I believe you may want to update "10 Alibi's" in your Whole Language section because you state Sesame Street has been exposing the children to phonics. Well, they used to do phonics, but now their "reading" vignettes are instead presented as some form of whole word recognition, which as you know, is the method used in Whole Language. At least, that's the Sesame Street we see down here. The only real concession Whole Language has made to phonics is to teach the initial consonant sound, and so maybe that little bit of phonics has led some to believe the "Sesame Street teaches phonics."

Background: Mother of 5, whose children hated reading and couldn't read, write or spell, either! After I trained them in phonics, all love reading, and only one can't spell very well still (probably lazy).

Love the work you are doing up there --- best wishes always!

- Jeanne Harris, MOISER, Oregon USA, March 1997

Thank you for your kind comments and for taking the time to write us. Your observations are consistent with many that we have received about Sesame Street no longer teaching 'real' phonics. Our original article on the ten alibis for whole language was written in 1992, and our example of Sesame Street was used simply to counter the alibi that "too much TV" is a cause of illiteracy. Of course, whole language taught on TV can be just as harmful as whole language taught in the schools. Similarly, phonics taught on TV can be as beneficial as phonics taught in schools.

However, in the near future, we will post your comments on our site as an update and footnote with a link to our Sesame Street example. Thanks again for writing to bring this to our attention.