Dear Balanced Literacy Proponents (or whatever PR spin fad-du-jour mask you’re wearing now),
This is just a friendly note to let you know, your time is up.
The Tom Foolery that has played out in American classrooms for the last few decades has damaged generations of children. The rising national illiteracy rates prove we have a national crisis on our hands, and we have you to thank for it. If that was your intention, then well done.
You cast aside the truth that, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yet, before you doom more generations to the same death sentence you cast upon generations of children, those of us you were not able to taint with your beguiling ways have something to say.
The death grip you have had on education has done immense damage to this country that is beyond reckoning. You have engaged in crimes against humanity for you willful commitment to propagating methods that do not teach anything at all. The children that have survived your system and can claim to be educated, are so because of dedicated parents who fought against you, who knew better than you, who never believed in what you said was the latest and greatest method to teach. The educational environment that exists because of you, is a bad imitation of what education once was, and what it can be again.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” You clearly choose the darkness of destructive selfishness. I hope the few decades where you raked in the cash was worth it; the drill and kill environments you created was worth it; the standardized testing cash cow was worth it.
Collectively parents have clued into your seemingly altruistic game. We see through your veiled claims that you are great. We see through your lies. We have unearthed the science of reading, and since we were educated before you took over, we are able to educate ourselves about what the #ScienceOfReading is, and why your methods are nothing more than pathetic Ponzi schemes. Since we choose to walk in the light of creative altruism, we share our knowledge with others, we spread the message of the truth in the science of reading, we educate others, we lift each other up, and united, we stand against you.
You can stand up and kick and scream and get a bunch of your paid professorial staff to sign off on your factually inaccurate letters and blog posts sharing your false concern over what you allege are our misguided attempts to steal your power, while you attempt to tear down passionate, well-educated and determined parents, but what you clearly have not derived from your missives are that big words and well organized writing does not make it factual. You seem to have missed the lesson that marketing can’t spin everything, attempting to talk over the heads of your perceived audience, feigning intellectual superiority, will not automatically make you the winner. I for one just laughed at you. I laugh at you still with your continued attempts to justify your position. I will never stop laughing at you.
And I will never stop laughing at you because I do not fear you. Parent advocates, the ones you despise so much, do not fear you, and truth be told, you fear us. As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
So, like I said, this is just a friendly note to let you know that your time is up. We are coming for you, and we will win. If I were you I’d start packing up that sweet office of yours.
All the best,
#ParentAdvocates for the restoration of the #ScienceOfReading to ALL American Classrooms, united in one voice, restoring education, taking back our power as parents, and ending your destructive reign