Reading Wars

from "New York: magazine, published May 8, 2006:
http://nymag.com/nymag/letters/16857/

It’s no surprise that Michael Bloomberg is smitten with the designer pedagogy called Balanced Literacy. It’s quite seductive and certainly appears very impressive. Teachers provide instruction in the format of a mini-lesson using the workshop model. All the many components make it one heady elixir. But could the young Joel Klein ever have read his favorite book on baseball and decoded the words if he had not received strong phonics instruction? The old-fashioned “drill and kill” hardly put some of the best adult thinkers off learning for life. It might have provided the necessary discipline to succeed in their academic pursuits.
—Marjorie J. Levine, Manhattan