Posted on 03/24/2010 12:29:26 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
"Last week I posted background on FreeRepublic about a column published months earlier titled “Education as Neurotoxin.”
This column tries to explain why the US has 50 million functional illiterates and 1 million dyslexics. Were these people born this way? Or had bad education methods caused the impairments? (In which case, our enemies never needed to put fluoride, etc., in the water as our public schools were already harming the nation’s intelligence.)
Someone left a half-dozen bitter comments insisting I was “delusional,” “illogical,” “irrational,” “nonsensical,” etc. I’m not sure which part offended him most, that sight-words cause mental problems; or that the far-left could possibly promote the use of destructive methods..."
Short blog post links to two articles that respond to the two parts of this criticism.
(Excerpt) Read more at EducationImproved.blogspot.com ...
how else could it have come to this in one generation?
I would like to know the education level of each congress critter and senator. I would like to know how many of them attended public schools and how many attended public colleges.
Can you provide link to original post? Sounds interesting..
Is teaching sight-reading all that common?
What’s really pitiful is the fact that the badly educated are now becoming teachers. The partner of a co-worker went back to college to get a teaching certificate. Her grammar was never good & her writing was poor. She succeeded in getting her degree, but could not pass the final teachers test to get her license from the state. After working as a substitute for a couple of years, she managed to have the test waived & got a teaching job as an 8th grade science teacher making $60k. Sheesh!
Strange there was no mention of these “illnesses” 45 years ago when I was in high school. Funny how everyone in my school of 2000 graduated, every year! Maybe it’s just global warming.
“how many of them attended public schools and how many attended public colleges.”
Probably very few of ‘em attended either- they tend to be trust-fund babies or otherwise well-connected and can BS their way to a B.S. in the Ivy League. It really doesn’t matter- the Communists will turn them into nonfunctional PC zombies before they know what hit ‘em;)
Good reading instruction includes teaching phonics and sight-reading.
You don’t want kids to be sounding out words like can, man, hat, etc. They should easily have those words memorized.
In addition to that, they should be able to sound out more difficult words.
I have a daughter with a brain injury that caused speech problems and auditory problems. She could easily memorize words; however, she had problems with phonemic awareness due to the speech/hearing problems.
The problems with phonemic awareness really started catching up with her in third grade as she progressed to harder reading. Even the regular phonics programs didn’t help her. She was taught with Zoo Phonics in kindergarten and 1st grade. It’s a good program, and my other kids picked up reading easily with that program.
However, some kids need specialized instruction.
In 4th grade, we moved my daughter in a private school that used Barton Reading which is a multi-sensory Orton-Gillingham reading program. After going through the program for 2 years, she could read at grade level. Her phonemic awareness was way above grade level after the program.
thta made my day. glad to hear she is doing better. i’m sure she wanted to read better and therefor applied herself to learning.
i can not comprehend not being able to read or not even wanting to read. i read all the time. sometimes i feel like the lawyer defending scotty in star trek; with all the technology he had a room full of books. and picard read shakespeare in the 24th century
She had one huge, major set back in 5th grade. She had just really started reading for enjoyment, and she was reading a lot.
Then, she had a grand mal seizure and was diagnosed with a seizure disorder. The first anti-seizure medication she was on caused her to stutter when she was reading. It took a while to figure out what was going on, and then it took a while to change medication. She started using audio books, and that helped with some school and I read text books to her. I think it took about a year to get her back to where she was before the seizure.
She’s okay with reading now in 7th grade. She still uses audio books for book reports. I think they are more relaxing for her, and she gets done with them faster.
That's the "Your baby can read" method, isn't it?
I started public school in the mid-seventies.
I was taught using the “sight-reading” method. No phonics.
I seem to remember many kids from that generation having some trouble learning to read well.
My son (home-schooled) learned to read phonetically.
I couldn’t say what was better. My guess is it depends on the kid.
Some would be able to learn both ways.
This is what is wrong with our overall education system. Too big to be individualized to each student.
This is where the parents should be filling in.
I know if I didn’t have my father sitting with me at the dinning room table at night teaching me algebra and geometry, I would have never learned it.
March 19, “Can Bad Education Inflict Brain Damage” linked to “Education as Neurotoxin,” which is on AmericanChronicles. Google it.
Oh yes, that’s one of my big themes. That’s what Flesch wrote about in 1955, “Why Johnny Can’t Read.”
Follow link to blog, where there’s link to good article.
Or maybe this is better: “42: Reading Resources” on http://www.Improve-Education.org
You have a very informative website!
I know adults who were taught to read using sight words, and it’s absolutely crippling. I assumed that it had been abandoned years ago, but I from your website I see I was wrong.
Scary.
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