Posted on 01/02/2012 7:18:49 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
GOOD INSIGHTS ON WHY MILLIONS OF KIDS CAN'T READ. (A FOLLOW-UP FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN EARLIER POST TITLED "FAKE READING THEORY IS THE SLAVE TRADE OF OUR ERA.")
The country continues to be plagued by illiteracy. The reason is simple. The country continues to be under the heel of some of the most reckless and reprehensible “experts” imaginable.
They make little children memorize the SHAPES of words, which most little children simply can’t do. Ergo, these children experience major reading and cognitive problems.
Don Potter, the phonics guru and as well a teacher in Texas, recently sent me this illuminating note: “This has been a banner year for me. I have rescued dozens of students from the clutches of the sight-word monster. I am looking forward to rescuing more in the year to come. The parents marvel that I have been able to improve their children's reading with phonics in a very short time. They are also very upset to learn that their children were suffering, not genetic defects that screwed up neural pathways, but old fashioned artificially induced whole-word dyslexia caused by sight-word instruction. Every student coming to me has a copy of the Dolch Sight Vocabulary List in their Homework Folder.”
Note that the parents had embraced the idea that their kids were mentally impaired (dyslexic) but are now shocked to find that the kids are normal! (In fact, it’s the school that is mentally impaired.) There in a few dozen words is the whole story of dyslexia in our time. Parents and kids accept the school’s nutty diagnosis but in many cases will be angry with you if you tell them, sorry, you’re fine but you are the victim of a hoax. (I have a video on YouTube called "The Strange Truth About Dyslexia." People leave really violent comments on it.)
QED: the Dolch Sight Vocabulary List should be removed from every school.
Now, I want to give you a little more detail about the reading debate...but not too much! Reading theory quickly becomes murky; and I believe our Education Establishment uses the general confusion to keep their bad ideas in play.
Happily, I’ve found an excellent way to explore some of the subtleties. Raymond Laurita was a major crusader 40 years ago; in 1967 he published an article titled “Errors Children Make in Reading.” I’ve cut his article down to the best parts; and I promise you will be glad you read them. They explain how Sight-Words do their evil work:
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On hearing the errors of these unfortunate children, the first impulse is to attribute them to a lack of intelligence or even some form of mental aberration. The linguistic monstrosities these children perpetrate appear to be without semblance of logic or consistency...
The primary cause of reading difficulties in virtually all of the over 700 cases of reading disability I have treated over the years was related to difficulties the child encountered in attempting to cope with the problems imposed by whole configurations....
When a child is exposed to a whole word configuration such as “could” for example, without sufficient preparation, we are literally opening a Pandora’s Box of possible confusions....
To the immature child who hasn’t developed adequate visual and auditory identity and association between individual language symbols and the words they form, the word “could” will undoubtedly be confused later with a variety of configurations; among them: cold, called, cloud, canned, cooled, clawed, cord, would, should, etc....It isn’t difficult for the more than casual observer to understand why so many children become reading problems. They simply cannot cope fast enough with the need to learn numerous and unrelated whole word configurations on a purely visual basis.
It must be remembered that children who learn by the sight method, and this constitutes the majority of children in the United States, have been scientifically conditioned during the initial exposure period to a learning experience which by its very nature elicits a purely visual response to a configuration without assistance from auditory clues. No sincere educator can pretend that this initial exposure period hasn’t a most profound and enduring effect on the immature child, for by a series of carefully arranged stimulus-response activities, he has been literally conditioned to a visual, configurational attack on language. The result is inevitable.
The argument of those who persist in exposing all children indiscriminately to a visual configurational attack is usually based on post-facto reasoning, for they tend to cite the large numbers of children who have learned to read without first making auditory and visual associations with the individual letters of the alphabet. It is my belief and that of others that children who learn to read using a gestalt approach which exposes them to whole word configurations at the outset, are children who have had either prior preparation which prepared them for the experience or are those children gifted with better than average capacities of visual perception, discrimination and memory....
Alex Bannatyne writing in The Disabled Reader, states “This latter method, commonly called look-and-say, may be effective with those two thirds of first- and second-grade pupils who are sufficiently gifted in the realm of language to be able to learn to read quickly. I believe that these verbally capable children rapidly teach themselves to analyze words phonetically in spite of a deliberate non-phonetic approach on the part of the teacher. That this is so can easily be tested by asking children who have learned to read well using the look-and-say method to sound out difficult words; this they usually do quite competently....”
The subtlety and infinite diversity of the errors that the child becomes subject to in his developing confusion have to be seen to be believed....
Another example saw a child respond to the word “grab” with the response “drag.” This is an extremely common type of error for it has in addition to the visual confusion an overlay of confused auditory association. The consonant blends gr and dr are extremely difficult to differentiate for the child with inadequate auditory perception and discrimination. The two sounds are very similar as are the lip movements which are made to create them. In addition to the auditory confusion and the close configurational pattern of the two words, the child was also reversing the initial and final consonants. This child also referred to a “furry” animal as a “funny” animal and read about a character who went swimming in the “winter” instead of in the “water.” Both of these errors had a configurational base with the error involving the words furry and funny complicated by a discrimination confusion between the n and the r. This child also made the following progression in mistaking the word “Oh.” He went from oh to on to no and finally concluded the series with not.
These confusions are not extreme examples of severely disabled children but are instead rather common samples that every remedial teacher will meet on a given day if the time is taken to record the mistakes children make.
Often a child will read a sentence such as: “The little boy went into the jungle and saw a big giraffe.” and substitute for the last word: elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus or even dinosaur. Most adults fail to realize the subtle yet logical cause for this kind of mistake. It is really very logical for the child who has been conditioned to respond to visual stimuli. He isn’t thinking in terms of auditory clues, rather he is sure only that the little boy has seen some kind of large jungle animal. Unless he is a capable, linguistically talented child, his auditory associational training hasn’t prepared him for a total attack on the word, thus why shouldn’t it be a hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros or even a dinosaur. They are all “big” words in terms of size; they are all large animals and to the small child the possibility of a dinosaur residing in the depths of the jungle is a distinct possibility....
Observing a child who has lost some of this marvelous human capacity to respond with reasoning and logic, is a terribly depressing sight, and when one considers the number of times that human frailty in the form of faulty teaching and inadequate methodology has been the cause of this loss, the situation takes on the aspects of a tragedy....
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QED: the Dolch Sight Vocabulary List is the reason we have 50 million functional illiterates. It should be removed from every school. All the phonics experts say that children learn to read in the first grade. The Whole Word maniacs say that children will read some day, maybe, perhaps in middle school, but don’t be surprised if they experience ADHD, depression, dyslexia, and chronic illiteracy.
Don Potter publishes this article and many like it on donpotter.net. His site is an archive of historically important material.
My own focus is on providing artillery for parents to use in their daily battles with school administrators. Many of these officials may actually have no idea how far over to the dark side they have drifted. (They make the mistake of trusting the pronouncements coming down from on high.) So send them a copy of this post or the article titled: “Fake Reading Theory is the Slave Trade of Our Era.” (on RightSideNews)
(Improve-Education.org also has 10 articles about reading.)
Bruce:
Imagine how we high school teachers feel when huge numbers of high school students start 9th grade reading at a 4th grade level! These students are mainstreamed into “regular” 9th grade English classes.
We are told at endless professional developments that WE must prepare students for state reading tests, 9th-grade level tests- for students who are three, four or more grade levels behind in reading! When the low test scores come out WE high school teachers are blamed!
The poor kids are the ones who lose out; after third grade, the curriculum changes from learning to read to reading to learn. If the kid doesn’t have a rudimentary grasp of reading by that time, he’s going to fall further and further behind as the curriculum becomes ever-more reading-based, without a prayer of ever catching up. In my district, the dropout rate is ~ 60%.
Of course, the parents are partly to blame too. There is little to no reading material in most homes, only 50% of parents read to their kids, few visit libraries, kids watch endless hours of TV at home - often the parents themselves, especially those in large urban districts, are semi-literate themselves.
All of this a HUGE problem in my school district.
One of THE most perfidious programs EVER to be foisted on America’s children was Whole Language.
My husband and I have been working with the cub scouts for several years now. We get to see first hand the illiteracy.
We warn parents, that if you institutionalize a child for there education in a government school, the parent **must** must**must*** stay on top of what their children are likely not to learn,, and it is the **parents’** responsibility to see that it is fixed ( private tutoring or afterschooling.)
My belief is that most parents these days view public skrew’ls to be akin to kiddy daycare.
My fear is that most parents these days are so fraught with providing the sustenance for their standard of living, they’re incapable of anything more than the quarterly PTA conference. And quite frankly have not the critical thinking skill necessary to argue an ass-hatted teacher down.
The meek shall inherit the Earth. That their inheritance entails chains and bondage is besides the point.
What’s astonishing is that the generation who’s mantra was “question authority” - now in power - has inclulcated the perception that authority reigns supreme (not to be questioned at risk of your expertice being questioned).
The thing missing betwixt public & private schooling is the horror word to contemporary parents: discipline.
The bottom line: parents pay for that one way or another; either they instill it or it will be instilled for a price. Can you imagine the hysteria rampant in the parochial faculty of a parent causing a rukus because their parochial schooled child was disciplined?
Public Skrewl kids can get an excellent education IF the parents are on top of what the kids are being taught every single step of the way & they are ammenable to their child being disciplined.
You either do one or BOTH: pay taxes, or parochial tuition (you don’t get a rebate).
Well, no. No alphabet and no sounds that letters make. Just words in a book that I read.
You may want to read this.
We warn parents, that if you institutionalize a child for there education in a government school, the parent **must** must**must*** stay on top of what their children are likely not to learn,, and it is the **parents’** responsibility to see that it is fixed ( private tutoring or afterschooling.)You said it, not me. Yesh, I'm the nitpicker. You going to let your kids slide on such profound difference?
In the era of the Founding Fathers, in reading, writing and arithmetic, these discussions on method were muted by all the accomplished students who were being turned out successfully with but a fifth reader. Now why was that? It was phonics. There were few stragglers.
Today by comparison we do see full blown illiteracy in all three subjects.
I encourage parents to instill the joy of reading with presents of expensive books with glossy pictures as kindergartners. The mantra should be: "You read it to me."
Once the kid's inculcated into the whole skrew'l system, they'll no longer see the pursuit of knowlege as being anything greater than a means to that car at 16. That notwithstanding, isn't that what its all about?
I started doing phonics flash cards with my child at a few months of age.
I bought some phonics based books from the UK which for the life of me I can't remember, but the characters were a pig, a badger named Brian, and some other animals. I also had the reading with phonics sets sold in the US.
Phonics was part of the daily routine. She was reading by age two. By age ten, she was reading through the Britannica Great Books of the Western World-because she wanted to read them.
The only down side is that the child grew up to be a Half Price Books/Amazon junkie.
I taught my little sister to read by the age of 3. She was able to read basic first grade books. She succeeded well in school and today is a writer and editor. My Dad bought the Hooked on Phonics series for my Niece when her son was 3 years old. He learned to read before he started school. He is ten years old and is at the top of his class. All because he can read.
By age ten, she was reading through the Britannica Great Books of the Western World-because she wanted to read them.THAT's what any parent should covet: their child "wanting" to KNOW.
Back in my day too much want of knowlege was considered geeky - rubbed schoolmates the wrong way - and translated into adverserial relationships with my classmates (and ultimately with my parents themselves). Learnging one's prodigy kid any one of the martial arts at 3rd grade isn't untoward. Its far less awkward having to answer to their parent why you kid kicked their ass, as oppossed to the other way 'round.
When I was in elementry skrewl I was banned from the science section of library; I was forced into history & biography section. I hated it.
These days I relish history & biography.
Are schools still pushing sight-reading? My sister was “taught” this way and has had trouble her whole life with spelling and seeing how complex words are constructed. She’s very bright, has an advanced degree in mathematics, but she was hampered by sight-reading.
I was taught phonics and developed a facility for language, scoring 750 on the SAT verbal way back when. I’m certain that the ease I have with language is from having been taught phonics. I can’t see how English can be taught without it.
Respectfully,
Wintertime
It isn't. Even those posters who insist that they learned to read by using sight or whole word methods learned by phonics. Somewhere or somehow they made the connection between the shape of the letters and the sounds.
By the way, I find it interesting that those, who learned to read at 3 years old, can remember every detail of the method or methods used.
I believe sight words work extremely well for children 3 years and under. I am open to other opinions for children older than that.
Only Chinese and Japanese (to some extent) use pictographs.
Japanese uses Chinese pictographs (Kanji) for old Japanese words. For newer words it uses katakana which is a phonetic alphabet or Romaji (which is the Roman alphabet)
Other Asian languages like Arabic ( ب ت ث ج ح) or Hindi () have their own alphabets and are not pictographic.
Oh, not this again.
Two of my 3 who can read taught themselves to read before kindergarten (one at 2 and one at 5) by cracking the code. That is sight reading, and it’s a natural way to read, picking it up by context, the same natural way we learn to speak, and the way we learna new language in that country.
There is nothing wrong with phonics. Kids can learn to read that way. Though English is plagued with more exceptions than rules.
But sight reading is natural and fine.
You put it perfectly. You so clearly have an unreasoning faith in phonics that you're willing to force it on everyone you meet. I don't put my "faith" in any particular teaching method. That's blind, and it's stupid. You, on the other hand, are clearly a true believer. Good for you. Hopefully, not too many people will fall for your single minded crusade.
Wow. A personal attack. Never thought I'd see that on the internet. I especially like the guilt by association trick with the government school employee crack. Projecting much? There are better ways to win an argument or engage in intelligent discourse.
Despite that you charged me with lack of knowledge, my only factual point -- that English is an amalgam of Romance, Germanic and Celtic languages (among others) -- is unassailable. Much of it is phonics-based. On the other hand, much of it can only be forced into a phonics-based mold by creating so many rules that it simply isn't worth while. The complexity makes the system worthless at that point and other systems work better. Phonics-only, to the exclusion of everything else, is nothing more than blind, unreasoning faith. Rather than arrogance, I've adopted a position of humility, knowing that I don't have the perfect system that will always deliver 100% reading skill for every child all the time. I'm sorry to say that for arrogance, the irony of your screen name in this context is palpable.
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