Commentary: Basal Reading Programs and the Deskilling of Teachers: A Critical Examination of the Argument

Abstract

n this commentary, I examine the hypothesis that the use of basal reading programs in elementary classrooms in the United States results in the deskilling of teachers. After providing background information and stating the deskilling argument, I will scrutinize it by posing four questions related to it. I will conclude from my responses to these questions that the simple cause/effect relationship suggested by the deskilling argument is an oversimplification and fails to credit teachers with the intelligence and decision-making capabilities they possess. At the onset, I wish to be explicit about my point of view. I am a coauthor of a basal reading program. I accepted the opportunity to serve in this capacity several years ago well aware of the intense criticisms of basal materials and those who develop them. My decision to associate myself with a basal publisher was based upon the belief that such materials can be useful literacy acquisition tools for teachers and children and that, through my efforts and that of other literacy educators (Winograd, 1989), those materials could be improved. Given my orientation, one might choose to dismiss my comments as being reactionary, and I suppose they are in the sense that I am responding to critics who have directly or indirectly suggested that through my involvement with a basal publisher I restrict or control teachers' teaching and students' learning of literacy abilities. In the Preface to the Report Card on Basal Readers (1988), a work highly critical of editors, authors, consultants, and publishers of basal reading programs, Goodman, Shannon, Freeman, and Murphy state: While we have tried to be fair in this report we have not tried to be neutral (p. v). Though I disagree with much of what they say in the Report Card, I know Goodman et al. to be committed educators with high integrity and hence accept their stance of nonneutral fairness. I take a similar stance in this commentary and request similar consideration.