Posted on 01/02/2012 7:18:49 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
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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