Free Republic

Important Ed News /// Phonics is winning, finally, at long last, after 85 stupid years, after 50 million functional illiterates, after one of the most stubborn subversive schemes against common sense ever to brutalize a country. Finally, the one correct way to teach reading is again embraced as the one correct way to teach reading. Go ahead, shout "OMG." The fix has been in for so many dumbed down decades that many people may have given up hope. You may think this is now crazy optimism on my part. But I will show you some signs that things have suddenly...

August 2017, Charlottesville: Police disappear even as belligerents advance toward each other, and fighting in the streets begins. The same tactic had been used successfully in Ferguson and Baltimore. Who but President Obama and the respective governors could have given the orders to stand down? Who else but mayors and police chiefs could have expedited such counterintuitive commands? Democrats got their optics. CNN could chant each day that the USA is full of white nationalists and right-wing criminality. Obama must've been proud. Anyone could see that white supremacists lurked on every street. Funny thing: If you wait around for these...

Not much is certain in life, but here are two things you can take to the bank. If you want a child to learn to read, phonics is the way that works. Second, you can be sure that our Education Establishment will try to keep phonics at a minimum and force children to memorize the English language one sight-word at a time. Where reading is concerned, the nonsense never stops. In his famous 1955 book Why Johnny Can’t Read, Rudolf Flesch said he looked at all the research. There were 11 studies from 1913 to 1948; in all of them,...

The single most important aspect of education is reading.   If children are not reading, their entire education comes to a halt. That’s what has happened in millions of lives.  All the statistics for many decades reveal a curious surprise: our public schools don’t actually know how to teach reading or, more likely, they pretend not to know.  This is a bizarre scandal, especially given that children have been learning to read for thousands of years, and 100 years ago this country was thought to be moving toward universal literacy.   An odd thing happened circa 1931. The Education Establishment pushed look-say (or...

Not all at once, by some surgical procedure. No, this will be a slow, subtle process, taking place over years. Every step will be conducted with utmost seriousness. Scientific validity will be claimed. Endless research will be constantly referenced. If there is little progress or outright failure, teachers always seem amazed, as if such a thing had never happened before. Principals explain that the school is doing everything it can, if only parents would help in this delicate training. Children and families will be told with absolute confidence: we use the best methods here and our students learn to be...

On a literacy forum, a somewhat hostile teacher demanded to know if I was trying to frighten people? I answered: Yes, I am. I've studied Whole Word for almost 10 years. It doesn't work; it couldn't work. That our education establishment pushed this thing on people is a crime. If I can help frighten people away from it, that's good. As for phonics, people should understand that this is almost an umbrella term. In fact, I'm starting to think it's not so much a program or set of rules as a concept. If a kid knows that the letters on...

“Oh-oh, yes you are the great pretenders Pretending that you’re doing good Your need is such that you pretend too much You’ve done all the damage you could” The top 1000 people in public education, let’s call them the Education Establishment. They make all the decisions. Our public schools are what they are because of this tiny elite. Some observers think these people are incompetent, clumsy, addled. Maybe many are. But at the very top I suspect you find people with total clarity. They know what they’re doing. They know it’s not what most of the public wants. But they...

American media are excitedly reporting that women are smarter than men, according to IQ tests. Not equal to men, supposedly the goal of feminism, but superior to men. That is quite a jump, all in a matter of decades. How could such a thing happen? After all, biology tells us that genes tend to be stable over generations. An ABC News blog reported: “James Flynn, a New Zealand-based researcher known as an IQ testing expert, said...that women have closed the gap and even inched ahead in this battle of the intelligent sexes...Deciding which is the smarter sex is an ever-controversial...

[Author's title: "In Reading We Can Read The Contempt of Socialists"] What, if any, is the connection between illiteracy and ideology? George Orwell, our greatest political sociologist, has some ideas. He is the master explainer of governance, power, totalitarianism, education, and the dynamics of class warfare. It's an ugly picture. In his seminal essay, "Ignorance Is Strength," Orwell lays down the iron rule of history: "Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world[:] High, Middle, and Low." Orwell cynically notes that the Middle always campaign for...

Fake reading theory is the slave trade of our era. Conscience demands that it be opposed. A hundred books, perhaps two hundred, have been written on the reading wars. Finally those millions of words come down to a few dozen. English is a phonetic language and must be learned phonetically. Whole Word, the opposing theory, is a mirage, without merit. The great sophistry of the 20th century was to create the illusion that Whole Word could actually work or, one step lower, that there was a legitimate choice between the two approaches to reading, as there is between fahrenheit and...

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...

FSACNIATNIG [Jonah Goldberg]From a reader:Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.Posted at 05:55 PM