Customer Reviews

Essays into Literacy: Selected Papers and Some Afterthoughts

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In this brief volume, Dr. Frank Smith, a Harvard researcher AND genuinely talented writer, deflates standard educational myths about teaching reading in particular and education in general. He pulls no punches in his condemnation of the bloated nonsense floating around classrooms and insulting our intelligence today. Of particular importance is his famous article, "The Politics of Ignorance." Written over 20 years ago, it is as wise and witty as it was when it first appeared. Get it, read it, and be prepared to reassess everything you thought you knew about education.

According to Smith, "Children who read I do not have any candy as 'I don't have no candy' have picked up all the significant features of meaning from the text and succeeded in translating them into their own thought and language. Expecting them to read word-perfectly not only confuses pedantry with reading, but also it will probably convey to children a completely distorted notion of what reading is. They may be deluded into requiring far more visual information from the text than any mature reader would be able to cope with" (p. 22).

Smith is in the never-never land of educational theory. If a child understands what the task is, and reads 'I do not have any candy' as 'I don't have no candy,' then she does not know what words are before her. She is guessing, not reading.

Evidence from research strongly supports phonics, an approach Smith slights. Instead, he is content to pontificate about how "The brain contains nothing less than a theory of the world" (p. 121).