[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: A piece I felt I had to write

[Rob Tierney]

Thanks David…I appreciate your challenging the castigation of scholars and practitioners like Marie and attacks in the media of folks such as Gay Su Pinnell and Lucy Calkins as well as some of our young scholars.  The castigations represent forms of misguided understandings of the contributions of these colleagues in an effort to move forward other agendas.
In terms of Marie, I was the beneficiary of many of her visits to Ohio during my buckeye days as well as to Canada when she was consulting with educators in British Columbia.  She was an amazing mentor to many of us and someone keen to know what you might be doing and thinking.  You mention some key contributions. I was also enthralled with her notion of self-improving systems that I suspect predated metacognition.  Plus, her engagements in New Zealand with research on Pacific Islanders and Māori was notable.  I discovered she was also a mentor of Māori educators such Graham Smith who started the language nests and is now one of the leaders in Indigenous developments world-wide.  Finally,  I remember a story she shared with me-- a meeting of professors at the University of Auckland.  She recounted that the Chancellor of the University of Auckland asked this esteemed group whether any among them felt that they could make a true difference in the world beyond their publications.  Marie was the only one to raise her hand.

From: <reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> on behalf of P David Pearson <ppearson at berkeley.edu>
Date: Friday, October 28, 2022 at 7:36 AM
To: reading hall of fame <reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] A piece I felt I had to write

I posted the attached piece on FaceBook out of respect from one of our departed RHF colleagues, Marie Clay, whose contributions have been called into question in an APM series of podcasts by Emily Hanford with the umbrella title of Sold a Story<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/yInFCGv0oyCJK9BMrSKISfC?domain=features.apmreports.org/>.  I have listened to the first two, and I'm focusing on the second, which is mainly about Marie Clay's work. Hanford unpacks her account of Marie's contributions and goes on to tell us why they are misguided. To quote Hanford, "In this episode, I’m gonna tell you where this idea comes from. I’m gonna tell you what’s wrong with it."  I've embedded a link to the piece I posted on FaceBook, a medium which not all of us use.

So I am taking the liberty of sharing it directly. Below is the introduction to it. If you like, you can read the whole piece here<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/wzH5CJyBrGf83oBYksGTo8B?domain=dropbox.com>.  My piece is not really about Hanford. It is really my 15 year overdue piece about Marie's legacy in our field. That said, I think we all need to be aware of Hanford's reporting and its impact on policy.

A note to the reader: I wrote the initial draft of this essay soon after Marie Clay’s death in 2007, but I failed to finish it in time for inclusion in a publication honoring her contributions to the field. And it has rested in a comfortable sinecure in the cloud since that time. About a week ago, I happened on an American Public Media podcast by Emily Hanford, one that cast doubt on the professional contributions of Marie Clay. Essentially, Hanford blamed Dame Clay for America’s dismal reading performance when Clay offered teachers an approach to promoting reading development that, at least according to Hanford, is just plain wrong. And it is wrong, Hanford added, because it is at odds with what we know because of recent advances in the science of reading. Time to right that wrong by restoring phonics first and fast to the top slot in our reading curriculum.
I was appalled and angered by this indictment for two reasons: (a) it is based on a limited portrayal of scientific reading research (dare I say, just plain wrong?), and (b) it was directed at scholar who has left us a rich, perhaps unparalled, legacy of understandings about the nature of reading acquisition, one to be celebrated not denigrated. At the height of my rage, I remembered this unfinished tribute. Thanks to the search affordances of our digital age, I found it—as I said, resting comfortably in the cloud. So, I got to work and finished it for this occasion (Finally met the deadline! Thanks for your patience, Marie). Today, I’ll forego a point-by-point counter to Hanford’s outrageous claims in favor of an argument for celebrating Professor Clay’s legacy.
--
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"“Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.” – Eleanor Roosevelt."
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P. David Pearson
Evelyn Lois Corey Emeritus Professor of Instructional Science
Graduate School of Education
University of California, Berkeley

email:  ppearson at berkeley.edu<mailto:ppearson at berkeley.edu>
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website for publications:  www.pdavidpearson.org<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/-WOqCK1DvKTqzkDnQt3VC2J?domain=pdavidpearson.org>
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