Big business plot?

I have seen this one, and I do believe there is a core of truth to it, although the conspiracy theorists do tend to go much, much too far.Put yourself in the position of a big profit-oriented publisher. Which kind of reading series do you want to produce — a simple black-and-white printed series of a few books which teach everything needed to know about reading in three or four years; or a massive program involving four-colour print on every page, multiple books and workbooks, even more massive teachers’ editions with scripts for the teachers to read, films and transparencies and computer programs and games and puppets, lasting for eight years or better yet making the kids dependent for twelve? Obviously, there’s a lot more profit to be made from fancy series than from simple ones, from long series rather than short ones, from tied-in texts across the curriculum than from stand-alone books, from books requiring multiple expensive related materials than from self-contained books, from books requiring teachers’ packets than from self-explanatory ones, and so on.What is unfortunate is that the teachers, and worse yet the faculties of education, have so wholeheartedly bought into this pattern. Teachers keep crying and moaning about how they are not treated as professionals; but if any real professional were handed the kind of script that primary teachers are expected to follow slavishly (and worse yet sometimes ask for), she would toss it in the trash and walk out. Can you imagine a doctor or lawyer or business owner or city council member working all day every day from a pre-packaged script like this? The only other people who are forced to do this are the worst-paid and least-respected workers around, namely telemarketers.I can understand teachers using rograms because they are told to do so, on pain of losing their jobs, or using what all their preparation told them was correct. I can understand school boards being sold on fancy expensive text programs by glossy hard-sell sales pitches. But I cannot understand how faculties of education bought into these programs so thoroughly. This is shameful and should embarrass anyone in the field.By the way, in Europe, (a) the schools average two years ahead of American schools in achievement and (b) do *not* use this kind of expensive text, do not have scripts for the teachers, and often do not have any required texts at all — even in math. Food for thought?: I have read many arguments in the phonics Vs whole language debate,
: but I have just come across one I have never seen before. I would
: love some opinions. The author, who wrote his book in the early
: 70’s, studied many basil readers. (He made most of his comments
: about the 1950’s Dick Jane and Sally series.) Anyway, he feels
: that companies want to create a situation where the schools are
: forced to keep buying their products. He claims they go out of
: their way to find high frequency words that are phonetically
: irregular and as dissimilar as possible to obscure the phonetic
: nature of spelling and force the child to memorize each word
: purely by sight. The readers are based on a controlled vocabulary
: of sight words making it difficult to switch from one company’s
: series to another in mid stream. It creates long term buyers who
: also sometimes end up buying their brand of text for other
: subjects because they share the same core of sight words. He feels
: that they have a large financial interest in doing this and are
: good at putting out anti-phonics materials, and that is why it is
: so hard to get schools to consider phonics based methods..

: Nonsense promoted by a “conspiracy” theorist.

: I don’t know whether the author of that book is correct in his findings but anyone who believed that textbooks are big business would be right. The selling of textbooks to public schools is big business. As the biggest buyer of textbooks is the state of Texas, the publishing companies who write them write them with Texas and its expectations in mind.A few years ago an entire series of new math textbooks was written. Textbooks are very expensive and cost a school thousands upon thousands of dollars. Many school quickly jumped on board the bandwagon of the new Chicago series math books. A few years later, some teachers feel the series doesn’t serve well. What does a school do? As you say, it’s hard to switch midstream and it’s expensive too.In my experience, schools keep searching for the “Holy Grail” of curriculum and so allow themselves fall prey to the big business of the publishing companies. They keep looking for a curriculum and its textbooks that will be foolproof. In my opinion , there is no such thing as “foolproof curriculum” or foolproof textbooks but we spend a lot of tax money looking for it.I have read many arguments in the phonics Vs whole language debate,
: but I have just come across one I have never seen before. I would
: love some opinions. The author, who wrote his book in the early
: 70’s, studied many basil readers. (He made most of his comments
: about the 1950’s Dick Jane and Sally series.) Anyway, he feels
: that companies want to create a situation where the schools are
: forced to keep buying their products. He claims they go out of
: their way to find high frequency words that are phonetically
: irregular and as dissimilar as possible to obscure the phonetic
: nature of spelling and force the child to memorize each word
: purely by sight. The readers are based on a controlled vocabulary
: of sight words making it difficult to switch from one company’s
: series to another in mid stream. It creates long term buyers who
: also sometimes end up buying their brand of text for other
: subjects because they share the same core of sight words. He feels
: that they have a large financial interest in doing this and are
: good at putting out anti-phonics materials, and that is why it is
: so hard to get schools to consider phonics based methods..

EMAILNOTICES>noI don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I believe the answer is simple: GLITZ SELLS! Given the choice of purchasing two books with the same story, would we buy the one with black and white pictures or would we choose the one with beautiful illustrations? Publishing companies are in competition for dollars. If they didn’t update their books with more attractive ones, there’d be no reason for schools to purchase new ones in large quantities.Of course, new theories are always emerging and when teachers want to implement these, books need to be created which provide for that implementation. Publishers DO listen to what the educational field wants. I’ve seen their representatives sitting in on sessions at national conferences and outright asking for suggestions for textbook development.On the other hand, there are many small private publishers who have come up with really good programs and teachers and schools need to purchase only one copy which will last for years. There’s no real money to be made in such enterprises and many of them die an early death. Most of the good programs I’ve found were single books which contained most of the information needed to become a successful teacher, books like Nina Traub’s “Recipe for Reading,” Romalda Spalding’s “Writing Road to Reading,” Bechtold’s “Signs for Sounds,” Ruth Worden Frank’s “The Phonetic Reading Chain,” and Sr. Monica Foltzer’s “Professor Phonics Gives Sound Advice,” - - - and then there’s my own, “The Spel-Lang Tree.” Grace

PASSWORD>aamjT37qc5iCcIt’s the nature of big business to create a product and market it. IF that’s a conspiracy… then there are an awful lot of conspiracies happening! MOst people would call it planning. WHat’s the difference between a group of people planning and a conspiracy? Connotations, I suppose.Now, Heinemann publishers seems to put out a *lot* of rah-rah stuff for its whole language fan club to read, much of it conspiracy theories about reading research (it’s all a plot to discredit whole language you know, by the government and big business).IT wastes an awful lot of time and trees, IMHO. Then again, if people had learned good independent (logical??) thinking skills from the get go, they wouldn’t be so likely to be swept into groupthink and surround themselves with their favorite publishings to keep feeding the same ideas, valid or not.

. I believe the answer is simple:
: GLITZ SELLS! Given the choice of purchasing two books with the
: same story, would we buy the one with black and white pictures or
: would we choose the one with beautiful illustrations?LOL I fully agree. I have recomended quite a number of books to our local librarian. The library took me up on all but one suggestion. I had suggested that since they have so many do-it-yourself home phonics course books that they should get some systematic phonics readers for the parents to use with their kids. I recomended a very inexpensive set that my son had liked. The librarian said they would not be suitable because they had sinple black and while illustrations and she is looking for something more colorful and eye catching for beginners. Alas the beginner readers they have may be pretty to look at, but they contain numerous irregular multisylable words that make them phonetically unreadable to beginners.: Of course, new theories are always emerging and when teachers want to
: implement these, books need to be created which provide for that
: implementation. Publishers DO listen to what the educational field
: wants. I’ve seen their representatives sitting in on sessions at
: national conferences and outright asking for suggestions for
: textbook development.: On the other hand, there are many small private publishers who have
: come up with really good programs and teachers and schools need to
: purchase only one copy which will last for years. There’s no real
: money to be made in such enterprises and many of them die an early
: death. Most of the good programs I’ve found were single books
: which contained most of the information needed to become a
: successful teacher, books like Nina Traub’s “Recipe for
: Reading,” Romalda Spalding’s “Writing Road to
: Reading,” Bechtold’s “Signs for Sounds,” Ruth
: Worden Frank’s “The Phonetic Reading Chain,” and Sr.
: Monica Foltzer’s “Professor Phonics Gives Sound Advice,”
: - - - and then there’s my own, “The Spel-Lang Tree.”
: Grace