50. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: The Underground HIstory of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

50. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: The Underground HIstory of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

The Ignorant Schoolmaster

   After Gedike, the next innovator to hit on a reading scheme was Jean Joseph Jacotot, a  grand genius, much misunderstood. A professor of literature at nineteen, Jacotot  discovered a method of teaching nonspeakers of French the French language beginning  not with primers but with Fenelon's Telemachus.

Jacotot read aloud slowly while  students followed his reading in a dual translation — to their own familiar language and to  Fenelon's spoken French. Then the process was repeated. After the group reading, each  student individually dismantled the entire book into parts, into smaller parts, into  paragraphs, into sentences, into words, and finally into letters and sounds. This followed  the "natural" pattern of scientists it was thought, beginning with wholes, and reducing  them to smaller and smaller elements.  

     Jacotot has a reputation as a whole-word guru, but any resemblance to contemporary  whole- word reading in Jacotot is illusion. His method shifts the burden for analysis  largely from the shoulders of the teacher to the student. The trappings of holistic  noncompetitiveness are noticeably absent. Penalty for failure in his class was denial of  advancement. Everyone succeeded in Jacotot's system, but then, his students were highly  motivated, self-selected volunteers, all of college age.  

     From Jacotot we got the idea anybody can teach anything. His was the concept of the  ignorant schoolmaster. It should surprise no one that the ideas of Jacotot interested  Prussians who brought his system back to Germany and modified it for younger children.  For them, however, a book seemed too impractical a starting point, perhaps a sentence  would be better or a single word. Eventually it was the latter settled upon. Was this the  genesis of whole-word teaching which eventually dealt American reading ability a body  blow?  

     The answer is a qualified No. In the German "normal word" method the whole-word was  not something to be memorized but a specimen of language to be analyzed into syllables.  The single word was made a self-conscious vehicle for learning letters. Once letter  sounds were known, reading instruction proceeded traditionally. To a great extent, this is  the method my German mother used with my sister and me to teach us to read fluently  before we ever saw first grade.