Reading Against Democracy: The Broken Promises of Reading Instruction »

A former preschool and primary grades teacher, Patrick Shannon is currently a professor of education at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of nine books, including Reading Poverty (1998), text, lies, & video tape: stories about life, literacy, & learning (1995), Becoming Political: Readings and Writings in the Politics of Literacy Education (1992), and The Struggle to Continue: Progressive Reading Instruction in the United States (1990), all published by Heinemann.

Thoughtful teachers, chafing at restrictions and mandates, are asking themselves, “How did it come to this?” Patrick Shannon's book provides fascinating, thoroughly-researched answers, with an empowering perspective and a hopeful path out of this current nonsense.

- Randy and Katherine Bomer

Authors of For a Better World

Education is not a disinterested process, nor does it foster many innocent bystanders or casual observers. Pat helps us understand the players, the policies and the programs that influence classroom practices, research agendas, and literacy assessments, and provides the “big picture” of literacy education that enables us to comprehend today's educational landscape.

- Frank Serafini

Author of Lessons in Comprehension

This book is certain to inspire educators who are discouraged by recent developments to continue their work for equity, humanity, and social justice in our schools. It reminds us that we do not stand alone, but that there are, and there will continue to be, scores of dedicated educators seeking humane and thoughtful ways of helping children to learn.

- Catherine Compton-Lilly

Author of Confronting, Racism, Poverty, and Power

Patrick Shannon's Broken Promises was hailed by Language Arts as one of nine seminal references on literacy and inequality in education. But so much has changed, and worsened, since its publication that instead of revising his classic Shannon has written an almost entirely new book. The result, Reading Against Democracy, is Shannon's fully documented, up to date, and utterly convincing look at how businesses and political interests broke the promise that American education would teach students how to think, read, and write as citizens.

Shannon describes how business, government, and educational experts have consistently trumped the civic rationales for education with the economic. He explains how attempts to make instructional outcomes more predictable for business have led to a curricular formula that serves American students poorly at home as well as, ironically, in the global economy.

Think the goal of America's schools is to immerse students in literate behaviors so they can participate in America's rich democratic tradition? Think again. Reading Against Democracy is the book that lays out the whole story of where literacy education has gone wrong, where it's headed, and what steps we can take to make sure our children are educated like people, not trained like employees.

Introduction     vii
Reading Instruction Before the Turn of the Twentieth Century     1
Early Attempts to Reform Reading Instruction     18
A Real Rationalization of Reading Instruction     36
Challenges to the Scientific Management of Reading Instruction     69
One Best Method: The Role of Government     96
The Business of Reading     125
The Scientific Solution     144
Teachers as Targets     166
A Process of Elimination     192
Then, Now, and Tomorrow     211
Notes     233
Index     265