Problem is that most state education systems and/or counties haven’t recognized Whole Language as effective since the late 1980’s, early 1990’s. There are only a handful of states nationwide that even acknowledge Whole Language exisits in some of their school districts. Your rant may have been good two decades ago but not anymore. Phonics has been the method of teaching reading in most public and private school systems after it re-emerged in the late 1980’s. NIce rant, no beef, no facts!
Rote memorization is one of the quickest and most efficient methods of learning certain facts such as multiplication tables, German prepositions that only govern the dative case, etc.
I had hooked on Phonics when I was in elementary school, possibly a little into junior high. It helped, because I read my first sci-fi book when I was 11. Things like relativistic speeds and gravitational lensing are far above the average 11 year old.
I’ve said before that most of my education has taken place on this website, after having been done with all of my formal education. I’m far more intelligent now than I was when I was 18. Some of also is from realizing how much the world sucks, feeling the crushing weight of life and everything in it.
Balanced Literacy wasn’t even announced until 1999. So they stopped harping on the term Whole Language around 2000 but all the practice is still there TODAY in Guided Reading, etc. Plus, no matter the official nomenclature, they start the kids off on high-frequency words, which is what the article is about. Here is the latest wisdom from the web:
“High-frequency words, often times referred to as sight words, are words that students encounter frequently in reading and writing. It is critical that readers and writers develop automatic recognition of these words. Comprehension begins to break down when students focus on trying to decode or sound out individual words. Learning to recognize high-frequency words by sight is critical to developing fluency in reading.”
This quote and many others are in the referenced article:
“High-Frequency Lie: Some Words Can’t Be Sounded Out”
Starting with sight-words means that you don’t really have phonics, although most schools will throw the word around.
Whole Word, which came before Whole Language, might be what hasn’t been “recognized.” Admittedly, the fads come and go differently in different parts of the country. But your chronology is not the main one.
Here’s a lament from a teacher to me last month about Guided Reading, which she refers to as “whole language.”
http://www.edarticle.com/article.php?id=28475.