A Case for the Language Arts
By Mary Ellen Bafumo

The advent of No Child Left Behind legislation has produced mandates that focus heavily on reading skills. Writing has a secondary role while speaking and listening skills are almost insignificant in terms of instructional time. NCLB mandates have translated into block scheduling for reading in many schools. This can be very useful when the emphasis is on the language arts. The same scheduling can block a love of reading and the acquisition of requisite skills, when instruction focuses narrowly on reading.

High stakes testing
When high stakes testing first made passing scores the central goal of school activity, I recall observing a newly-configured reading block in a high poverty, urban elementary school. I followed a large group of first graders who spent an hour and a half in a section of the library/media center that was outfitted with areas for reading instruction. Students were in four groups and sat for 20 minute intervals in each of four centers: phonics, vocabulary, sentence strip reading and oral reading practice. My observation was two weeks into the practice and in talking with children about what they were learning in school, it was abundantly clear that they were learning to dislike reading a great deal. There was no quality literature, only limited vocabulary stories. "The stories are dumb," was a comment I heard more than once. There was no writing about a story, role playing of the characters or illustrating one's favorite scene. There was no imagining what might have been or writing alternative endings; all of the things good teachers instinctively do to integrate learning and create the patterns by which the human brain learns.

An integrative approach
Since these students went next to a math block (which actually had a good reading component around math problems), not only was time spent on writing, speaking and listening limited, but social studies, science, physical education and the arts were significantly restricted or omitted.

The solution is not an end to block scheduling, which provides structured instructional time that is helpful to some students. The answer for the language arts is a focus on all of their components – instead of reading only. That means an integrative approach with contextual reading instruction instead of fragmented study; and the meaningful incorporation of speaking, listening and writing. Only then will students have the foundation that makes the language arts central to all learning.

Mary Ellen Bafumo is a Program Director for the Council on Educational Change, an Annenberg legacy group.

May 2004, Vol.34, No.8