Thomas, P.L. (2025). Breaking free of the “war,” “crisis,” and “miracle” cycles of reading policy and practice. In T.A. Price & M. McNulty (eds.), Public spaces, politics, and policy: historical entanglements with irrational momentism (pp. 93-112). Bloomsbury. [Click link in title to access and order]
[Header Photo by Anthony on Unsplash]
Since the “science of reading” (SOR) has now expanded into a “science of learning” (SOL) movement, the same problems among SOR advocates have appeared among SOL advocates—misinformation and misunderstanding about teaching and learning combined with a bait-and-switch approach that offers anecdotes as if they prove the so-called “science,” for example:
There is so much wrong with this that it is mind boggling, but let’s focus on, first, this is merely an anecdote, which proves nothing except that it happened.
Second, that direct instruction can be effective for students demonstrating simple recall is not very shocking; in fact, many would recognize that direct instruction/recall is asking far too little of students, especially in literacy instruction.
At one point in my education, I could name all the presidents in order as well as all the state capitals. It would have been better if I had developed a more sophisticated understanding of the presidency and the political realities of the US.
Through direct instruction over a brief amount of time, I can say one word, “inside,” and my poodle will happily trot into our apartment. I didn’t let her discover that; direct instruction produced pretty reliable recall in that sweet dog.
But she isn’t smarter; she is well trained.
Here, then, I am going to expand some on a third point: Furey clearly does not understand the issue he seems to be attacking, grammar instruction (with the implied agents being woke progressives who worship at the alter of discovery learning).
Let’s start by acknowledging Stephen Krashen’s explanation of “three different views of phonics”:
Intensive Phonics. This position claims that we learn to read by first learning the rules of phonics, and that we read by sounding out what is on the page, either out-loud or to ourselves (decoding to sound). It also asserts that all rules of phonics must be deliberately taught and consciously learned.
Basic Phonics. According to Basic Phonics, we learn to read by actually reading, by understanding what is on the page. Most of our knowledge of phonics is subconsciously acquired from reading (Smith, 2004: 152)….
Zero Phonics. This view claims that direct teaching is not necessary or even helpful. I am unaware of any professional who holds this position.
Furey seems to be posting a Gotcha! aimed at what he believes is a Zero Grammar view so let me follow Krashen’s lead and clarify: “I am unaware of any professional who holds this position.”
The Big Irony of a “science of” advocate attacking a straw man position on grammar is that there is pretty solid body of research/science on grammar instruction (note that many people use “grammar” to encompass grammar, mechanics, and usage).
To understand the research on direct (and isolated) grammar instruction, we first must clarify our instructional goal. If a course is a grammar course, and the goal is for student to acquire grammar knowledge, then some or even a significant amount of direct instruction can be justified and effective.
Even in the context of teaching students to acquire distinct grammar knowledge, however, many would caution against viewing grammar as “rules” and instead would encourage seeing grammar as a set of contextualized conventions that also carry some degree of power coding.
For example, subject/verb usages are a feature of so-called standard English, and some dialects can be identified by varying from those standards. It is important to acknowledge that one is not “right” or “better” linguistically, although the so-called standard forms tend to carry some cultural or social capital. And there may be cultural/social negative consequences for using dialects considered not standard.
As an analogy, direct (isolated) grammar instruction can be effective for teaching students grammar knowledge just as having students diagram sentences can be effective for teaching students how to diagram sentences.
The problem is when we make our instructional goal teaching students to write with purpose and with awareness of language conventions (grammar, mechanics, usage).
There is a long and deep research base reaching back into the early 1900s showing that direct (isolated) grammar instruction fails to transfer into student writing and can even have negative outcomes for the quality and amount of student writing.
For example, LaBrant (1946) noted: “We have some hundreds of studies now which demonstrate that there is little correlation (whatever that may cover) between exercises in punctuation and sentence structure and the tendency to use the principles illustrated in independent writing” (p. 127).
This does not mean “do not teach grammar,” but does mean that direct grammar instruction needs to in the context of student writing.
Students who are writing by choice and with purpose are much more likely to engage with and understand (and thus apply) language conventions (grammar, mechanics, usage) than when we directly teach those in isolation.
So let me be clear: Teaching students to write without direct instruction would be inexcusable, but teaching grammar through direct and isolated instruction is malpractice when our goal is teaching writing.
Here, then, are some ways to insure direct grammar instruction in the context of student writing is effective:
As this discussion shows, another failure of the “science of” movement is the urge to attack caricatures and to oversimplify.
Teaching grammar is not a simple thing to address, and, again, I will note using Krashen, there simply is no credible professional saying teachers should not teach grammar. In fact, no credible educator would reject direct instruction of grammar as long as that instruction is in the context of student writing.
LaBrant (1947) made an assertion about teaching almost 80 years ago that may sound familiar: “A brief consideration will indicate reasons for the considerable gap between the research currently available and the utilization of that research in school programs and methods” (p. 87).
I have always regarded this as accurate, and have repeated the claim myself for decades.
Straw man fallacies, caricature, and anecdotes, I fear, are not the path to making this less true.
The “science of” movement is failing here, and the consequences are to the detriment of students and teachers who deserve better.
Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination
Teaching High-School Students to Write (1946), Lou LaBrant
Research in Language (1947), Lou LaBrant
The Individual and His Writing (1950), Lou LaBrant
Writing Is Learned by Writing (1953), Lou LaBrant
Inducing Students to Write (1955), Lou LaBrant
Writing Is More than Structure (1957), Lou LaBrant
Blueprints or Houses? Lou LaBrant and the Writing Debate, P.L. Thomas [access HERE]
Revisiting LaBrant’s “Writing Is More than Structure” (English Journal, May 1957), P.L. Thomas
Teaching Grammar in Context, Connie Weaver
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 12th Edition, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup
The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing, John Warner
This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice! (CCCC)
[Header Photo by Ines Kopu on Unsplash]
First, the bait.
As I have detailed, the mainstream media, education reformers and pundits, and politicians repeat a misleading claim that US students are not “proficient” readers, and thus, we are experiencing a reading crisis.
The bait in this misinformation is almost always misrepresenting NAEP scores. Again, the confusion and misinformation is grounded in NAEP’s achievement levels that use “proficient” as an aspirational goal for students that is well above grade-level reading as measured on state assessments of reading, as I recently explained:
The disconnect lies with the second benchmark, “proficient.” According to the NAEP, students performing “at or above the NAEP Proficient level … demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter.” But this statement includes a significant clarification: “The NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments).”
NAEP provides a correlation that shows almost all states set “proficient” at the NAEP basic level:
The bait, however, manufactures the perception of a crisis by making claims about NAEP proficient—2/3 of students are not proficient—that at least exaggerates the state of reading achievement among students:
Next, the switch.
Since about 2012, most states have revised or introduced new reading legislation grounded in the “science of reading” (SOR); in other words, states have made significant political and financial investments in both that there is a reading crisis and that the reforms will improve student reading achievement.
Mississippi, for example, has been christened a “miracle” and many states are rushing to copy their reforms despite a lack of research or evidence about the impressive grade 4 reading scores (which disappear by grade 8). [See three questions that need to be answered about MS.]
Many states are also beginning to adjust their proficiency cut scores [1], complicating any claims of reform being effective versus a misleading change in how students are labeled:
Wisconsin isn’t the only state that recently instituted changes that effectively boost proficiency rates. Oklahoma and Alaska recently made similar adjustments. New York lowered passing or “cut” scores in reading and math last year, while Illinois and Colorado are considering such revisions.
Now, here is the switch.
SOR advocates use the proficient level of NAEP to manufacture a crisis, but then celebrate state-level proficiency (that correlates with NAEP basic) to make claims that the SOR reforms are working:
Here are some fun facts, however, about Indiana and other states: These state proficiency gains are equal to NAEP basic, which, again, SOR advocates refuse to acknowledge when discussing the state of reading the US today; note the correlations below of states with NAEP proficient (appears to be nothing to celebrate, right, if we accept the original bait that NAEP proficient is the correct standard?):
While I do maintain that crisis rhetoric isn’t an effective approach to education reform—especially when that crisis is built on misinformation and misunderstanding test data—I will concede there is a reading reform crisis driven by market, political, and ideological agendas among the adults who seem more interested in scoring gotcha points and profiting off reform than improving student reading.
First, the most current evidence available suggests that reading reform that appears to raise test scores in the short term only is primarily driven by grade retention, not changing reading programs, teacher training, or instruction.
Next, recent research again reveals “63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables that influence the development of background knowledge,” leading the researchers to argue:
The influence of family social capital variables manifests itself in standardized test results. Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students.
One of the political purposes of NAEP is to hold states accountable for state assessments. If you look carefully at the correlation above, students moving from one state to another would result in that student being labeled differently in terms of reading achievement [2].
Despite the negative responses to my argument, I maintain that the US needs a common standard for age-level reading that includes clear achievement levels that can support valid reading reform and develop a data base that better reflects if reform produces higher student achievement.
We cannot and should not be shouting “crisis” because we do not have the data to draw any valid conclusions about the overall state of reading in the US.
What we do have is permanent reform for the market and political benefit of those perpetuating crisis rhetoric and selling solutions.
The current state of NAEP and state testing allows rampant market and political manipulation of claims about reading and reading reform.
To maintain permanent crisis and reform, many are willing to sacrifice students, teachers, and public schools.
I am not.
[1] For some background on changes to how tests measure student achievement, I recommend exploring the controversial and often misunderstood re-centering of the SAT.
[2] State achievement levels vary widely:
The reading proficiency bait-and-switch has come to South Carolina (another grade retention state that has much lower grade 8 reading scores than grade 4; see below):
This is more partisan political grandstanding, but the grandstanding in on incredibly thin ice.
SC, like IN above, sets state reading proficiency in the NAEP basic range; however, note that SC is toward the lower end of basic (see the correlations above).
SC sits just above the national average in grade 4 reading (2024), but like MS and FL, the impact of grade retention seems to be in play because by grade 8, SC falls down toward the bottom, again similar to MS and FL:
[Header Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash]
When I had my OpEd on the manufactured reading crisis and NAEP misinformation published in The Washington Post, I anticipated that SOR advocates would continue their misinformation campaign, including targeted attacks on me that repeat false claims and innuendoes (“hidden agenda”).
I do find it a bit odd that my OpEd claims have ruffled so many feathers because, to be blunt, the OpEd is pretty moderate and factual. For those not interested in reading the piece, here is the TL;DR:
However, most of the negative responses to this commentary that I have seen focuses on one element—my rejecting crisis rhetoric about reading.
Since I began teaching in 1984, I have worked as an educator entirely in the post-A Nation at Risk era of high-stakes accountability education reform.
I reject crisis rhetoric about reading and education for the following reasons:
Again, to be clear, the US does not currently have the data to make any sort of valid claim about reading proficiency in the US. The only verifiable claim we can or should make is that there is clearly an opportunity gap grounded in race and socioeconomic status as well as ample evidence that multilingual learners and students with special needs are far too often neglected in our schools.
As I argue in the commentary, we need better data, and we need a more honest and nuanced public discourse about reading and education that is not corrupted by market and political/ideological agendas.
Further, journalists, politicians, and even parents should not be controlling the discourse or the reform in reading and education.
Yes, they are and should be stakeholders with a voice in a democracy, but ultimately, education is a profession that has never had autonomy—and I suspect that is because more that 7 out of 10 educators are women (notably even higher in the early grades when students are first taught to read).
I do not—like many in the SOR and education reform movements—have a “hidden agenda.”
I have never and would never sell a reading or education program. I have never and would never endorse any program or theory or ideology. I provide the vast majority of my work for free, open-access publications and my blog.
Over 40+ years, I have presented many dozens of times with well over 90% of that for free or at my own expense.
I am a critical educator and scholar, and I have never been paid to make any claims or to endorse any organization. My published and spoken work is mine and mine only.
I am fortunate to be a university-based scholar, and thus, I have academic freedom and am beholden to no one except me.
My agenda?
I work to support the professional autonomy of teachers so that the individual needs of students can be fully served in our public education system.
And thus, my agenda includes calling out misinformation, identifying the market and political/ideological agendas driving permanent education reform, and providing for all stakeholders counter-evidence to the crisis story being sold.
Since I am an older white man with university tenure in the US, I am not much impacted by the persistent lies and distortions about me and my “hidden agenda”; however, those lies and distortions are in the service of other people maintaining the education reform gravy train that feeds their bank accounts and political/ideological agendas.
Here is another TL;DR version of my WaPo commentary: If you have to misinform or lie to make your argument, you likely do not have a valid argument.
SOR advocates and education reformers are mostly misinforming and outright fanning the flames of crisis to promote their own agendas.
Suggesting I have a “hidden agenda” is a whole lot of projection.
We can and should do better in our rhetoric and our claims.
We can and should create better systems of assessment and thus better data.
We can and should reform reading and education in ways that address the lives of our students as well as the learning and teaching conditions of our schools.
Punishing thousands of Black, brown, and poor students with grade retention because we are addicted to permanent education reform is inexcusable; test-based grade retention is not reading reform.
The accountability era of education reform begun in the early 1980s has never worked, except to perpetuate constant cycles of crisis/reform.
There is no reading or education crisis.
There is a culture of political negligence in the US that has existed for many decades—that culture is grounded in rugged individualism and bootstrapping myths of the US that are contradicted by (ironically) scientific evidence and research.
Students and teachers (mostly women) are not broken beings that need to be fixed.
Students and teachers reflect the negative systemic forces that somehow we as a society refuse to acknowledge or reform.
I should not be surprised that in the Trump/MAGA era there are many people offended by a call for honest and accurate rhetoric about reading, education, students, teachers, and schools.
I think those people being offended says more about them than me.
English Journal Series: We Teach English in Times of Perpetual Crisis
[Header Photo by Iana Dmytrenko on Unsplash]
Thomas, P.L. (2025, July 28). There is no literacy crisis in the U.S. Here’s what’s really happening. The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/474j758
The evidence/links in the articles:
English Journal Series: We Teach English in Times of Perpetual Crisis
Big Lies of Education: Reading Proficiency and NAEP
Three Questions about the Mississippi Reading “Miracle”
[Header (The Champions v.1, 3, George Tuska pencils, Vince Colletta, inks) and all images used under Fair Use unless otherwise identified]
Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron are two of the most successful and highly regarded celebrities in contemporary pop culture. These two women have been in the news recently in ways that seem at first contradictory.
Johansson “has become the top-grossing star according to total global ticket sales,” writes Andrew McGowan, on the heels of headlining Jurassic World: Rebirth.
However, just a few days before that accomplishment, Theron, as reported by Zack Sharf, “called out a Hollywood double standard when it comes to action movies. The Oscar winner…said studios often give female actors just one shot to have an action movie hit. When it comes to men, however, they can have a box office flop but still land multiple follow-up projects.”
One of Johansson’s highest profile characters, Marvel’s Black Widow, offers a window into how Theron’s criticism remains valid even in the context of Johansson’s success.
Black Widow first appeared in 1964, nearly unrecognizable to today’s fans as a foil to Iron Man in Tales of Suspense 52. This origin portrays Black Widow in a different color costume on the cover than in the interior, but she is mostly a one-dimensional Cold War temptress.
Over the next 60 years, Marvel’s stewardship of Black Widow reflects the ongoing fate of women in pop culture—being underestimated and hypersexualized.
Along with her Academy Award for Monster, Theron has performed in a number of action and superhero films—The Italian Job, Æon Flux, Atomic Blonde, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Hancock.
Notably, Theron’s criticism focuses on action roles, as covered by Sharf:
“Yeah, it’s harder. That’s known,” Theron said when asked about gender disparity in the action genre. “Action films with female leads don’t get greenlit as much as the ones with male leads. I think the thing that always frustrates me is the fact that guys will get a free ride.”
In my book-length analysis of Marvel’s Black Widow in print comic books across seven decades, one of the key themes of Natasha Romanov’s characterization is directly stated by Nat in issue 1 of volume 3, by the creative team of Richard K. Morgan and Bill Sienkiewicz: “He’s young—younger than me, anyway. And he’s fast. And he has a knife he knows how to use. But like most men in the end, he underestimates me.”
For current fans of the MCU, Black Widow/Nat as portrayed by Johansson may seem like a much larger character than has been portrayed in the comic books. Marvel has committed to 8 solo-title volumes, although most have been extremely brief. Black Widow has had one 20-issue run, and the critically praised last series, volume 8, only survived 15 issues despite an all-star creative team of women—Kelly Thompson, Elena Casagrande, and Jordie Bellaire.
Superhero comic books and films represent a key tension in pop culture among market forces, fans, and social biases such as sexism.
Theron, I think, is making a valid point that is reflected in Nat’s acknowledgement above; pop culture remains mostly controlled by men—the funders, the creators, and the fan base—who continue to underestimate women as characters and creators.
Johansson as Black Widow/Nat entered the MCU in Iron Man 2, and with hindsight, it seems to be a huge understatement that Marvel underestimated the power of both Johansson and Black Widow for the Avengers and MCU.
Johansson, in fact, has addressed that Black Widow was hypersexualized:
All of that is related to that move away from the kind of hyper-sexualization of this character and, I mean, you look back at ‘Iron Man 2’ and while it was really fun and had a lot of great moments in it, the character is so sexualized, you know? Really talked about like she’s a piece of something, like a possession or a thing or whatever — like a piece of ass, really. And Tony even refers to her as something like that at one point.
Unfortunately, this early objectification of Black Widow in the MCU is comic book accurate since many of the depictions of the character in the print comic books has been for the male gaze.
That hypersexualization has included extremes such as plunging necklines, exposed mid-drifts, and cat fights involving Black Widow and Yelena Belova
For women characters and creators, then, Black Widow represents that women are often underestimated because they are hypersexualized.
While it seems likely that pop culture will continue to reflect society—especially the worst of society—instead of changing culture for the better, it seems there can be a time and place that pop culture resists underestimating and hypersexualizing women.
I think volume 8 of Black Widow by the creative team of Thompson and Casagrande represents the power of women creators working with complex women characters. And Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons at DC matches that excellence with a classic superhero.
These, none the less, are outliers, and it seems likely derivative women characters (such as She-Hulk), hypersexualizing and underestimating
women characters, and giving women creators work as tokenism will persist at the Big Two, Marvel and DC.
Women as victims of sexism are not responsible for changing these realities from a position of less power; however, Johansson and Theron are providing important voices as well as demonstrating their exceptional roles in pop culture.
The irony is that what Theron labels “risk” seems more bankable than yet another film propping up an aging white man paired with a woman half his age—even as we acknowledge that Johansson with a woman writer/director made that work also.
NEW: Black Widow Underestimated and Hypersexualized: “I Am What I Am” (Brill)
[Header Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash]
“Did you write this?” I once asked a sophomore in my advanced English class. The student was one of three siblings I would teach, and their mother was a colleague of mine in our English department.
With students and my own daughter, I have asked questions like that one often, and I always knew the answer. The question was an opportunity for the student to confront what I already knew.
This student, you see, had turned in a cited essay that her older sister had turned in just a few years earlier. I had the paper in my files, and since I immediately recognized it, I had the copy with her sister’s name on the cover page waiting for her reply.
English and writing teachers especially, but all teachers are constantly seeking ways to insure students do their own work.
As long as there have been students, teachers, and formal schooling, however, students have sought ways to pass off writing and reading that they, in fact, had not done.
This student cold-face lied, and I handed her the paper by her sister.
Something like that has occurred several times over my forty-plus years of teaching.
A non-traditional aged woman in a night composition class for a local junior college became enraged when I asked her “Did you write this?”
I had been reading her writing for several weeks, and this essay she submitted wasn’t her work. There was no doubt and no need to prove it.
She became loud and angry, steadfast in her claim the writing was hers. After that night, I never saw her again.
Several years ago in my first-year writing seminar, a basketball player submitted a teammate’s essay from a few semesters earlier. The essay rang a bell, and after a search on my laptop, I found the original essay on my hard drive.
Plagiarism and passing off other people’s work as their own have not been rampant throughout my career, in part because I have implemented reading and writing workshop in courses. Students have been reading and writing in front of me for decades.
Lots of cheating can been avoided by daylight and surveillance.
Part of the workshop approach, as well, stresses for students that the reading and writing processes are acts of learning; further, the emphasis on process helps lessen the importance of the product as a mechanism for acquiring a grade.
“It ought to be unnecessary to say that writing is learned by writing; unfortunately there is need,” wrote Lou LaBrant in 1953. LaBrant then continued and this may sound familiar:
Again and again teachers or schools are accused of failing to teach students to write decent English, and again and again investigations show that students have been taught about punctuation, the function of a paragraph, parts of speech, selection of “vivid” words, spelling—that students have done everything but the writing of many complete papers. Again and again college freshmen report that never in either high school or grammar school have they been asked to select a topic for writing, and write their own ideas about that subject. Some have been given topics for writing; others have been asked to summarize what someone else has said; numbers have been given work on revising sentences, filling in blanks, punctuating sentences, and analyzing what others have written….Knowing facts about language does not necessarily result in ability to use it. (p. 417)
Over the seventy-plus years since LaBrant’s article, students have written original texts far too rarely; in fact, as writers and students in general, students sit in classrooms where the teacher does much of the work the student should be doing as part of learning.
Writing prompts and rubrics have done far more harm to students as writers than any technology work around, but technology has also joined in the fun over those eight decades.
ChatGPT and other forms of AI are the current miracle/crisis forms of technology in education. Seemingly, many people in education, surprisingly, are jumping on the AI bandwagon, much like the coding wave and cellphone bans.
You see, we are trapped in a love/hate binary with technology in education that too often isn’t based in evidence.
Tech and AI products like Grammarly and Turnitin.com have ridden high waves of use despite both products, to be blunt, just being very poor quality. Grammarly gives really bad writing advice, and Turnitin.com is less effective detecting plagiarism than a simple (and free) Google search.
The broader technology problem in education, which parallels the AI problem, is that technology in education is often like a microwave; something can be completed quicker but the product is either hard to stomach or simply ruined.
A recent study, in fact, shows that students using AI to draft tend to produce very similar texts that are shallow at best. Further, students who use AI to compose struggle to recall any of their writing.
Why? Let’s invoke LaBrant again: Writing is learned by writing.
Better worded, we should think of “writing” as composing. Composing is the art of simultaneously creating meaning, developing understanding, and drafting communication in words, sentences, and paragraphs.
AI generating functional text in some real-world contexts may be a time saver, a net positive. But for students, scholars, and writers, using AI at any point of the composing process is a new form of plagiarism.
Let me be clear, this is about the composing process because AI has long been useful for surface editing; grammar and spell check is not cheating, and AI can relieve the writer some of the burden of editing (a role humans often play for other people in the world of writing an publishing).
Maybe AI will prove valuable in many ways for humans, but AI that does for students the very behaviors students must perform to learn is never justified—just as teachers doing the work for students has never been justified.
“As citizens we need to be able to write and to understand the importance and difficulty of being honest and clear. We will learn to do this by doing it,” LaBrant offers bluntly.
“Did you write this?” is an enduring question between teacher and student.
In 2025, using AI is just as damning as putting your name on your sister’s essay before turning it in as your own.
So that’s why you cannot spell “plagiarism” without “AI.”
my partner is having a fling
this summer
with tomatoes
a red heirloom
we are sharing
is gradually disappearing
slice by slice
on the cutting board
this morning i ate a slice
on toasted Italian bread
with her homemade hummus
that tastes how i love her
i fell backward
into my childhood summers
when mom would slice
tomatoes warm from the garden
and serve with scrambled eggs
or we’d make tomato sandwiches
on Sunbeam thin slice white bread
coated in Duke’s mayonnaise
our cutting board
will be empty soon
or another tomato
will start to disappear
slice by slice
you cannot return to childhood
or freeze time
during a summer fling
with tomatoes
this is how we live,
this is how we die
—P.L. Thomas
I want to defy
The logic of all sex laws“Sexx Laws,” Beck
I recently cited Bertrand Russell, a philosopher who I read during college. But I also came back to read a biography of Russell in the 1990s during my doctoral program, when I was writing an educational biography for my dissertation.
I was in my mid-30s by then and had left my early 20s search for what I believed mostly behind. As I discovered by becoming a biographer, unmasking any person is quite shocking, and Russell seemed much frailer, less resolute once I saw the whole man.
Russell, you see, had espoused a free love ideology, but putting his beliefs into practice proved much different than advocating for those beliefs.
I think Russell was lurking there in my mind when I saw this graffiti recently:
I snapped a picture with my phone and posted a snarky “Free love or anger?” caption across social media.
Sexual liberation, free love, polyamory, etc., are all fascinating to me because I find these concepts both powerfully compelling and (as witnessed in Russell’s own life) incredibly difficult to realize in lived experiences.
Too often, I think, what should be issues of sexual liberation—more needed by women—is a tactic by men to leverage some space or justification for men’s infidelity; further, these progressive ideas about love and sex tend to hit a wall with men’s inability to be possessive in relationships.
Another interesting example is the creator of DC’s Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston, who is featured in Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman.
Marston is often credited with weaving feminist ideals into Wonder Woman, and he also practiced polyamory—living and having children with his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and partner Olive Byrne, an arrangement that also included Marjorie Wilkes Huntley from time to time.
Again, the reality behind the ideal revealed that these women made much of Marston’s work possible, and likely did some significant amount of that work.
Who did these progressive ideas about women, sex, and relationships benefit?
Marston reminded me of another foundational author in my life, D.H. Lawrence who expressed and portrayed in his fiction a belief that men needed a woman for his intellectual partner and another for his sexual partner.
These are, of course, just a few examples of how the real world manufactures normal, how individuals navigate that normal or find ways to forge their own normal.
And thus, that blunt graffiti two-words also sit just as I was reading and finishing Sayaka Murata’s Vanishing World.
Like Haruki Murakami, Sayaka Murata is a Japanese writer who draws me in with what reads like literary fiction but is heavily tinged with something like science fiction, or fantasy, or magical realism.
Murata’s works, such as her newest novel Vanishing World, falls into what Margaret Atwood calls speculative fiction. Both Murata and Atwood include elements that are speculative science, but much of these created other worlds seem disturbingly normal, or at least not so much different from the world we live in now.
And similar to her Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings, Vanishing World draws the reader into another engaging and surprising examination of normal.
Amane, the main character, lives in the cusp of an old world where procreation is achieved through intercourse (her parents, to Amane’s discomfort, produce Amane through sex), and the brave new world of procreation only through artificial insemination.
In fact, the new normal is that husband and wife are family, and thus, any sexual contact is deemed incest, taboo.
There are some surprises, twists, and disturbing developments, but all in all, Murata forces the reader to think deeply about sex and gender roles, what makes normal “normal.”
The end is disorienting and powerful (similar to Earthlings), bringing the entire work into stark focus.
“Men and women were now all the same,” Amane acknowledges, “all wombs in service of the human race.”
And just pages from the end, Amane argues with her mother: “‘And you aren’t brainwashed, Mom? Is there any such thing as a brain that hasn’t been washed? If anything, it’s easier to go insane in the way best suited for your world?'”
This speculative world of Murata is about humans making normal “fuck nobody,” a sort of extreme puritanical alternate world that renders human nature unnatural—or at least, no longer normal.
[Header Photo by USGS on Unsplash]
Here I want to note that Q1 and Q3 have been answered, and the answer is exactly what I have been suggesting.
First, let me recommend How much of “Mississippi’s education miracle” is an artifact of selection bias?, which examines the analysis answering two of the questions below: On education miracles in general (and those in Mississippi in particular), Howard Wainer, Irina Grabovsky and Daniel H. Robinson.
Here are the highlights, although I recommend reading the entire piece:
In 1748, famed Scot David Hume defined nature. He elaborated such a law as “a regularity of past experience projected by the mind to future cases”. He argued that the evidence for a miracle is rarely sufficient to suspend rational belief because a closer look has always revealed that what was reported as a miracle was more likely false, resulting from misperception, mistransmission, or deception….
A careful examination confirms that enthusiasm to emulate Mississippi should be tempered with scepticism….
This provides a boost of about $111.63 of extra funding annually for each pupil. Comparing this amount to what are annual contemporary per pupil expenditures nationally, we have to agree that if such small expenditures can make a visible difference in student performance it truly is a miracle – a Mississippi version of St. John’s loaves and fishes.
But it was the second component of the Mississippi Miracle, a new retention policy, perhaps inspired by New Orleans’ Katrina disaster a decade earlier, that is likely to be the key to their success….
Prior to 2013, a higher percentage of third-graders moved on to the fourth grade and took the NAEP fourth-grade reading test. After 2013, only those students who did well enough in reading moved on to the fourth grade and took the test.
It is a fact of arithmetic that the mean score of any data set always increases if you delete some of the lowest scores (what is technically called “left truncation of the score distribution”)….
Strangely though, for the eighth-grade literacy test, the state’s rank dropped to a tie for 42nd place!…
(Note that this works especially well for student height, for after retaining the shortest third-graders for an extra year they will likely be taller when they are measured again a year later. It would be nice if the same were true for students struggling in academic subjects.)…
Were we to do this we would find that most of Mississippi’s gains are due to the retention rate.
It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the lion’s share of the effects of the “Mississippi miracle” are yet another case of gaming the system. There is no miracle to behold. There is nothing special in Mississippi’s literacy reform model that should be replicated globally. It just emphasises the obvious advice that, if you want your students to get high scores, don’t allow those students who are likely to get low scores to take the test. This message is not a secret….
Find a way to prevent the lowest test scorers from taking the exam and the average score will increase….
Second, besides weak empirical data, educational reformers like Patrinos should have given greater weight to the extant literature on the Mississippi Miracle. The miracle had already been convincingly debunked.10 Fourth-grade gains had vanished by the time the students reached eighth grade.
One of the key assertions of the “science of reading” (SOR) movement is that students across the US are mostly not proficient readers because teachers rely on balanced literacy to teach reading.
And then, SOR advocates argue that 95% of students can be proficient readers, and the key to that success is SOR.
That raises an important question about Mississippi, which has implemented both SOR reading policy and grade retention for over a decade.
SOR advocates have called MS’s jump in grade 4 NAEP scores a “miracle”; however, MS has continued to retain about 9000-12,000 students annually in K-3.
Certainly, a decade is enough time to reach the 95% rate of proficiency, and thus, retention numbers should have dropped dramatically or be near 0.
As shown in MS’s 2024 NAEP reading scores for grade 4:
For 2024, MS NAEP grade 8 reading scores drop to eleventh from the bottom of state scores:
An analysis of reading reform found that states with comprehensive reform that includes grade retention have experienced short-term increases in test scores.
However, the analysis does not identify why these comprehensive reforms (including grade retention) are correlated with those short-term scores increases.
Research on education “miracles” have found that virtually none exist, and even when a school or program appears to be “high flying” there is little evidence those can be scaled up meaningfully.
Mississippi’s grade 4 NAEP scores in reading, then, raise questions that must be answered; instead, it is now politically cool to adopt copy-cat legislation from the state without proper evidence that there is valid success or a solid understanding of what is happening and why.
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 
