Supporting versus Sorting
This is one of several critical points summarised by Dr's Ramsey and Louden upon which we must reach some clarity and consensus. As a nation we face the same choices of our fellow human beings in other nations grappling with similar issues.(13) This is not only an Australian "problem" but also a universal phenomenon where a segment of every society (some smaller and some larger), is systematically excluded from the knowledge base of the nation because they cannot read. This restricts the opportunities that only arise by being literate(14) in a knowledge nation. Few who can read can imagine being restricted from the pure enjoyment as well as freedom one gains only by being able to read. One might say that being able to read and choose widely what we read fuels our radical individualism.

One of the questions before us is, should we exclude this or that group from this Inquiry based on their label? Some would argue "they" have their own "buckets of money" and should therefore not be included in this Inquiry. The argument extends to the creation of yet another label of student focussed disablement.(15) Will this take us to a better understanding of how to teach reading? Rowe in at least one section appears to join others who agree that it will not.(16)

For far too long (this being the 100th anniversary of the old I.Q.(17)) we have spent too much time classifying, predicting and fulfilling our prophecies of who may not read by virtue of their nature only to be proven wrong by the substantial research that now shows us that it is not one's nature that determines who will read and who will not, which stratagem will work and which will not... but who will have the teachers – be they parent, tutor or masterful professional – with the time, will and skill to stay with us until we have achieved automaticity.(18)

There is too much confusion around what a "learning disability" might be. Could it be a "teaching disability" (as it is listed as one of the possible "causes")?(19) If so, should we be labelling the child with a label for something that rests with someone else? Do we know what dyslexia is? Does it really matter that the student "has" Down's syndrome, ADHD, autism and the plethora of other labels - or can we turn the sorting of who shall read into support for all to read? In thinking about the profound impact that labelling of children has had in setting the mind-set of possibility against the maze of entitlement in determining who is allowed to receive help, I am reminded of a story.

This story is about a town where the water supply consistently made 30% of the town's children ill. In seeking solutions the town's people were torn. To fix the system would mean investing in an overhaul of its entirety. Too expensive said many, as it is fine for the majority of folks. Sub-systems that provided pills and reduced the suffering of some of the 30% argued that they would go out of business if the system were overhauled. The engineers knew that only an overhaul at the core would stop the suffering in the long run and yet they could gain no sectors' support for this work.

We face the same tough choices: - do we add yet another new label and create another new "bucket" to increase the assortment of salves and demarcate them from other labels and buckets, as if their labels are what matters, full well knowing that we could reduce the bulk of illiteracy for future generations? Or, do we endure the cost of fundamental structural reform? One path will lead to increased costs of sorting, then apply a salve to one but not another of the children who are not yet literate; the other path leads to supporting literacy for all. Ours is clearly the later.

Concentrating on Supporting versus Sorting: Advantages

If we are to produce a plan of action instead of a pile of words to be piled atop the 25 or so preceding inquiries(20), our work requires clarity of focus that avoids not only becoming embroiled in the reading wars but circumvents the sorting wars. As Dr Rowe points out in the draft document, we have no agreement on what would constitute a "learning disability"(21), even though, for some reason other than the evidence presented, it appears enticing to adopt this term. The field of specialist education, much like the field of literacy, is currently emerging from the constraints of a multi-millennial labelling war reaching back to the early Greeks who first conceived "idiot" and a social program based upon this enduring, albeit ill-conceived idiom.(22) What we know from this deep history is that those who have received labels have been those who have not received support for their becoming literate, rather they
have been separated from school communities and natural supports of children who can read and read easily. This war too is "over". The evidence base favours inclusion;(23) yet like the reading and resource wars, segregation breathes on the taboo of fear that we might all catch some contagion from those whom we have been separated - racial, impaired and in older days, even the girls.(24)

Argue as we may for and against the nature or nurturing locus of the problem (is it "in" the child or "in" her environment) and then converting these into an elegant array of labels of children, takes us no further in assisting teachers to understand what needs to be done to support all whom they find in their charge. Dr Rowe, supported by the plethora of persuasive evidence cited by others who have also examined this phenomenon, points out that no matter the label, certain critical attributes – when applied – work for all.(25) Dr Rowe also poignantly makes the point (9.2) that only a small portion of variance was accounted to individual difference of students; that "outmoded forms of biological or social determinism" whilst still pervasive are "little more than 'religious dogma'. A labelling war is therefore to be avoided on practical grounds, even if one cannot give up one's philosophical positions about where "the problem" lies and what we should label it – from impaired social structure to impaired human being and the multi-layers of positions in between. For some, maybe many, labelling the child with a disability when the setting in which they live may be the barrier; is inaccurate, unduly burdensome for the child to bear and blurs the focus of where we need to invest our interventions. It is elegant, as well as egalitarian (or at least adequate) to start from the position that all children unable to sufficiently read - should be enough of a label to trigger access to some of the nation's reading resources.

If, as seems the conclusion of the Draft Review of the evidence, teacher quality is the critical variable(26); why then do we not trigger resources using an identification mechanism of teachers who lack these qualities rather than look to burden the labelling upon the victim of these lacking qualities? (This should not be taken to be teacher bashing or labelling. Far from it. We address in strategies, teacher "self evaluation" as a more rational form of resource-trigger mechanism).

Putting a label between one's humanity and one's need to access a fundamental human skill is merely a resourcing war that converts an admirable and ambitious goal of making ALL Australians literate into a massive expenditure of sorting who may be excluded from the goal. This is not to say that once included in the goal of becoming literate that we cannot then match the plethora of promising practices with specific children based on their individual differences and hypothesise what might work based on their varying reading profiles.(27) This is not an argument of "one size fits all", merely an argument to include ALL who cannot read into the spotlight of our goal. Let me end this plea for supporting versus sorting with another story.

Fabian, a year 2 boy in the far North of Western Australia is one of these kids. He cannot read. It is quite extraordinary then that at 2.10 pm he heads to the library. Fabian knows there are computers in the library. He loves computers and thinks and hopes he may be able to learn more about reading and writing on the library computer. He sits down at the computer, which has the library catalogue system on it. In the search screen he begins to type in his name – he manages the first few letters then stops to untie his shoe and take it off. The librarian witnesses this and asks Fabian what he is doing – he ignores her question and turns over his shoe to look at the sole. He continues typing and she realises he is copying his name from the bottom of his shoe. He is so excited to type it in correctly as shown on the bottom of his shoe. He clicks on the search button and of course has no idea what the search result says. He knows enough to press the start over button and then reaches for a book and starts typing in a word from it. Once again the catalogue does not give Fabian the result he is after. Fabian, with or without good instruction... is in hot pursuit of literacy.(28)

 

Some of the critical questions we are left with in terms of a "problem" when we take the labelling away and discern to tackle the problem of the "elephant in the lounge".

Tool wars versus a war on illiteracy
The polarisations in the field have been described as "the reading wars". Although we have some indication of "peace" around the reference table, Dr Louden noted that the shape of this agreement is not yet clear. What clouds our vision of recovery of those children who are not learning to read appears, at least to us, to be related to the mistake of declaring war on certain tools of potentially teaching reading rather than declaring war on the real enemy - illiteracy.(29) The reading wars do show at least one thing: one method makes a very bold claim that all children can learn. It does not say some. It does not say only this or that labelled child – it says all children can learn.(30) We would much prefer to stake our chips behind a method with
positive assumptions that may fail a few, than behind methods with negative assumptions that succeed, when counting the casualties of this war. (Spiegel though is probably right. We need to build bridges across at least the most promising strategies.)(31)

Instead of using one of Homo sapien's distinctive abilities - toolmaking - we have instead made a few tools sacred and engaged in a modern rehash of making use of certain tools, taboo. Although I don't favour the moralising of the goal of reducing illiteracy to a "war", I believe it is at least more scholarly that we engage in an arms race to perfect tools to reduce the size and dimensions of illiteracy than it is to reduce our classrooms to a battlefield in which a feud over tools is fought.

Over the past 3 decades most human developmental science movements have moved to replace the over-emphasised behavioural-based sciences of the earlier period. The utopian dreams of making whatever we wanted of each student through operant conditioning were correctly rejected, however this was sadly accomplished not by superior evidence forcing in a new paradigm but by defining the scientific study of human development as a modern taboo.

Scientific evidence has been discarded by many in this field while the society at large demands increasing scientific evidence in most other aspects of life (e.g. demanding increasing verifications on environmental safety, medical and bio-medical safety etc.). However in this field - education - one needs only to read the passion of condemnation of attempts to measure certain aspects of human development (such as identifying numbers of children who cannot read in Australia) to appreciate that scholarship and moralisation have been on a collision course for some time.

Why are certain tools of learning – taboo?
Our position is that governments and whole societies have used certain tools to "poor" and sometimes "mischievous" ends and in so doing, alienated many from the evidence-based tools. The use of the old IQ (this year its 100th birthday) to separate and congregate large numbers of citizens is a classic case in point. Such mischievous use of the intelligence tool led English, Americans and Australians, as well as the Germans into a flirtation with eugenics from which we have only begun to recover.(32)

We removed children from their families, sterilised many of our girls (into the 1980's) and caste a percentage of children at first out of schools and later into segregated schools (from which we are only now recovering) on the basis of this testing. In other words, we used a test that could yield a rough measure of intellect's distribution to a child or person to segregate them from education rather than determine how best to teach the child to read.

This "poor" ends usage of this and other tests is still used to "gatekeep" immigration (its first use in America), "gatekeep" money buckets, "gatekeep" numbers applying to university, "gate-keep" which course a person will be allowed to pursue and so on, ad infinitum. It is easy, therefore, to appreciate the moralisation of the scientific measurement tools as taboo and others that attempt to measure human nature's distributions as well as human culture's effects on improving their conditions.

Scholarship requires that we return to evidence, for without evidence we have returned to an age of teach and pray versus teach and measure to discover "what works". However to return to such scholarship we must be diligent not to use the measures outside of the use to measure the influence of "what works", is showing promise or is not working.

We must choose our measurement and teaching tools based on efficacy, replacing our value of a particular method(33) (input) to value a particular outcome (e.g., leave no Australian, illiterate.). In so doing, we may appreciate that there may be a suite of measurements and methods that can achieve an evidence-based outcome.

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Endnotes

13. See endnote 3.
14. See Lyon (2003) in Rowe's point 9.1 Rowe et al (March, 2005).
15. Rowe, et al (March, 2005). From the outset, it is important to recognise the lack of clarity surrounding prevailing definitions of learning difficulties, and the continuing controversy about how identification should proceed. Over the past few years, theorists and practitioners have highlighted the necessity for definitional changes that reflect contemporary understandings and allow for easier and more consistent identification (e.g., Kavale & Forness, 2000; Scruggs & Mastropieri, 2002). Despite increasing efforts to cope with definitional problems plaguing the term learning difficulties by researchers and practitioners (e.g., Shaw, Cullen, McGuire, & Brinckerhoff, 1995), there is little consensus in the literature on definitional issues, especially in respect of the role played by intelligence (or IQ). The inherent complexity in reaching definitional consensus is characterised by Lyon (1996, p. 3) as follows: Which instructional reading approach or method, or combination of approaches or methods, provided in which setting or combination of settings, under which student–teacher ratio conditions and teacher–student interactions, provided for what period of time and by which type of teacher, have the greatest impact on well defined elements of reading behaviour and reading-related behaviours, for which children, for how long, and for what reasons? The question, posed by Lyon with respect to children with reading difficulties, is equally applicable to children with a range of other learning difficulties. In particular, it highlights the challenge faced by educational researchers and practitioners as they seek to find effective ways to cater for the educational needs of children who find it difficult to learn. (p. 2&3) And In a review of the current international situation in relation to this issue, Gale (2000, p. 130) notes: Although there have been literally thousands of studies concerned with learning disabilities, particularly focused on primary and secondary education, what the literature generally shows is that researchers are no nearer to a common understanding of what is meant by such terms. (p. 3) See also Allington, R. and Walmsley, S. Eds. (1995) No Quick Fix: Rethinking Literacy Programs in
    America's Elementary Schools. Teacher College Press. International Reading Association.
16. Rowe poignantly makes the point (9.2) that only a small portion of variance was accounted to individual difference of students; that "outmoded forms of biological or social determinism" whilst still pervasive are "little more than 'religious dogma'. In Rowe et al (March, 2005).
17. Allington, R. (1994). The schools we have. The schools we need. The Reading Teacher, 48, 1, p. 15 It simply is not necessary that some children fail to learn to read well. Unfortunately, that is how society has historically understood the bell-shaped curve that was created at the turn of the century to represent the normal distribution of a wide range of supposedly innate human abilities. It is time to reject the notion that only a few children can learn to read and write well. For too long we have set arbitrary but limited literacy learning goals for some children, usually those children whose scores fell at the wrong end of the normal curve distribution. This design virtually ensured some children would not receive instruction sufficient to develop their potential as literacy learners. See also Sejnowski, T. & Quartz, S. (2002). Liars, Lovers, & Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are. Harper Collins: New York. Lewis Terman - developer of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, said that the IQ test was the beacon light of the eugenics movement. This is the ultimate sorting tool that sadly led to such movements as institutionalisation, segregation and sterilisation, marriage prevention & miscegenation laws, and separation from peers & learning. The IQ continues today - used to sort between regular and special education despite the absence of evidence of benefit in being separated and congregated with others with the same label.
18. The National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children To Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. Report of Subgroups, p. 3-7. There has been a high degree of overlap in the use of terms such as "automaticity" and "fluency." Most scholars treat automaticity as the more general term that embraces a wide variety of behaviors, ranging from motor skills such as driving and typing to cognitive skills such as reading. Some would prefer to reserve the term "fluency" for reading or other language phenomena. This distinction, however, is not universally recognized. For example, The Literacy Dictionary (Harris & Hodges, 1995) defines "fluency" as "freedom from word identification problems that might hinder comprehension..." whereas, in the same source, "automaticity" is defined as "fluent processing of information that requires little effort or attention." In other words, automaticity and fluency are often used synonymously.
19. Hempenstall, K. (1999). Effective School Practices, 18 (1), Summer, 1999. Reading Problems: The Causal Role of the Education System.
20. Comment made to the Reference Group of the Inquiry – Melbourne, 11/3/2005.
21. See Rowe et al (2005) at endnote 15. Allington, R. (1994). The Reading Teacher, 48, 1. The schools we have. The schools we need. Children identified as learning disabled, for instance, cannot be differentiated from those served in remedial programs or those identified as dyslexics (Algozzine & Ysseldyke, 1983). In addition no one has been able to demonstrate that any particular curriculum or teaching style works better with some groups of children than others. Algozzine, B., & Ysseldyke, J. E. (1983). Learning disabilities as a subset of school failure: Exceptional Children 50 242-246
22. "Idiot" – The early Greeks believed that any physical or language difference was a mark of
    inferiority and labelled people with intellectual impairment 'idiots', leaving their fate to the gods. The early Greek response was to kill children with disability with few exceptions. The foundation of Roman Law, the Twelve Tables mandated the killing of infants with impairments. See Garland, Robert. (1995). The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco- Roman World. Cornell University: NY.
23. Jackson, R., Chalmers, R., & Wills, D. (2004). Should Schools Include Children with Disability? Interaction 17, 2, 2004. Journal of the National Council on Intellectual Disability. A synthesis of comparative research by Dr Robert Jackson and Darrell Wills demonstrates that inclusive education is significantly superior to separate or segregated education models for children with disability.
24. Watts, R. (1995) Beyond nature and nurture: eugenics in the 20th century Australian history. Australasian Journal of Politics & History.40-3. See also: Grant Rodwell (2003). 'Shoes Well Cleaned and Heels Repaired': scientific management, eugenics and teacher selection and preparation in Australia, 1910-1970, Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 24, 1, 67-86
25. Snow et al 1998: Good instruction seems to transcend characterizations of children's vulnerability for failure; the same good early literacy environment and patterns of effective instruction are required for children who might fail for different reasons. Does this mean that the identical mix of instructional materials and strategies will work for each and every child? Of course not. If we have learned anything from this effort, it is that effective teachers are able to craft a special mix of instructional ingredients for every child they work with. But it does mean that there is a common menu of materials, strategies, and environments from which effective teachers make choices. This in turn means that, as a society, our most important challenge is to make sure that our teachers have access to those tools and the knowledge required to use them well. In other words, there is little evidence that children experiencing difficulties learning to read, even those with identifiable learning disabilities, need radically different sorts of supports than children at low risk, although they may need much more intensive support. Childhood environments that support early literacy development and excellent instruction are important for all children. Excellent instruction is the best intervention for children who demonstrate problems learning to read. (emphasis added)
26. Rowe and others referenced in 9.2 make a sound case for this position in point 9.2. In Rowe et al (2005).
27. See endnote 25.
28. Personal correspondence, Anne Devenish, Kununurra 2001.
29. Snow et al (1998): Under the treaties that have recently been entered into, furthermore, the focus of attention has shifted from the researchers' theories and data back to the teacher, alone in her classroom with a heterogeneous group of children, all awaiting their passports to literacy.
30. In Rowe point 6.21, p. 22. In Rowe et al (2005).
31. Spiegel (1992), quoted In Rowe point 6.4, p. 33 in Rowe et al (2005).
32. Black, E. (2003). War against the weak. Eugenics and America's campaign to create a master race. Four Walls Eight Windows. Jones W. E., Report on Mental Deficiency in the Commonwealth of Australia (Canberra: Australian Department of Health, 1929), 16. Rodwell, G. (1998). "If the feeble-minded are to be preserved ..." Special education and eugenics in Tasmania 1900-1930. Issues in Educational Research, 8(2), 1998, 131-156. Rodwell, G. (2003). 'Shoes Well Cleaned and Heels Repaired': scientific management, eugenics and teacher selection and preparation in Australia, 1910-1970, 67-86 Garton, S. (1994). Sound Minds and Healthy Bodies: Re-considering Eugenics in Australia, 1911- 1940, Historical Studies, 26, 103, 1994, 163-181 Rob Watts (1994). Beyond Nature and Nurture: Eugenics in Twentieth Century Australian History, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 40, 3, 1994, 318-34. Wyndham, D. H. (2003). Eugenics in Australia: Striving for National Fitness. London: Galton Institute. Eugenics also played a central role in the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) which was founded in 1930.
33. Snow et al (1998). This body of research indicates that "balance" nor "eclectic" is accurate in carrying the message of the research base. Snow et al argue that reading instruction is about an integration of attention to the alphabetic principle with the construction of meaning and opportunities to develop fluency. See endnote 25.

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