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Past and present technocratic solutions to teaching literacy: implications

for New Zealand primary teachers and literacy programmes
Janet Solera
a
The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

To cite this Article Soler, Janet(1999) 'Past and present technocratic solutions to teaching literacy: implications for New
Zealand primary teachers and literacy programmes', Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 7: 3, 523 — 540
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 Curriculum Studies, Volume 7, Number 3, 1999

Past and Present Technocratic Solutions

to Teaching Literacy: implications for
New Zealand primary teachers and
literacy programmes

JANET SOLER
The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT The late 1990s have seen a resurgence of the arguments for a
skills-focused literacy instruction programme. This article explores the New
Zealand-based public and professional debates surrounding the promotion
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of a technocratic approach to literacy instruction during the 1940s and

1950s, and the reoccurrence of the reading debate in late 1990s. In the early
stages of both literacy crises, the professional competency of education
officials and primary teachers was attacked by business interests and their
political allies. The aftermath of the earlier crisis highlights the failure of
this mechanistic and ‘culture neutral’ view of literacy instruction to cater
for Maori children. The outcomes of the earlier debate signals a need avoid
a similar conclusion to the current debate by adopting a broader approach
to literacy instruction in the new millennium if language and literacy
instruction programmes are to cater for complex cultural contexts, and the
changing technological environments

Introduction
In the late 1990s, a skills-based, technique focused, approach to literacy
instruction has been promoted in New Zealand’s public and professional
debates over literacy. Politicians, media and educators have been
influenced by the ‘reading wars’ in the United States (see Vacca, 1996, p.
3), and the promotion of the ‘National Year of Reading’ in the United
Kingdom. These debates have influenced the New Zealand government’s
recent development of a ‘literacy strategy’ to solve ‘the disparity between
good and poor readers’ (Gerritsen, 1999, p. 1).
This technocratic approach to English literacy first came to
dominate New Zealand literacy policy and teaching practice in New
Zealand primary schools during the 1940s and 1950s, when a new

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 Janet Soler

‘scientific’, psychologically-based paradigm of literacy instruction

emerged. The new approach to literacy instruction developed from a
debate over reading methods, which surfaced in the New Zealand
political arena in the early 1940s to mid-1940s (Soler, 1998). The
dominance of the technocratic approach to literacy during this period
was linked to internal political influences and international influences
related to the 1950s ‘great debate’ over reading (Chall, 1967). Prior to this
period, the emphasis in New Zealand primary school literacy instruction
relied upon the infant teacher’s professional experience, and a literary
and moral basis for primary school literacy instruction (Soler, 1999). The
adoption of standardised tests and other quantifiable approaches to
literacy were justified in the 1950s by their claims of a ‘scientific’
approach to literacy-based upon developments in psychology. This new
approach resulted in an emphasis upon: reading skills, psychometric-
based materials, standardised reading tests, ‘reading experts’ and the
compulsory use of ‘scientific’ basal readers developed for English school
children.
The move to technocratic approaches to literacy instruction and
assessment was a direct outcome of the 1940s and 1950s legitimation
crisis over literacy ‘standards’. The National Party (the opposition party)
used the claim that literacy standards were ‘falling’ to undermine the
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power of the Labour government, the Department of Education and the

professional credibility of teachers. Senior primary school administrators
responded by accommodating the demand for the teaching of the ‘Three
Rs’, introducing standardised texts and approaches, centralised
normative evaluation, supported by the work of centralised ‘reading
experts’. The adoption of technical knowledge and technical procedures
grounded in the newly developed applied sciences of psychology and
statistics promoted overseas, helped New Zealand educational
administrators reassert power over the primary school system.
Programmes to train ‘reading experts’ were developed, based upon
claims of scientific expertise, and the development and codification of
theoretical knowledge related to literacy instruction.
The current literacy legitimation crisis was initiated in the early to
mid-1990s by a small group of university-based academic ‘reading
experts’. This group questioned the approaches adopted in teaching
emergent literacy through the use of ‘whole language teaching’ and the
‘reading recovery programme’, which had become widely adopted by
New Zealand teachers in the 1970s and 1980s (see Tunmer, 1990, 1992).
As the debate over current methods of teaching reading moved from
academic journals into the popular press, the public attacks on the use of
the ‘whole language’ and the hitherto strongly supported ‘reading
recovery’ programme intensified. In the late 1990s, other political groups
have entered the debate. The most recent participants in the public
debate over ‘reading methods’ and ‘literacy standards’ are the Business

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 TECHNOCRATIC SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING LITERACY

Round Table, who are similar to the Confederation of British Industry and
to the right of centre New Zealand National Party government. The
participation of these groups in the ‘whole language versus phonics’
debate and their accusations that schools have not achieved high enough
literacy standards has the potential once again to lead to a loss of faith in
the teaching profession. The calls for the ‘one right way’ to teach the
decoding of print in the early stages of emergent literacy have also been
influenced by overseas developments and debates, and the ascendancy
of psychometric approaches to literacy. Once again, an emphasis upon
the ‘three Rs’ has served as a political platform for an approaching
election as National Party politicians stress the need for standardised
testing and assessment of the teaching profession’s ability to teach
children to read.
The first part of this article focuses upon the 1940s and 1950s
debates in the professional publications and parliamentary records.
These sources reveal the presence of a ‘quiet revolution’ and the
establishment of a technocracy that transformed the politics of the late
1950s and early 1960s leading to problematic outcomes. The second part
of the article examines the development of the current New Zealand
‘literacy crisis’ in the New Zealand press. The promotion of a narrowly
technocratic approach in both periods of ‘literacy crisis’ raises serious
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questions about the appropriateness of developing a narrow skills-based

approach to primary school literacy instruction and language
programmes for the new millennium.
The problems generated by the adoption of technocratic
approaches in the 1940s and 1950s suggests that focusing on how we
teach reading can produce a mechanical, uncritical, monocultural
approach to reading, which limits literacy to the decoding of print. If we
let the question of how we teach reading overshadow an understanding
of why we teach reading, we will fail to see reading as a changeable social
practice which has ‘identifiable moral and ideological consequences’
(Luke, 1995, p. 95).

The Literacy Legitimation Crisis of the 1950s

The Public Debate
The public criticism of literacy standards in New Zealand began in the
early 1940s. By the late 1950s, this public criticism had resulted in the
acceptance and promotion of technocratic-based literacy instruction
ideals that dominated literacy policy and practice in New Zealand
primary schools.
In his 1940 Report to Parliament, the Minister of Education
acknowledged fears that there could be ‘a serious drop in the standards
of work’. He initially countered these fears by asserting that there was
evidence to indicate that standards in the ‘three Rs’ were not declining

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 Janet Soler

(Mason, 1940, p. 2). These parliamentary debates over ‘standards’ and

the role of the ‘tool subjects’ were followed by an attack on the standards
of primary school education from a group of teachers and university
lecturers who were quoted in the primary teachers’ professional
publication National Education (see, for example, New Zealand
Educational Institute, 1944, p. 275).
In October 1944 the Director General of Education and the Minister
of Education, organised a National Education conference to ‘ascertain
public opinion on aspects of education that concern the country as a
whole’ which was to involve ‘many bodies apart from teachers’
organisations, who had an involvement in topics of national concern’
(New Zealand Department of Education, 1944, p. 219). The 1944 Education
Conference brought forth criticism of educational standards, and calls for
a greater involvement from businessmen and manufacturers in
determining curriculum policy in this area. Members of the Associated
Chambers of Commerce reminded the conference that the employers had
a vested interest in education ‘because it was at the consumer end of
education, its members being largely employers of labour coming from
the schools’. They stated that members of their organisation were
concerned about a ‘decrease in fundamental skills’ (Soler, 1998).
The debate over standards in the ‘tool subjects’ continued to
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influence public debate for the remainder of the 1940s. Official statements
and reference to the judgements of the Inspectorate were not enough to
silence the critics. There was a need to use a technical solution and a
supposedly ‘neutral’ empirically based approach to eradicate the
politically contentious problem of ‘falling standards’. Hence, the
agreement to develop and utilise standardised tests to monitor progress
in developing reading skills, despite the misgivings of senior educators
(Ewing, 1970, p. 262). In their 1947 Reports, both the Minister of
Education and the Chief Inspector of Primary Schools announced that
standardised tests were being prepared in the ‘tool subjects’ despite the
possible disadvantages of formal tests. The Minister of Education
announced that he now felt the introduction and ‘judicious’ use of
standardised tests would benefit rather than hinder the teaching
profession (Mason, 1947, p. 6). From 1947 onwards, a biennial inspection
and regular staff conferences would ensure teachers were knowledgeable
about modern educational trends and the rationale that justified them
(Overton, 1947, p. 1).

Establishing a Technocracy
The 1949 Report of the Chief Inspector of Primary Schools justified and
emphasised strategies aimed at developing the teaching profession’s
claims to expert knowledge, autonomy, and professionalism in
curriculum content and delivery. The Chief Inspector stressed the need

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 TECHNOCRATIC SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING LITERACY

for ‘specialists’, arguing that ‘provision has to be made for maintaining

and expanding the specialist services which have been built up in recent
years’. This Report continued to reinforce the role of primary school
inspectors in professional development, which had been promoted by the
Minister of Education and drew attention to senior educational
administrators’ efforts to organise, and share expertise and specialised
knowledge amongst the teaching profession (Ball, 1949, p. 4).
The development of professional expertise and the understanding of
‘modern education in practice’ amongst the teaching profession helped
combat claims of ‘falling standards’ in literacy instruction, and led to an
emphasis upon reading and the development of ‘remedial reading clinics’.
An increased emphasis upon the expert knowledge, scientific and
technocratic justifications, and progressive claims for ‘modern education’
were as useful in justifying the curriculum revisions to both the teaching
profession and the politicians.
In 1948 and 1949, Education, a New Zealand-based magazine
designed to communicate the ideas of educational administrators to
teachers, published a number of articles which promoted a positivistic,
unproblematic, progressive vision of curriculum change:
The new book arrives with the opening of the atomic era ... Must the
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schools then ignore this phenomenon for change for another twenty-
year period. Must education always trail ignobly? ... A written syllabus
is always static. In modern industry the machine minder and the
scientist in his laboratory have become allies in the service of the
community. The analogy might feasibly be applied to schools, when
the teaching of the curriculum would proceed faithfully until such
time as new experience, acquired and tested empirically, pointed the
way to amendment. (New Zealand Department of Education, 1948,
p. 117)
This vision of a ‘scientific’ empirically based approach to literacy
instruction was supported by a growth in the literature related to the
problems of children’s reading which was now accessible to primary
school teachers. Schools and inspectors spurred on by the standards
debate were now regularly administering reading tests such as Burt’s,
Gates and Schonell. Primary teachers were encouraged to ‘make “special”
empirically-based studies of reading problems’ under the leadership of
Professor Bailey from Victoria University College (see, for example, New
Zealand Department of Education, 1948, pp. 145–147).
In 1947, a course attended by inspectors and teachers who had
conducted studies in reading problems, was held to clarify the problem,
and work on remedial reading in the junior and middle divisions of the
primary schools. Teachers attending the course were given remedial
cases in selected schools. These remedial cases were determined by an
annual survey of word recognition, using approved tests so that ‘an

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 Janet Soler

approximate reading age was secured, and this, considered along with
the mental age, gave a starting-point for general treatment’. Teachers who
specialised in remedial reading began to compile case histories and
organise treatment. The development of these ‘scientific’ approaches to
literacy instruction enabled teachers to claim that teachers and the
teaching profession were the ‘experts’, and therefore the best equipped
to judge both literacy standards and methods of literacy instruction.
The growth of this new technocratic ideal helped place the teaching
profession above criticism from parents, the public, and politicians. Its
influence was supported by the overseas developments in school
psychology and educational psychology reported for school
psychologists in professional publications for New Zealand in the late
1940s:
According to the replies from 43 countries, it can, however, be said
that, although educational psychology services have not yet been
organised in all countries, there is a pronounced trend towards the
organization of such services. (New Zealand Educational Institute,
1949, p. 21)
The increasingly powerful influence of psychology and its emphasis upon
behaviourism and the traditional ‘value-neutral’ conception of empirical
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science established a strong bias towards a technical emphasis within

New Zealand literacy instruction in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The
adoption of a behavioural science-based approach to literacy was
hastened by the need to silence an increasingly strident political and
public criticism of literacy standards. Reference to ‘scientific’ approaches
helped educators to claim a professional expertise for teachers and
literacy instruction programmes that could not be contested easily by the
critics of the ‘new’ curriculum policy reforms.

The Consequences
The technical rationality and ‘value-neutral’ methodologies that were
applied to literacy instruction from the early 1950s disengaged decisions
about the teaching of literacy from the social and political contexts,
which previously been the central rationale for literacy instruction. In
stressing the technical issues relating to the teaching of reading, the
‘experts’ who came to dominate the politics of literacy in the early 1950s
drew attention away from the broader issues linked to literacy instruction
for the development of a local New Zealand identity and culture. Even
more serious was the lack of recognition of the indigenous Maori culture
and other minority cultures and languages within New Zealand society. A
technocratic approach to literacy instruction failed to acknowledge the
complex nature of literacy and its relationships with culturally significant
concepts, patterns, and ideas.

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 TECHNOCRATIC SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING LITERACY

During the 1950s, the experiences of a small group of teachers

working with Maori children highlighted the failure of narrowly focused,
mechanical approaches to learning reading to cater for cultural
differences. The ensuing decades would highlight the inappropriateness
of this approach for Maori children. This would lead to modifications and
in some cases complete rejection of this approach to literacy instruction.
In a series of articles published in National Education in 1955 and
1956, Sylvia Ashton Warner critiqued the prevailing ideals in the teaching
of reading, and the compulsory use of ‘Janet and John’ basal readers. She
stressed the failure of these approaches and texts to address the links
between culture and literacy instruction. She also warned that the
teaching of Maori children to read in the infant room was often
unsuccessful because ‘at this tender age a wrench occurs from one
culture to another, from which, either manifestly or subconsciously, not
all recover’. At the centre of Ashton Warner’s alternative concept of
literacy instruction was an ‘organic’ concept of teaching reading which
stressed the creative and spiritual, rather than rational and behavioural
(Ashton Warner, 1955, 1956).
In the mid-1960s, Lynne Owen, teaching reading at Cape Runaway
school, expressed the same dissatisfaction at the failure of the dominant
technocratic approaches in New Zealand primary school literacy
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instruction to recognise Maori culture and the local New Zealand

situation. Like Ashton Warner, she sought to integrate cultural
experiences back into the ‘standard readers’:
I struggled to teach them reading from the standard readers used in
the infant rooms in all New Zealand schools, Maori and pakeha. These
readers were far beyond their experience, and there was nothing in
them for my pupils to grasp. So I set myself the task to fill in the long
winter evenings in my caravan. From the first book I copied out the
vocabulary to be learnt, then using this wove a story about two Maori
children, Haneri and Honi. Their experiences were the situations the
Maori children met every day in their lives at home and school, all
told in the words that by law they must learn in so many months.
(Owen, 1965, p. 3)
By the early 1960s, the New Zealand Educational Institute officially
recognised the lack of recognition of Maori children’s ‘needs’, ‘interests’
and ‘vocabulary’ in the ‘Janet and John’ reading texts in its official policy.
During 1962 and 1963, there were official moves to replace the ‘Janet and
John’ readers with material more directly related to New Zealand
children’s experiences (see, for example, New Zealand Educational
Institute, 1962, p. 355, and 1963, p. 325).
The 1940s and 1950s ‘literacy crisis’ resulted in a withdrawal of
public and political confidence in the teaching profession and the
education system. This attack on the current reading practices led to the

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 Janet Soler

rise of ‘reading experts’ who promoted a skills-based, mechanistic

approach to literacy. This approach failed to acknowledge the fact that
learners actively construct meaning in relation to their social and cultural
world knowledge. As we move towards the conclusion of the 1990s,
another literacy crisis has resulted in a loss of public and political
confidence in current reading practices and the calls have begun once
again for the use of scientific methods to produce a technical solution to
a ‘literacy crisis’.

Literacy Debates in the 1990s: resorting to

technocratic solutions?
While the 1950s can be noted for the establishment and promotion of the
‘reading expert’, in the 1990s the notion of ‘expertise’ in reading has
become highly contestable. In the years since the 1950s, it has become
evident that research derived data on standards and methods of teaching
reading can be interpreted in conflicting ways. Reading experts in New
Zealand are articulating their own personal convictions and ideological
commitments in a manner that is creating a divide between the teaching
profession and a group of university-based experts in the New Zealand
press.
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The business sector was an initiator of the ‘literacy crisis’ in the

1940s. It fell silent when a technocratic approach to literacy was
established during the1950s. Groups affiliated to the business sector have
been more influential in recent developments in the current literacy
crisis. In the late 1990s, the business sector began by actively discrediting
the expertise of the teaching profession in the pages of the New Zealand
press, strongly advocating policy solutions that reduce literacy
instruction to the adoption of a single correct methodology. At the time
of writing this article, it remains to be seen how successful they will be in
embedding a technical solution into educational policy. If such a
technical solution is adopted, we could once again face the consequences
of ignoring the complex cultural and social issues implicit in literacy and
language instruction.

The Public Debate over Reading Method

Public concern over literacy issues in the 1990s did not initially focus
upon the mechanics of reading. New Zealand newspaper and magazine
articles in the early 1990s expressed concerns about ‘computer [1], and
adult ‘workplace literacy’.[2] The first article claiming that computer
literacy standards were falling was published in a popular New Zealand
magazine in June 1993 (Chamberlain, 1993). In a feature article ‘Our
Illiteracy: reading and writing on the wall’, the International Association
for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) surveys were utilised

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 TECHNOCRATIC SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING LITERACY

to argue that literacy standards were declining. This article claimed that
better methods of teaching children to read were needed to address
these declining standards (McDonald, 1995). During 1994, a number of
newspaper articles focused upon concerns over ‘rising illiteracy’ amongst
school leavers and university students. University staff contributed to the
initiation of this debate by claiming that literacy levels were falling.[3]
In mid-1995, the debate in the New Zealand press moved from a
focus upon the literacy standards of school leavers and university
students, to a critique of reading methods and the teaching of reading in
New Zealand. In June 1995, a major newspaper reported that Professor
William Tunmer, Dean of Education at Massey University, had found
‘faults in teaching reading’ and his report ‘questions the way NZ children
are taught to read’ (New Zealand Herald, 24 June 1996, p. 2). In July, The
Listener, a national weekly magazine, featured an article titled ‘What’s
wrong with reading?’ which claimed that ‘the century old debate ‘over
how to teach reading was ‘becoming a hot issue among academics in New
Zealand and overseas’ (O’Hare, 1995). This article indicated that the
current debate over reading methods could be interpreted as a debate
between a group of university-based academic researchers, and
experienced educational practitioners who defended the currently
accepted use of ‘whole language’ and ‘reading recovery approaches’ to
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teaching reading.
In 1995, the most public advocate of phonics, Tom Nicholson, an
associate professor in the Education Department at Auckland University,
cast doubts on the effectiveness of current reading methods and stated
that teachers were ‘hanging in there’ utilising a less effective approach to
reading. He noted that those teachers favouring the ‘use of more phonics
are afraid to speak out publicly for fear or being ridiculed by their
colleagues’. Other university-based reading specialists attacked the
current reading methods and approaches, particularly Marie Clay’s
reading recovery programme:
‘Instructional strategies for Word Identification’, co-authored by
Tunmer and James Chapman, casts doubt on the work of New
Zealand’s reading guru Dame Marie Clay. The central belief of whole-
language advocates such as Clay- that learning to read is essentially
like learning to speak- is incorrect argues Tunmer. (O’Hare, 1995, p. 2)
The article concluded by claiming that research was mounting to show
that the theories that supported those who supported the current use of
whole language, were ‘wrong headed’, ‘flawed’ and ‘anti-science’. New
Zealand teacher educators who had written books with academics
supporting the teaching profession’s adherence to ‘whole language’ were
incorrectly looking to ‘good practice’ based approaches to reading,
rather than scientifically- and research-based approaches:

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 Janet Soler

In the US, whole-language advocates simply reject the research as

irrelevant and damn every study as an artificial assessment of a
narrow set of skills. That ‘anti-science’ attitude is common in New
Zealand, too, says Nicholson. ‘Teachers know through their gut feeling
what children need.’ As Smith and Elley complacently put it in
Learning to Read in New Zealand: ‘New Zealand reading methods
developed largely as a result of good practice on the part of
competent teachers rather than on the accumulation of research.
(O’Hare, 1995, p. 2)
In August 1995, the weekly magazine, Metro, published yet another article
on the phonics versus whole language debate titled ‘Adventures in the
reading trade’ which also attacked the established whole language
approach and the reading recovery programme (Roger, 1995). The
publication of these 1995 articles initiated a ‘reading wars’ debate in the
New Zealand press. Concerns over literacy became narrowly focused
upon the technical procedures related to methods of teaching early
literacy. A group of university-based psychologists and reading
researchers lined up on the side of phonics and phonemic instruction,
while another group of professionally-based supporters and their allies
defended the whole language approach. New Zealand researchers
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became aware that Reading Recovery, as well as whole language

approaches were now publicly under attack (see McDonald, 1995). This
put the two widely accepted approaches to teaching reading and the
teaching profession who utilised them into a vulnerable position where
they could be publicly attacked in the press by groups who were not
educators or academics.

The Politics of Expertise: the ‘profession’ versus

university experts
While 1996 saw few articles on literacy published and no major articles on
the ‘reading wars’, the second half 1997 saw a numerous articles on the
topic published in the New Zealand press. The local interest in this topic
mirrored the concerns expressed in United States-based articles on the
‘reading wars’ published in locally available editions of international
magazines. Overseas, the debate over the ‘role of phonics in reading
instruction’ featured on the cover page of the April/May edition of the
bimonthly newspaper of the International Reading Association (IRA). This
article noted that the debate had recently narrowed to a focus on
‘intensive direct skills instruction, as opposed to more flexible, literature-
based approaches to the teaching of reading’. It had also ‘moved beyond
the education arena to become a hot political issue’ in New Zealand as
well as in the United States, Canada and Australia.[4] The IRA Board of
Directors foreshadowed future outcomes in New Zealand in their
statement that they had ‘grown increasingly concerned about this trend

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 TECHNOCRATIC SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING LITERACY

toward non-educators issuing curricular and legislative mandates that

rob teachers and other educational professionals of the freedom of
exercise their judgement’. They also warned that press claims could be
‘inaccurate and exaggerated’ in their ‘claims of poor achievement among
students, often attributed to a perceived inattention to phonics in
beginning reading instruction’ (International Reading Association, 1997).
Further articles in the New Zealand press began appearing July 1997.
Professor Bill Tunmer and Professor James Chapman’s joint ‘statement’
given at the 1997 IRA International Reading Conference held in New
Zealand was reported as indicating that ‘The Education Ministry’s
emphasis on teaching children to read by using context, rather than
sound was wrong’. Tunmer and Chapman once again attacked the reading
recovery programme, stating that: ‘reading recovery programmes did not
greatly improve sound processing skills in children who needed it’. Their
study revealed that ‘reading recovery teachers appeared to be giving
‘highly inflated’ estimates of reading levels of children finishing their
programmes’. They also noted that ‘assessments of reading book level’ by
classroom teachers are ‘inaccurate’ (New Zealand Herald, 19 July 1997, p.
20).
Throughout August and September, newspaper headlines
successively announced a ‘fall in reading standards’ and counter claims
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that ‘the literacy level was dropping’ with the release of a reports by the
Otago National Monitoring Unit and the Education Review Office
(ERO).[5] Detailed comments by commentators on both sides of the
debate were quoted in the New Zealand Education Review (23 July 1997, p.
1) [6], a New Zealand-based weekly newspaper, which focuses specifically
upon New Zealand Tertiary topics.
The ERO report on literacy, released beginning of September, added
a major impetus to the debate over ‘poor’ literacy standards. The Report
was quoted as stating that ‘poor teaching rather than a lack of resources’
was to blame for ‘problems with teaching reading in schools’. In her
reply, the New Zealand Principals Federation president stated that
‘primary school teachers will be very aggrieved, as the sample (used in
the ERO report) was far too small to make such sweeping assumptions’.
She noted that ‘New Zealand children scored highly in international
literacy studies and reading programmes developed here (in New
Zealand) were in demand overseas’ (Otago Daily Times, 1 September
1997).[7]
Despite these attempts by the teaching profession to defend literacy
standards in New Zealand, the majority of headlines such as: ‘New
Zealand loses world crown in reading’ (New Zealand Herald, 19 July 1997,
p. 1), ‘Poor reading claim renews dispute’ (The Dominion, 14 August 1997,
p. 14), and ‘Schools ‘fail to teach reading skills’’ (The Dominion, 1
September 1997, p. 5), gave the impression that teachers were failing to
properly teach reading skills. At the end of September, the South Pacific

533
 Janet Soler

edition of Time Magazine (29 September 1997)[8] published an article with

Headlines reporting that ‘An Australian survey stirs debate over the best
way to teach children the first two Rs’. The article reflected the New
Zealand situation stating that ‘While some educators emphatically agreed
with its findings, teachers unions and state education ministers roundly
criticized it’.

The Business Sector and the Technocratic Solution

In October 1997, the New Zealand Business Round Table and its
associated organisation the Education Forum entered the debate (The
Independent, 26 September 1997, p. 9). The Director of Research for the
Education Forum and policy analyst for the New Zealand Business Round
Table, linked the press coverage of ‘adult literacy problems’ to the debate
over methods of teaching emergent literacy. This moved the focus of the
debate from the methods of teaching emergent literacy, to an emphasis
upon the teaching profession’s competence. All literacy problems could
be attributed to New Zealand teachers. They had a vested interest in
resisting change and their approaches to teaching literacy had ‘obviously
failed’:
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... evidence of the mediocre state of much of our education system is

everywhere. If the stream of complaints from university teachers and
employers about the literacy problems of school leavers is even half
true, we have big problems in the teaching of English ... That
educators are still largely in denial about these problems says a great
deal about the stake they have in policies and approaches that have
so obviously failed. (The Otago Daily Times, 15 October 1997)[9]
During May1998, the New Zealand press carried reports of the British
Labour government’s new ‘National Literacy Strategy’. Coverage of this
topic was not limited to the daily newspapers. The National Business
Review’s 1 May article linked the news of the British government’s
‘literacy strategy’ to employers’ interests, with the headline ‘Why your
employees are illiterate: Educators refuse to acknowledge that our
children are struggling to read under the present system’. This article
stated adult literacy problems could be directly linked to the methods
used to teach emergent literacy. Advocates of the ‘phonic method’ for
teaching reading were the main interviewees in this article which linked
their side of the ‘reading war’ to the business sector’s concerns over
‘workforce literacy’. Tom Nicholson, one of the main advocates of the
phonics, was able to criticise New Zealand educators continued use of
the ‘whole language’ method of teaching reading. The article quoted
Nicholson referring to the British policy, which he argued, supported
abandoning the promotion of whole language and increasing support for
phonics:

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 TECHNOCRATIC SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING LITERACY

In Britain in March this year David Blunkett, the Education Secretary

announced all primary schools will be required to return to the
traditional method of phonics, and abandon ‘the present system by
which children are largely expected to learn by reading story books to
their teachers’ ... Here in New Zealand we encounter the defeatist
attitude from some professionals that there will always be slow
readers, nothing can be done about it. (National Business Review, 1
May 1998, p. 28)
Nicholson’s conclusion was the same as Michael Irwin’s claim that
illiteracy would ‘always be with us’ as long as teachers resisted using the
correct method. The National Review article implied that the failure to
teach phonics was the cause of New Zealand’s ‘workforce’ literacy
problems. The article concluded with Nicholson reinforcing the article’s
theme that illiteracy could be solved through the use of phonics, which
was the correct method to teach reading (National Business Review, 1
May 1998, p. 28).
The beginning of May also saw the release of a ‘Government
consultation Green Paper’ on ‘Assessment for Success in Primary
Schools’ which proposed to make changes by ‘Bringing in external,
nation-wide maths and literacy tests, based on the curriculum, for
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students in Year 6 and Year 8.’ The influence of similar policies

introduced in other OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development) countries was noted in the background to this document
with the statement that ‘Similarly, education policy in the countries
belonging to the OECD is also shifting to focus on the results or outcomes
of education’ (New Zealand Government, 1998, pp. 7–10).
At the beginning of October 1998, Roger Kerr, another spokesman
for the Business Round Table, supported the assertions that educational
bureaucrats were at fault by promoting the wrong method of teaching
reading. In an article headed ‘Get the Bureaucrats out of education’,
Roger Kerr of the Business Roundtable criticises the ‘whole language’
approach to the teaching of reading and grammar in New Zealand and
supports phonics’ (The Independent 7 November 1998, p. 11). In mid-
October, new headlines announced ‘leaks’ that New Zealand’s National
government intended to follow the British initiative and develop their
own ‘back to basics’ literacy strategy.[10] At the end of October, an
analysis of this current education policy in The National Business Review
pointed out that these announcements were part of ‘Recent curriculum-
related school announcements’, which ‘fit’ a ‘pattern’ ‘of announcements
in principle that can be incorporated into a manifesto for the inevitable
(1999) election and its campaign trail’:
... the re-affirmed emphasis upon the ‘threeRs – reading ‘riting and
‘rithmetic’. This is a ritual of modern western culture – one can trace
the political fortunes of governments by the frequency and nature of

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 Janet Soler

such calls ... Suddenly without public debate the traditional big three
(three Rs) are given precedence. The fact teachers complain that the
new literacy announcement has been made without their involvement
supports the perception that it is partly a political move, a knee-jerk
reaction to some league table results. Change the coach we have lost
some tests. (The National Business Review, 30 November 1998, p. 42)
The statement from the National Business Review draws attention to the
way the current ‘crisis’ over literacy, like the earlier 1940s and 1950s
crisis, is part of broader, conflicting political forces. University-based
academics, teaching professionals, the Business Round Table and all the
other participants in the current public debate over ‘literacy standards’
in the New Zealand have their own political agendas. The current debate
on ‘how to teach reading’ is not a politically disinterested call for the
identification of specific skills and development of new programmes.
In the late 1940s, the opposition National Party used the cry of
‘falling standards’ to discredit the governing Labour Party in the period
before the1950 election. In 1999, the New Zealand government is setting
up a Literacy Task Force and catering for the ‘back to basics’ movement
through the development of a ‘literacy plan’, in the year before the 1999
national election. The government is well aware of the ‘rallying power’ of
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a reaffirmed emphasis upon the 3 Rs in an election, which will be held in a

difficult economic and political climate. As in the earlier 1940s and 1950s
crisis, the professionals and ‘experts’ are also part of the political
processes that shape literacy policy and practice. A technocratic elite has
evolved from the ‘scientific’ body of expertise, which has been built up
around the teaching of reading over the past 40 years. This group of
reading experts has a vested interest in the legitimation of rational,
analytical, empirical approaches to literacy and their implementation into
state policies.

Conclusion
A comparative investigation of these two periods of literacy crisis
supports the allegation that calls of ‘falling standards’ and ‘back to basics’
are not politically neutral calls for specific skills or curricula (de Castell &
Luke, 1987; Unsworth, 1993, pp. 3–6). In the 1940s and 1950s and the late
1990s politicians, business groups, educational professionals and
academics have had a selective and interest bound view of literacy. In the
1940s and 1950s literacy crisis, politicians, the business sector and a
small group of academics initiated the declining public confidence in the
New Zealand schooling and the teaching profession. This loss of
confidence was countered by the adoption of technocratic practices.
In the mid-1990s, a group of reading ‘experts’, employing the whole
language versus phonemics/phonics debate, have played a major role in
focusing the media upon issues related to teacher competence.

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Politicians and the business sector are currently using the debate to
discredit the teaching profession and to advocate the technical solution
of adopting the ‘correct method of teaching reading’. In both periods,
policy ‘discourse coalitions’ (Fischer, 1990) have formed between experts
who advocate the use of scientifically-based methodologies for solving
‘reading problems’ and governing political parties. These coalitions have
allowed expert knowledge and technocratic practices to drive policy
options, and the demand for a rational justification of literacy practices.
In the 1940s and 1950s literacy crisis, the demands for a scientific
rationalisation resulted in the mass implementation of standardised
approaches to teaching literacy and the compulsory use of ‘scientific’
basal readers which could not be successfully utilised in New Zealand
classrooms. The consequences of the 1940s and 1950s literacy crisis
raises a number of questions for New Zealand educators and teachers
who will have to meet the calls for a technical solution. An emphasis
upon finding the ‘correct technique’ will not take into account the
development of dynamic, evolving, and historically constructed model of
literacy. It will not help facilitate dynamic standards and practices of
literacy or the practical demands of working in complex cultural contexts
and changing information communication technologies.
New Zealand Literacy instruction programmes for the next
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millennium must go beyond the mechanical skills of contending with text.

The legacy of the 1950s was a whole scale standardisation and uniformity
in teaching method and use of English text, which precluded meaning,
excluded cultural tradition and obstructed literacy. Allan Luke (1988, pp.
186–211) has noted how post-war educational ‘scientists’ endeavoured to
create texts and pedagogical practices based upon the empirical study of
the acquisition of literacy in the ‘real world. The ideological and political
selections of these psychometrically inspired resources and practices,
ironically constrained the ‘critical potency’ of literacy by shutting out the
lived experiences and backgrounds of certain groups of readers.
In post-war New Zealand, Sylvia Ashton Warner and the other
teachers who taught in isolated native schools, came face to face with the
alienating effects of this approach for Maori children. They found that
becoming literate involves accessing symbolism, abstraction, and the
imagination. Children of the new millennium need to have access to
curricular products and practices which will enable them to revitalise,
transform and even preserve the literate culture of the future. The failure
of the post-war technocratic approach to literacy tells us that a narrow
focus upon ‘scientifically’ derived techniques, programmatic basal
readers and worksheet-based skill exercises, exposes students to a
restricting, limited, literacy curriculum. Future reading programmes
should open up an infinite number of possibilities by relating to New
Zealand children’s experience of their everyday world with all its
changing presentations of literacy.

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 Janet Soler

Correspondence
Janet Soler, Centre for Curriculum and Teaching Studies, School of
Education, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA,
United Kingdom ([Link]@[Link]).

Notes
[1] See, for example, The Dominion 14 September 1990, p. 2; 15 February 1993,
p. 1, p. 2; and Computerworld New Zealand, 30 November 1992, p. 7.
[2] Articles appeared in the following: The Press (Christchurch) 7 June 1990,
p. 3; The Dominion, 14 September 1990, p. 2; and 16 April 1991, p. 7; The
New Zealand Herald, 16 April 1991, p. 20; 24 March 1993; 12 July 93, p. 2;
and 16 August 1993, p. 9; National Business Review, 30 October 1992, p. 34;
Listener, 29 May 1993, p. 34; North and South, June 1993, p. 66; and The
Dominion, 16 August 1993, pp. 3–9.
[3] Articles appeared in: The Dominion, 17 November 1994, p. 2; and The
Press, 7 November 1994, p. 4; 4 January 1995, p. 4; and 15 April 1995, p. 1.
[4] For an example of US press coverage of the ‘whole language method’
versus ‘phonics’, see ‘How Johnny should read’ in Time Magazine, 27
October 1998,
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[Link]
[5] ERO is New Zealand equivalent of OFSTED
[6] News items also appeared in the following newspapers: New Zealand
Herald 19 July 1997, p. 20; 13 August 1997, p. 1; 1 September 1997, p. 4; and
11 September 1997, p. 13; The Otago Daily Times 14 August 1997, p. 5; and
The Dominion, 14 August 1997, p. 14; and 1 September 1997.
[7] This page of the Otago Daily Times can be accessed at
[Link]
[8] This article can be accessed at: http:[Link]/time/magazine/
1997/int/970929/spacific.can_dick_and_htm.
[9] Access at [Link]
RAFA42F195OGH&type_html
[10] See, for example, the New Zealand Herald, 17 November 1998, p. 5; and 21
November 1998, p. 3.

Newspapers and Magazines

Computerworld New Zealand
The Dominion
The Independent (New Zealand)
The National Business Review
The New Zealand Herald
The Press (Christchurch)

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 TECHNOCRATIC SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING LITERACY

Time Magazine
Time Magazine (South Pacific Edition)
Metro
New Zealand Education Review
New Zealand Herald
Otago Daily Times

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