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Dyslexia turns out to be a lot like the President’s birth certificate. There are a huge number of claims on each side. They can’t all be right. Either the thing is real or it isn’t. You can find on the Internet an extraordinary number of people who talk about dyslexia as if it’s not only an ultimate reality but some sort of gift from God. (Oh, your brains may be scrambled but somehow it’s a wonderful thing because you see the world in a new way!) On the other side, you can find people saying that dyslexia is a lie,...

Okay, folks, place your bets. Was it clueless incompetence on a cosmic scale? Or, was it John Deweys collectivist wet dream turned Clockwork Orange? One of these ways or the other, we became a country with 50,000,000 functional illiterates, people who can't read a cereal box, never mind instructions on a pill bottle when that exact skill might save a life. Prisons are full of people who can't read. The country's schools wallow in mediocrity. All thanks to educational malfeasance, decade after decade. J'accuse! J'accuse! The so-called experts in charge of reading are derelict and destructive. Please, remove these parasites...

A recent post about a new book by Denise Eide called “Uncovering the Logic of English” prompted more than 80 comments. One person in particular objected that phonics was not the entire answer, and argued that Sight-Words were easy to learn, and that many people read this way. I don’t think so. So I am always trying to figure out CLEVER NEW WAYS to explain this mess to all the confused parents out there, and the confused teachers in the schools. This new article points out quite simply that reading, as described and prescribed by the so-called experts in Whole...

-six years ago, in 1955 to be exact, the most significant book about American education was published and, with very good reason, caused quite a stir. It was written by Rudolf Flesch, who had come to America to escape the Nazis in Vienna, became highly fluent in English and got a Ph.D in English at Columbia University. The book was entitled Why Johnny Can’t Read. It became a best-seller and rankled the entire education establishment. In it Flesch explained why so many children in American schools were having such a difficult time learning to read. He wrote: “The teaching of...

“Programmed Illiteracy in our Schools” is a wonderful book by a wonderful mind. Mary Johnson is the very model of what an intellectual and educator should be. This book is set mostly in Canada, and during the long-ago years 1959-1970; and yet, of all the many excellent book about the reading wars, this might be the best. Only 170 pages long, it manages to be both intensely personal and high-scholarly. It shows you the kids, parents and schools struggling with look-say; the politicians ducking; the Education Establishment scheming for dollars and control. My own conclusion about public education in the...

There are two ways to teach children to read. 1) Whole Word enthusiasts say that children must memorize the shapes of words one by one, just as the Chinese memorize their ideograms. This is the wrong way. English has far too many words for this approach ever to be considered. Even if an industrious child could memorize 2,000 word-shapes (which is extremely difficult and takes MANY years), that child would still be functionally illiterate. The vast majority of the English language remains unknown. Just as bad, words the child supposedly knows are rarely known with automaticity. Sight-word readers typically stumble,...

MIAMI — Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the military fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can't answer basic math, science and reading questions. The report by The Education Trust found that 23 percent of recent high school graduates don't get the minimum score needed on the enlistment test to join any branch of the military. The study, released exclusively to The Associated Press on Tuesday, comes on top of Pentagon data that shows 75 percent of those aged 17 to 24 don't qualify for the military...

Via Katzblog and Kate Lucadamo, Mayor Bloomberg made two interesting comments while doing an interview with the Wall Street Journal from Hong Kong, where he's traveling in his new role as head of C40 Cities, one of which waded heavily into trade policy with China, a contentious topic. The other may not thrill the new members of congress elected on Tuesday (or their longer-serving colleagues). Regarding trade with China, the mayor said, "“I think in America, we’ve got to stop blaming the Chinese and blaming everybody else and take a look at ourselves,” he said. “Let me get this straight:...

"There has to be a compelling reason these days for someone to decide to pick up a smelly book," says satirist Gary Shteyngart, the 38-year-old author whose novel "Super Sad True Love Story," a dystopian romance, has earned critical raves. By "smelly," Shteyngart is referring to the running gag of the plot — that books stink of dirty feet. Set in the near future — "oh, next Tuesday," Shteyngart jokes in a recent interview — the story details the development and collapse of a society that ridicules "printed bound media artifacts" and, in fact, anything that requires deep thinking. Instead,...

The Scripps National Spelling Bee highlights what a mess the English spelling is – a hodgepodge of orthographies borrowed from German, French, Greek, and Latin. Is it time for a makeover? The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw is said to have joked that the word "fish" could legitimately be spelled "ghoti," by using the "gh" sound from "enough," the "o" sound from "women," and the "ti" sound from "action." Shaw was probably not the originator of this joke, but he was one of a long line of people who thought that the English language's anarchic spelling, a hodgepodge of Germanic,...

Warning: Raw Speculation Alert. You have been warned! You are reading. This form form of reading will not disappear. eBooks—whether they be standalone devices, or merely apps on multipurpose toys like cell phones—will cause the reading of short bursts of words on a screen to become increasingly common. The key is “short”: columns such as this already push the limit of most people’s patience (yes, the content, too). The reading of book-length material—which is to say books in electronic or paper forms—will decline rapidly. eBook sales will increase, accelerating over the next five years. With the closing of mall stores,...

On May 13, Attorney General Eric Holder, who had been critical of the new Arizona immigration law, testified that he had based his comments on newspaper and television accounts but had not read the by then more than two-week-old statute.

Caught in the ACT Malcolm A. Kline, April 28, 2010 Although public schools like to trumpet their relevance, the education they deliver usually shows how out of touch they are. “Of the 1.5 million high school graduates who took the ACT during academic year 2008-2009, 33 percent were not ready for college-level English, 47 percent were not ready for college social science, 58 percent were not ready for College Algebra, and 72 percent were not ready for college Biology,” Cynthia B. Schmeiser, the president of the education division of ACT, Inc., told a Senate committee today. “Overall, only 23 percent...

A reading coach in California sent me this question: “I would like to know how you respond to teachers who are married to sight-word drills and describe their rationale as, ‘Well, there are just so many words that don't follow any rules.’” My answer is a longish rumination and probably not for the casual reader. But if you’ve wondered what Sight Words, Dolch Words, and the rest are really all about, this is a good place to start. Remember, our Education Establishment has spent 80 years promoting what I believe is a hoax and a crime, and in the process...

Boys can learn to beat girls at reading if they are given old-fashioned teaching methods, claim psychologists. The use of more traditional phonetics-based lessons helps boys catch up with girls - even doing better on some tests - and prevents some children from needing 'special' schooling, according to new research findings. A study of synthetic phonics also found children from disadvantaged backgrounds do as well as those from better off homes. The research, presented at the British Psychological Society's annual conference in York, has underpinned changes being made in the nation's classrooms. They have been introduced after damning revelations that...

To save the country, we first have to save the public schools. Doing this requires that we save reading, the one essential skill. March, 2010, is the 55th anniversary of “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” This book is just as hot now as it was a half-century ago, because our obtuse Education Establishment insists on using sight-words (or Dolch words) to teach reading. This is the phony method that Flesch exposed and explained in his book. “Rudolf Flesch Rules the World of Reading” gives a quick update on why this book is so hugely important. Maybe you already know all this....

College fails to teach civic knowledge - including American history and national institutions - and has an influence on liberal leanings among students, a new study says. The study, conducted by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, specifically cited typically liberal positions on gay marriage and school prayer. Richard Brake, the director of ISI's Culture of Enterprise Initiative, said high schools could be partly to blame for a lack of civic knowledge but college courses should provide more concentrated study. "You should reinforce it and go beyond it," he said. "Learning is about reinforcement." The study tested 2,508 Americans with various...

Think Globally Read Locally Malcolm A. Kline, January 22, 2010 The UN warns that illiteracy is a global problem but Americans may not have to look that far to find it. “Far too many young people emerge from primary school unable to read or write,” UNESCO warns. “In some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, young adults with five years of primary schooling have a 40% chance of being illiterate.” The U. S. could catch up in this race to the bottom. “The skills and knowledge that college instructors expect entering students to have are more focused and specific than what high...

They're kicking up their heels at the Barbara Bush Literacy Foundation for Family Literacy offices with announcement that former vice presidential candidate, Fox News commentator and author Sarah Palin will be among the published writers of note to make presentations at the Celebration of Reading. Politics notwithstanding, those who've seen Palin in person report that she is a charismatic figure not to be missed. And if you loved Palin going rogue on the campaign trail, we bet you'll love her even more as she comments on her life and reads from her book, Going Rogue. Mark your calendars for the...

Teenagers have been warned they are becoming unemployable because they use a vocabulary of just 800 words. The limited linguistic range also consists of many made up words and 'teenspeak' which has developed through modern communication methods such as text messaging and social networking sites. Today Jean Gross, who advises the Government on children's speech, said urgent action was required to prevent children failing to find jobs because they are unable to communicate. Mrs Goss, who last week issued a stark warning over the effect of television on children's development said yesterday: 'Teenagers are spending more time communicating through electronic...