Analysis Of Don Henley's 'Johnny Can T Read'

The “reading war” has raged since the early 1930’s. What is the reading war and why is a “simple” thing such as learning to read and spell so controversial. Why, when Johnny sees the words “yellow pencil” can he color the bird yellow however, ask him to spell the word and he stares with a blank face and says (Y_I_L_O). Is this a byproduct of the wars or as people have hypothesized it is for the reason that Johnny comes from a “bad family.” This paper delves into the “Reading Wars” and discusses the two different and diametrically opposed sides in this war. The “whole language or whole word army” and “phonics forces”. How they came to be and their differences. This paper shows that, used properly and planned that they can indeed co-exist
In this anthem he asks the question of who’s at fault and discovers that according to one and all it is nobody’s fault. (Henley, D. & Kortchmar, D., 1981). To believe that there can be no fault in the inability of Johnny to read is too simplistic of a reasoning. Furthermore, teachers probably do not even know that it exists. This war has raged for over eighty years in the education world with both sides arguing that their side is correct. In 1955 Rudolf Flesch rocked the world at the time with “Why Johnny Can't Read: And what you can do about it.” This book took on the world of whole word learning and brought it out into the world, showing teachers, researchers and parents the misconceptions and igniting the battle to a higher plane with experts on both sides joining the fray. It caused not just an education war, but also a political war that in the pits political parties and lobbyist’s on both sides against each other defending their
2). This simplified communication by using letters with sounds that were written with letters instead of allowing people the thousands of symbols. This meant that a person wanting to communicate is only required to know the letters and put the words together with the sounds each letter made. As Flesch states in his letter to Johnny’s mother “all you had to do was break down the sounds and put the corresponding letters on paper”(1955, p. 2). All people all over the world just needed to learn the sound of each letter in the alphabet. As an example a child learns the sounds C, A and T not the word