Posted on 06/06/2020 7:01:07 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Sad to say, the Reading Wars continue in the USA.
Millions of children are made to memorize sight-words, a proven road to illiteracy. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of websites, continue to assert things that are the opposite of truth. For example, we are told that English isn’t a phonetic language and students have no choice but to memorize the vast English language one sight-word at a time. Nonsense, as Rudolf Flesch famously explained in his 1955 bestseller "Why Johnny Can't Read.”
Why does this destructive charade go on? The official experts continue to disorient the public with incorrect theories, fake research, bogus claims, and airy jargon. Parents tend to be overwhelmed. Even teachers don't usually understand the wastefulness of what they're told to do in the classroom.
Realistically speaking, only a tiny percentage of human beings could memorize hundreds of phone numbers, license plates, chemical formulas, or birthdays. The same is true of English words treated as graphic design, i.e. sight-words. They are a dead end. And "hundreds," if you want to read English, are just the beginning. You must memorize many thousands, with instant recall. You have a better chance of winning a million from the lottery.
The following six items quickly explain why children need phonics. (All six can be easily read in less than an hour.) Then you will know more about reading than the people in charge of reading in this country.
1) Reading Is Easy. Four-minute video presents quotations from seven famous experts all saying that reading is easy if you teach it in the correct way.
2) 54: Preemptive Reading. Short article describes the basic steps for teaching a child to read English.
3) 40: Sight-Words—The Big Stupid. Article explains what it's like for children in elementary school when they are told to do the impossible.
4) Whatever Happened To Phonics? Short article provides more historical and cultural context for what is effectively a war against reading, and thus a war against thinking and academic achievement.
5) Phonics vs. Whole Word —Take 2. Sub-four-minute video illustrates the differences between phonics and sight-words.
6) An Educator Admits Her Mistakes. Only 3 minutes. In this graphic video Edwina Educator lays it all out for you: why our public schools went to hell.
What finally is so threatening about literacy that our education system is set up to prevent it. Traditionally, children learn to read; then they read to learn. If there's no reading, there's little learning and little reason for kids to be in school. Current practice can well be defined as the Biggest Crime in American History.
"Saving K-12” (book by this writer) has an 18-page section devoted to explaining our reading crisis. In general, this book provides an excellent short survey of what happened to our public schools and how we can fix them. More information about book and author here.
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Phonics is how I learned to read and certainly memorized tons of words for spelling tests.
The education-industrial-complex is a *Big*Fat*Festering*Pimple. It needs to be squeezed from every side.
Keep up the pressure on informing the public about the abusive teaching practices. These methods **hurt** children and destroy futures.
I will squeeze from the side of promoting free market options.
Another Reason to Homeschool.
The teaching methods promoted in the government schools are child abuse. Wise and caring parents will do everything possible to get their children out of these **Toxic**Waste**Dumps**!
I taught all of my kids with phonics. They are all excellent readers.
I learned with phonics too. I can sound out any word, including foreign words.
Me too. I learned Italian first, then English and also a few others.
I taught my son to sound out words long before school... ok, maybe not real long before... it was a game.
I, too, taught my kids using Phonics. I’m also teaching my grand-daughters as well.
I used Rod and Staff in the mid ‘90’s.
Ping
PLEASE note: many boys aren’t ready to learn to read until 8 or 9. Reading is immaterial - understanding is. I homeschooled my son because he was wicked smart - asking what were essentially physics questions at the age of 5. When listening to a history lesson about the Assyrians, chariots, and the spoked wheel, he stopped driving his cars around the floor (he needed to be in the room as I taught his older sister), he stopped dead, looked up, “Oh, spoked wheel!” I had no idea he knew what that was. That could go really FAST. It COULD TURN FAST! He was so excited about the idea of chariots and spoked wheels! No need to interrupt his learning with reading. He aced college English at 16, got into an honors college, etc. Please - do not tell your sons they’re dumb if they don’t read or talk — it’s not what their brains are wired to do . . . yet! Einstein, Edison, lots of others.
My mother taught all 6 of us to read with phonics, each by the age of 4. I really don’t remember how the school taught reading, because I already could read when I got there.
Wouldn't it be loverly?
Wow!
I never understood why teaching phonetically based alphabetic English as if it were hieroglyphics ever made sense to anyone.
I’m amazed by all the comments I get from parents who say their children learned to read at three or four.
But in general, we can’t design schools and education around exceptional children, such as your son. He’ll do okay no matter what happens.
l’m always thinking of the average children. I hope they will learn to read by 4 or 5. In that way they’re defended against the worst effects of the public schools.
We have 40-50 million functional illiterates. Think about it. Let’s not do anything that slows down more and better reading.
Blend Phonics is highly recommended by Don Potter, my favorite expert.
BP is short, it’s cheap, and it sticks to the essentials. One problem we have in public schools is they will claim to be teaching phonics but it’ll be some pseudo-phonics with lots of things in it you don’t want.
I was a pain in the ass to kindergarten and elementary teachers after that, reading the instructions and finishing worksheets before they had time to read the instructions to us.
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