Good Ole Summertime Musings.

Abstract

Good Ole Summertime Musings Peter V. Paul, Editor By the time this editorial goes to press, summer will be over and the colors of fall will or might be decorating the area where you live. However, as I write, the hottest season of the year is still in full swing and on my mind. Summer is the time when a number of educators might engage in what could be labeled their summertime reading, writing, or thinking adventures. These might entail reading a thick novel or two or a list of selected articles in magazines, or perhaps navigating through readings and postings on the Internet—all for which we found no time during the rest of the busy work year (albeit some of us seem to be busy all year round). Other individuals might try their hand at writing poetry or short stories, or perhaps jotting down thoughts about their existence and purpose in the universe. It is no different for me. Every summer, I forage for interesting ideas by diving into the bookcases in my densely packed home office, jammed with rows of books, two deep on nearly all of the shelves. This requires temporarily and patiently removing one row of books so that I can see what is stacked behind them, again and again. Occasionally, I uncover a pleasant surprise. I have so many books—some of which I have not read completely—and, as a result, my wife has rationed my future purchases. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: I will always have more than enough books for my summertime reading and writing activities for the rest of my earthly existence. During the summer, I also embark on my wildest adventures in imaginative thinking. Actually, according to my wife, these endeavors occur all year long, though their presence seems to be more pronounced during the hottest months of the year. In any case, I think about constructs that, subsequently, dominate sections of manuscripts on which I have been working. Let me provide a little context. Several of my students—current and past—always inquire about what I do in my spare time. Essentially, what they mean is what experiences do I have when I am not thinking, reading, and writing about deafness and language or literacy development. All of my students have heard my dictum, expounded incessantly: Think, read, and write about topics outside of the required readings in your university courses or outside of your professional area of expertise (or comfort zone). And the corollary: Engaging in these seemingly outside-the-box experiences might directly or indirectly enrich your subsequent scholarly thinking, reading, and writing activities. To complain that you do not have the time or energy to travel along these sinuous paths to reach a purported deep level of knowledge is akin to having myopia. Not taking calculated risks might pigeonhole you in a hardened disciplinary silo or an uncritical frame of mind regarding your own convictions, or even those of others. Let me cherry-pick a few personal examples. Essentially, I want to provide some background for the current salient constructs in my writings—not to mention the rationale for the esoteric titles of a number of my editorials in the Annals. To obtain some insights into the reading wars in the larger field of literacy (see, e.g., Pearson, 2004), I have plowed slowly, as expected, through a few of the major theoretical and research books on literacy (e.g., Alvermann, Unrau, & Ruddell, 2013; Arfe, Dockrell, & Berninger, 2014; Israel & Duffy, 2009; McGill-Franzen & Allington, 2011). That’s the safe scholarly route. However, a deeper understanding of and more clarity about the reading wars (and other educational conflicts) emerge from synthesizing and syncretizing thoughts from the reading of a few books in philosophy, theology, and even sociology. To take an example from sociology, Ritzer (1992) proffered insights into the conflicts engendered by researchers who ascribe to different paradigms and metatheories or to different worldviews. These bipolar mental frameworks often result in unbridgeable gaps between adherents of one position and [End Page 403] those advocating another. It is not difficult to serve up examples. In our field, there is a dichotomy between proponents of the medical/clinical...