Word: meaningful
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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In interviews with hundreds of teachers and administrators, Chall found that few referred to research in defending their use of the meaning method. "Their language," she says, "was more often characteristic of religion and politics, than of science and learning."
Most American schools, an 90 to 95 per cent of the reading texts for beginning readers, use the "meaning method"--emphasizing the content of written words in an effort to associate reading with the child's daily life.
Educators have spent decades debating the relative value of meaning methods and decoding methods, which include phonic and linguistic techniques. The decision to use content emphasis was made early in the century on the basis of very primitive studies.
He termed most administrators "stupid, misinformed, and spineless"--the result, he said, of being "well-meaning and devoted." The failure of Berkeley officials to present the real cause and standing of the 1964 Free Speech Movement was one instance he mentioned. Lang said that national newspapers had misrepresented the Movement...
to offer a life adequately large. The aesthetic act shifts from the creation of meaning to the destruction of it."