Posted on 08/13/2008 4:55:16 PM PDT by ventanax5
During his six years as New York’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein has spent many a Sunday morning speaking from the pulpit of a black church about his efforts to reform the public school system and to help African-American kids get a better education. “We have to make education the civil rights issue of our time,” Klein asserted in a speech for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in Memphis this year. “In America today, we have a racial achievement gap that is the shame of this great nation, and until we get right on education, we are not going to be right.” And now Klein and Sharpton have created a new national organization devoted to closing that achievement gap.
Admirable sentiments—but the approach that the city has taken to address this problem rests on flawed ideas and won’t work. It’s time for another line of attack: a Marshall Plan for reading.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
“In America today, we have a racial achievement gap that is the shame of this great nation...”
No.
Most definitely not.
The shame lies with those who CHOOSE not to achieve, and ONLY with them.
This truly great nation continues to offer a plethora of wholly color-blind opportunities for success.
The one thing that can turn it all around, and the experts decide that it is a crime to use it. I used to work at a Teacher's College and it was amazing how much phonics was hated. It was an evil, evil method of teaching reading. The educators with whom I worked all thought Whole Language was far superior. Now, sure, Whole Language turned almost all kids into illiterates, but -- like Communism -- the outcome was expected to be better, once the methodology was implemented correctly.
Its not because their black its because they're going to public schools where they teach children sodomy, condoms and atheism instead of reading writing and arithmetic. They should be homeschooling them and getting their parents involved.
I thought this story was going to be about combatting poverty in an American city named “Reading”. Figured they were going to do some urban rezoning, renovation, and revitalization.
My bad.
Readin’ be actin’ white!
The progressives now have math squarely in their sights (cites or sites will do if you're a whole language learner.) We're all loosers in this battle, folks. It's a hugh and series issue. Just read a few threads here at FR if you don't believe me.
That we've allowed it to go on so long is shameful.
I don’t think that phonics will have much effect on the core problem: the much smaller vocabulary of black kids. What good is being able to sound out a word if you’ve never heard it?
As for whole language, it is the way highly intelligent and literate people learn to read, but it is not suited for everyone. I would recommend a more mixed approach. Those who really learn to read throw away phonics at some point, the only question is when.
Yes. But it is a poor place to start someone as a reader. Most people just can't do it at a young age. Phonics, on the other hand, can be mastered by even very young readers.
The Education experts pursue a similar approach to math. They call it "discovery". They ask kids to discover geometry. Now, Euclid, one of the great math geniuses of history, mastered geometry, so let's have all the kids in public schools repeat his work! Don't teach them anything! That would spoil the fun! Just let the kids discover -- all by themselves -- all of the secrets of geometry. If Euclid did it, then little Larry Washington can do it too!
There's practically a conspiracy by these experts, searching for bone-headed methodologies that guarantee failure for most kids.
I agree with you completely. Phonics is the way to go. And the really sad thing about it is that phonics is easy to teach and easy to learn.
My wife and I learned via phonics in the 50s, home schooled our daughter with phonics in the 80s. At nine years of age she was reading books to her HS aged cousins, victims of whole word dementia.
Teachers that didn’t learn via phonics, can’t teach phonics. I suspect that they have a lot of resentment (due to envy) of those phonics taught superior readers. Whole word reduces all students to the same level of mediocrity, the goal of “progressive” educators.
Follow the money.
The professors who write the god-awful reading programs make big bucks from the publishers, their partners in crime.
Serving on a textbook selection committee is an eyeopener - this is where I became disillusioned. The typical whole language program has a stack of books two feet high. The phonics programs have at the most a few workbooks four inches high. Teaching phonics is not a big money maker for anybody.
The guru of whole language, Kenneth Goodman of the U. of Arizona, is infamous for designing programs that result in a full third of the class needing remedial help - another windfall for publishers. School superintendents like it because they can hire more reading specialists, thus increasing their little empires.
The whole thing is an unspoken interlocking conspiracy between education bureaucrats, college professors, publishers, and know-nothing school board members who are too busy to investigate and demand academic results.
The first whole-word guru was William S. Gray, author of Dick and Jane in the 1930’s. He became an overnight millionaire and was the role model for educrats for the next 80 years.
“Why Johnny Can’t Read” by Rudolf Flesch exposed all of them in the 1950’s but it was too late - - they are entrenched in their unholy domains and protect each other.
(Sorry to disillusion anyone about the beloved Dick and Jane, but it was the very first sight reader.)
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