Posted on 08/24/2015 7:00:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hundreds of websites still casually assert what is probably the most destructive sophistry in the history of education:
The Dolch Sight Words [created in the 1940s] are a list of the 220 most frequently used words in the English language. These sight words make up 50 to 70 percent of any general text….Dolch found that children who can identify a certain core group of words by sight could learn to read and comprehend better. Dolch's sight word lists are still widely used today and highly respected by both teachers and parents. These sight words were designed to be learned and mastered by the third grade.
Even at a glance, you may see several problems. Just because they were “designed to be learned and mastered” by the third grade doesn’t mean they will be. The majority of children cannot master these words by any grade, if by master you mean name them with automaticity at reading speed.
“Respected by both teachers and parents” is a slippery construction that conspicuously omits mention of “reading experts who conduct research.”
Furthermore, even if these words make up two thirds of a text, that means a child cannot read every third word. Nothing resembling reading can take place.
Note that phonics instruction would allow the student to read every word by the second grade. But the sight-word method promises that by third grade, the children will know a small subset of English words but still remain largely illiterate. What sort of promise is that?
Even all that is not the full indictment. Trying to memorize many graphic designs – and that’s what learning to read with sight-words entails – is virtually impossible. The brain becomes cluttered with hundreds of partly memorized designs, all of which look quite similar.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“Tyrants have created and sustained all manner of “advances” in language...including ebonix”!
Political Correctness was designed and implemented by Marxists. It is Cultural Marxism.
Political Correctness controls the Narrative and limits or eliminates discussion and true free speech.
That’s why you are against women if you oppose abortion; a racist if you oppose Obama; a homophobe if you oppose gays; for the rich if you oppose higher taxes on yourself, etc. etc. etc.
That’s only a small sample.
I wonder if the Chinese have 130 million functional illiterates.
“Me fail English? That’s unpossible”...
They are right, if all you know are the single letter sounds, dipthongs and tripthongs.
When homeschooling our kids, I figured the highest level of literacy in the USA was in the Victorian Era.
I searched for school books from the era when adults of that era were educated, the 1830s and 1840s.
I found there were two sets of phonics rules that have been forgotten since that time, the silent letter rules and the substitute letter rules.
Once you know them, you can sound out almost every word in our crazy language.
And most of them couldn’t even spell their way into a job. God knows how many application letters we receive with applicants who could not even use “loose” and “lose” correctly in a sentence.
Oh I agree with you about phonics and how to teach English.
I have struggled with Kanji for a couple of years now and those shapes rarely inform me of any meaning ";^)
Really, with all the pols trying to be pro-education, it’s not so much “competition” that is required as two simple things: phonics and an end to the teachers unions.
We had great schools when we had phonics but not teachers unions. Now, we don’t want to federalize education, so phonics should simply be promoted by the bully pulpit (or more locally, as appropriate). But teachers unions are a good excuse to get rid of legislated “protection” for unions.
Let free labor markets rule.
Simple answer. It’s a purposeful program of destruction. Stalin’s agents started it. The leftwingnuts of education keep carrying it out. Most of them have no idea what they are doing. They are trained to be destructive idiots in college.
I don't wish to incur the wrath of those who would claim I'm pimping my website, so tough luck.
You'll have to search for them on your own.
Try searching for ed sanders phonics.
You should come to either the rules or a clickable table of the rules.
Chinese characters are ideograms - developed to convey ideas - while written english is phonetic.
Perhaps there is so much similarity between Chinese and English that it give the Asians an unfair advantage over the Hispanics whose language is totally different. (Do I really need the sarcasm tag?)
What is truly sad is many of the immigrant children (especially the children of those here illegally) are illiterate in their own language as well as English. A major issue schools have now is trying to teach a child to speak, read, and write in English when they cannot read and or write in their native language. Parents of most of these children are illiterate so there is little to no support from them to help the children learn. Many place no value on education so it becomes hopeless.
Yes, it’s purposeful.
If people can read, they can read information that the left doesn’t want them to.
They’re doing the same thing with math now, too.
Introducing weird runaround ways of doing simple math to the point that the student can’t learn how to do it at all.
Yup, he continued the travesty but it was started in the USA in 1838, by one of the original Massholes, Horace Mann.
BTW, since you mentioned a Russian, English is a mess of silent and substitute letters. There are no such things in the Russian language. You simply pronounce every letter.
We'd be far better off to "steal" the Russian language and adopt it as their own.
They've stolen enough of our inventions, proper payback would be stealing their language.
Conjugation and declension are simpler in Russian too. Just add one of 10 endings.
He really believed his crazy ideas were best for teaching reading.
Our schools are churning out illiterates at an alarming rate. I see it everywhere I look. Even websites trying to sell their wares either don’t effectively proofread their text or don’t know how to recognize spelling and grammar errors when they see them. I’ve seen news articles...lots of them...with errors I would never let get by me.
Then look at the comments section below many news articles...atrocious...forum posts too. People don’t know how to use even common, simple words and punctuation.
To, too and two...
There, their, they’re...
Im better then that...THAN dammit...and where’s that apostrophe???
Plurals DO NOT require an apostrophe. It’s “two cars”, not “to car’s.”
And don’t get me started on Internet shorthand...
It’s depressing. And these are the people who will be running this country in a few years. How the hell do they think they can run a company if they can’t even SPELL it? And even worse, we’re seeing a more technologically oriented workplace every day. Computers are already required even for doing homework. And we’re churning out uneducated dimwits whose only use for a computer is youtube and facebook.
Education is one of my pet peeves. I learned to read at age 4, by age 10 I was reading my uncles’ college textbooks. (Yes that’s a possessive plural not a typo) I keep my spell checker between my ears. Most people don’t even bother to use the one built into their browser...That red squiggly line is there for a reason. I do pay attention to it, the thing catches tons of typos...and once or twice a month a word I don’t actually know how to spell...
WHY???
Laziness. Incompetence. Apathy...
And politics...Florida set up a voucher system a few years ago, if you didn’t like your kids’ school, you could turn in your voucher, send your kids to a different school, and your portion of tax funding would go to that school. In 2 years Florida was seeing a marked improvement in education. Why? Competition. Suddenly schools had to compete for funding, they had to actually do a good job, education improved as a result. So the teacher’s union filed a lawsuit and SHUT IT DOWN...The damn teachers, who are supposed to be interested in educating kids, shut down the best program yet for improving education...sickening...
Looks like they’re trying it again though, and maybe it will get some traction. According to a quick look at a few headlines, it’s still being challenged, but hasn’t been killed yet. And of course, is being challenged by the Florida Education Association and PTA...
http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/27/florida-school-voucher-expansion-yielding-results/
The previous version, shot down in 2006, is reported here
http://www.ij.org/florida-school-choice-latest-release
Note the 2nd paragraph:
The Court ruled in an opinion drafted by Chief Justice Barbara Pariente that Opportunity Scholarships violate the Florida Constitution’s “uniformity” clause, which guarantees all Florida students a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.” The Court declined to rule on a separate claim by teachers’ unions and other school choice opponents that Opportunity Scholarships violate the state Constitution’s Blaine Amendment.
Teacher’s unions and other school choice OPPONENTS...nice job teachers...
I only read a couple of articles, but it seems other locations are starting to try similar programs, which makes sense. What encourages improvements in performance better than a little competition? And of course, the people who are supposed to be dedicated to educating your kids are against it...
And people wonder why I’ve said for years this is not a world I would want to bring a kid into...
I read recently that modern Chinese children begin with pin-yin, a phonetic version of Chinese, and then move on to the ideograms when they have developed confidence in reading.
Spanish, like Italian, French, and Portuguese, is just a street dialect of Latin. The Spanish kids would probably have a better chance with Latin than the Anglos do.
Illiteracy is what makes America great (for DemocRATs)! There is nothing better than a bunch of dumbass voters.
I remember a few years ago that there were commercials running on TV adverting Phonics courses to teach children to read. Not today! I guess Common Core and the teachers unions banned them?
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