Deconstructing Derrida

Recently some of my staff and I have been discussing the issue of teaching students to read. At the heart of the current stream of thought is the ongoing shout match between “phonics” and “whole language” theories. In the course of our discussion, I mentioned that “whole language” was more than simply a method or technique, but involved the larger school of philosophy called “deconstruction.” As many were unfamiliar with this view, I am providing a link to some definitions of it put together by Stanford. I found them as a whole to help me closer to understanding the general idea behind the founder of the movement, Jacques Derrida. Of course, reading his works would help this further. The Stanford Link A Bibliography for Derrida Another link to a discussion of Derrida that is sympathetic to him A site attempting to bring together links of the Whole Language and Phonics debate Here is a link to another article I have posted on my blog about Whole Language – the rhetoric is somewhat pushy, but the points are still there.