Posted on 03/20/2016 7:29:25 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Wrong.
At very young ages, 3 and under, words make more sense when viewed as whole objects as opposed to phonetics. Many people, including myself, don’t wait until the age of 5 to teach their children to read. At the age of 5 maybe your techniques are best, but I prefer not to teach to the lowest common denominator. Excellence at a young age is something that should be applauded.
My sister and I were the same - I was taught by phonics, read well early on, and write for a living (and teach writing). She was taught Sight Words and struggled, always, with reading.
Tutoring, I always teach my kids to decipher. It gives them the key to unlocking the mystery of words and making them their tool.
“At very young ages, 3 and under, words make more sense when viewed as whole objects as opposed to phonetics.”
Spoken like a typical new age leftist theoretician. Psycho-babble claptrap that has no proof of workability.
Stupid ideas like that ultimately do more harm than good.
Unfortunately, few teachers learned to read phonetically, thus they are clueless as to how to teach it.
The solution is to make all teachers re-learn to read phonetically before they can teach. Which ain’t gonna happen.
It’s so sad. Teaching a 5 year old to read phonetically is ridiculously easy.
Re: “Dyslexia...a condition you are born with”
That is the Education Establishment’s favorite theory. It gives them a convenient excuse for perennial failure.
This article maintains that “Dyslexia is a myth.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/dyslexia_is_a_myth.html
Re: “What are your teaching creds?”
If you read my bio, you know I don’t say anything about being a teacher. if a title is needed, I’m an education reformer. My value is that I come from outside the system.
Re: “Yet native Italians rarely get dyslexia.” I can’t resist telling you an interesting story. A few years ago a group in Italy contacted me for help in fighting sight-words in their public schools. They were starting to have all the same problems we have here: dyslexia, ADHD, psychological ailments, Ritalin. So it seems that the global Education Establishment, or whatever you want to call it, is always pushing the same bad ideas. To put sight-words into Italian schools is completely insane, but they did it. This group, Pensare Oltre, wanted to fight back. This is very inspiring to me. I don’t hear from any groups in America wanting to fight back.
(For more on this story, see:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/education_reform_italian_group_shows_americans_how_its_done.html
Re: “So why on earth would you not start w/the letters?”
I write a lot about this question. For me, it’s obviously a wide ranging conspiracy to dumb down the schools. John Dewey and all of his socialist buddies recognized literacy as the thing they wanted to undermine. Teaching a phonetic language as if it’s a hieroglyphic language is the trick they use. Flesch explained this fully in 1955—it’s why Johnny can’t read.
The surprising part is they continue to get away with it. That’s why I say that getting rid of sight-words is the single most important goal.
Regarding: “the reactions you were expecting”
I appreciate your concern. Nothing much surprises me. I’ve been in the ed trenches for almost 10 years. I think of the Education Establishment as something like cockroaches or termites. They’re always having a good year.
I’m trying to help the parents who know there’s a problem and are looking for an answer. If people are open to finding an answer, then I can help them.
The biggest disappointment for me is that the people at the top who used to protect the society – the Chamber of Commerce, the Ivy League universities, big business, and many others— are much more passive or corrupted now. Bill Gates and Jeb Bush were two of the biggest forces behind Common Core. We need out conservative movers and shakers to move and shake at a much higher level.
How much do you earn from us clicking on your blog?
Oh, please. Don't assume experience teaching a class or degrees in education is necessary to being an effective teacher.
I taught two of my children to read at age five with Sam Blumenfeld's phonics books. It takes patience and repetition and explanation. Assuming you don't have a child with cognitive problems, that's about it.
If there's anything that over complicates learning these days, it's the education industry and their "new" programs that come along every year (someone please tell me how math has changed one iota but yet we need new ways to teach it and scores continue to tank) ... and it is very much an industry that makes a boatload of money off the taxpayers (and student failure) and a lot of what they do is both charlatanism and educational malpractice.
But that's another story. And now that I'm good and ticked off thinking about what the Education Industry has done to American students, I'm off to the liquor cabinet. Damn you!
Nothing.
(I should work on this in the future. Problem is, there are administrative details I don’t want to bother with. Second, you need to get LOTS of clicks to amount to anything but nickels and dimes.)
Is dyslexia a problem with the Chinese? Their language is of course mostly ideographic, and I recall one scholar as attributing a Chinese tendency toward authoritarianism as rooted in their language and its lack of flexibility. In contrast, cultures reliant on tonal, phonetic languages are said to be more fluid and dynamic.
I am not a dyslexia expert, not even on the idiot level, so I think there are differing views on where/how it originates. That being said I am really happy to hear that your daughter has made such a wonderful recovery. It sounds like you have two children to be very proud of!
I’m not a scholar but I figured out this much. People try to make parallels between English and Chinese, but it’s not usually helpful. Chinese has many many fewer words, and each has only one form. All the little words have been discarded and sentences have been stripped down to their logical components: no ticket no laundry. An ordinary person’s vocabulary isn’t even 10,000 characters or probably less than 5000.
Hieroglyphic languages seem to work okay for your top 1%. The more ordinary people top out at a modest number of symbols. And that’s exactly what happens in an English sight-word world.
The least you two teacher haters could do, especially you Mr. Price as you slog your blog, is be a donor to FR. I’m still waiting for the research data ol’ Bob was asked for when he quoted 90% in a previous post. So far crickets.........well, this “cockroach” needs to scurry to the kitchen for something to eat. I need my nutrition for another day of oppressing children & being a horrible human being..........
Theoretician?!
I have done it and I believe in the works of Dr. Titzer. How many 3 and unders have you taught to read. If your answer is zero then you are the theoretician.
Primary level written Chinese language instruction is said to consist mostly of rote identification and memorization of ideograms and ideographs. Recent research suggests that the Chinese version of dyslexia implicates different parts of the brain than what is manifested in regard to dyslexia as to phonetic languages. Whether such differences are useful for policy is another matter.
“The least you two teacher haters could do”
Let’s be fair here. I don’t hate teachers, I just consider them to be useful idiots of the left. Teachers, by and large, have NO CLUE as to the bigger picture of how the education system is hell-bent on destroying kids. They’re just doing their jobs and complaining when told to.
I was a voracious reader as a child, and when my mom told me to not read a certain book, I made sure to read that book.
I read various bodice rippers and a very explicit novel called Wifey by Judy Blume.
Quite the eye opener, and I turned out to be an overt heterosexual.
You know what was far more traumatic and had a greater impact on my delicate psyche?
Reading The Stand, by Stephen King, at 13. Messed me up for life, and I still see the world through a pre-post apocalyptic lens.
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