Many of the idiots went to work for the government; many went into politics where they found a home. Many of the latter forget where home is and stay in DC.
** people who can’t read a cereal box... **
Ah, but more importantly, can they read a tweet or a text? (omg!)
My mother, whose education ended at the 8th grade, taught me to read, write, and do basic arithmatic well before I started school. She did well enough that I was promoted to 3rd grade after one year. She had good materials however, those being a supply of No. 2 lead pencils and a Big Chief tablet. I would love to hear a teacher, any teacher, defend the load of crap that goes on in our public schools.
This sounds like someone’s Ph.D. dissertation trying to improve on an older system that has decades of proven success. The idea that, if it’s new, it has to be better, needs to be placed where the elephants go to die.
The system works as it was planned. A slave/serf society depends on ruined minds and inculcating a dislike of learning amongst the Nouveau slaves.
“Bad Schools” are the feature, not a bug.
Well, they may be illiterate, but at least it costs a fortune to teach them illiteracy.
With the dawn of computer screens with little icons on them literacy is no longer a top priority for American business. The intellectual cream will be taught to read and write; the vast bulk of the population will touch little icons which will order the hamburger and make change at the same time.
Phonics is not the universal panacea. I had a son with a learning disability around reading. I spent hours until we were both in tears trying to coach him using phonics. It just didn’t work. Most people “file” things and concepts by sounds of words in their brain. He files them by pictures. So when he reads “the cow jumped over the fence. He creates a picture of a cow, a cow jumping, a cow jumping and a fence. He has no pictire for “the” and “over” guides the placement of the cow relative to the fence. Every time he comes to an abstract in a sentence, he has to stop, ignore, and go on. Making things very slow. Speed reading eventually helped him skip over words.
As I’ve told y’all before... I work for the EPA. I have a coworker, black, female, 29 years old, currently working on her SECOND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! master’s degree. She had to ask me if there were 50, 51, or 52 states in the Union, and she cannot read the word “gauge”. She looked at it funny and said “godge”, rhyming with “lodge.” Her degrees are from “historically black colleges.”
It's been reported that 30% of 8th graders read at the proficient level.
So?....How many of this 30% were taught IN THE HOME by their parents, relatives, tutors, or friends how to read? Hm?...My guess: **ALL** of them!
So?...How many of this literate 30% were taught by their government teachers?...My guess: NONE!
Where are the studies that show precisely **where** and **how** children are learning? **Who** is doing the teaching? ( The parent, the child himself, or government teacher)? Exactly how much does a child learn from a teacher in a typical government school?
If you know an academically successful child, chances are that the child has been **AFTERSCHOOLED** or **HOMESCHOOLED**. There is likely NO difference in the amount of time, or habits, between the academically successful institutionalized child and the successful homeschooler!
The only thing the government is doing is sending home a tuition-free curriculum!
I would think the answer to these questions above are critical! We are not only spending thousands of dollars a year per child but, worse, we may be WASTING HIS LIFE by forcing him to go to a government school that is teaching him NOTHING ( except how to love communism and think and reason godlessly)!
It’s surprisingly easy to get by without being able to read. I have friend who I didn’t know couldn’t read for 30 years that I knew him. His wife helped with legal papers, and he has been very successful. I’m guessing it’s even easier to get by these days. Heck, it can be very profitable to not speak or read English, or to pretend not to, because government workers are more than happy to help you take our money.
Our son was born in 1983. When he was around 3, I began to read to him from the “recently re-released” McGuffey Reader. HE picked it up and by the time he was 4, he was reading and speaking in complete complex sentences. I rage against the teaching methods for language used today. I’m a retired English teacher by the way. I was stunned by the poetic and lyric qualities of letters written home by Civil War combatants as chronicled by Ken Burns. Why can we not teach the same qualities today? Our schools are well lit and well heated and way too well funded. Mid 19th century pupils froze in their one classroom and learned soaring rhetoric. I guess unionization has supplanted calling. sd
If anyone is interested or needs to pass along this information.
There is a free service on the web located at
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/
A youtube video explains here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=619fGVETdWk
If anyone is interested or needs to pass along this information.
There is a free service on the web located at
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/
A youtube video explains here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=619fGVETdWk
First of all, all of those chinese engineers who are supplanting us never learned to read using phonics. Ideogram-based languages have to be read using the whole-word technique.
Second, even if phonics is used, it is only a stepping stone, until the reader becomes proficient enough to use whole-word. Phonics is horribly inefficient.
Third, anecdotally, I didn’t learn to read using phonics. I was reading before I was two, and by age three could comprehend articles in magazines like Scientific American. As noted elsewhere, it’s not a panacea. There is certainly a place for it, but many children can skip past needing phonics to read. The real tragedy is the apathy of the teaching cadre in not focusing on basics like reading and other fundamentals.