Posted on 05/03/2010 2:26:57 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Our Education Establishment is dumbing us down. How sad, sick, and pathetic. People calling themselves educators devote their careers to making sure no one is educated.
Everyone has heard the complaints. But the fascinating question still remains: HOW DO THEY DO IT? Is it all just bumbling incompetence or do these people have secret techniques?
One familiar technique is to remove content whenever possible from the schools. All right, that technique we can see. But for many years Ive had the sense that deeper and weirder shenanigans were going on, but I couldnt pinpoint them.
Now I think I can. The Education Establishment chooses whatever approach will get the worst result! I know it sounds bizarre but l believe thats a factual description. Heres how it works:
In all of human experience there is only one way to learn or teach anything. You start at the very beginning and then you work your way through steps A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., no matter whether its chess, Latin accounting, biology, or surfing. We crawl, walk, run, and finally dance. The evil genius of our Education Establishment is to pervert this natural sequence, either by jumping way ahead or by remaining forever at the start.
In the two most fundamental situations --learning to read and do arithmetic--the educators invented sophistries to justify jumping way ahead. The excuse goes like this. Far in the future, these kids will be doing X. So lets start them off doing X today. This was basically the trick used in New Math and Reform Math. These approaches demand that children learn set theory, algebra, statistics, geometry and boolean logic. But arithmetic? Who needs that?
The Education Establishment used the identical gimmick in reading. They fabricated a sophistry which claimed that experienced readers recognize whole words THEREFORE children should skip the alphabet and start off recognizing whole words on day one. I dont believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there. So the sophistry--kids must ignore the baby steps and pretend to be experts on the first day--keeps readers perpetually babyish.
In two other major situations that permeate every aspect of k-12 education--acquiring knowledge and mastering subjects---the Education Establishment went to the opposite extreme. They invented lies and alibis for keeping children at steps A and B. This is so counterintuitive that you dont realize its happening in front of you.
The first tactic here is to demonize memorization and acquisition of knowledge. Children never learn anything in any permanent sense. So even though they might spend a year studying history, science and geography, at the end they dont know much history, science and geography. (What separates experts from the beginner is the beginner knows nothing but the expert knows lots of things. Our schools ensure that children always remain beginners in every subject.)
Another variation is seen in the very popular method called Constructivism. Children are supposed to create their own knowledge or, to put that cynically, to reinvent the wheel over and over again. This process takes so long that kids dont finish many wheels. Theyre always trying to construct simple pieces of knowledge: for example, 3 + 3 = 6 or Paris is the capital of France. There are thousands of things that should be studied. The gimmick is to make the whole process so prohibitive in terms of time that very little is accomplished.
There you have it: in all situations the universal device is to pervert the natural sequence of learning. They jump the kids way ahead so that the kids get bewildered and revert back to their first days. Or they keep them perpetually in the first days, spinning their wheels. Either way children remain as ignorant as when they showed up.
Note that the children themselves are not dumbed down. They are never allowed to learn. What happens is that when they reach the 10th grade, for example, they are not as well-educated as 10th graders from years before. And so we say that society is being dumbed down.
Heres the good news. Our Education Establishment, by always pushing the worst methods, emerges as an infallible guide to educational excellence! Avoid the nonsense they are so fond of. Embrace the sensible practices they condemn.
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[This is a short version of 49: How Do We Learn? How Should We Teach? Why Do The Experts Get Everything Wrong?--the newest article on Improve-Education.org.]
http://www.improve-education.org/id74.html
I’m afraid you’d lose your bet on my memory. I retain huge amounts of information, but it’s not at will, certainly not photographic (if only), and not in big chunks. Most of my peers turned out ok, but most are not as successful as I am. I had the additional obstacle of being diagnosed late with ADD. I graduated in 1989 from HS, and was diagnosed in 1988, back before it became fashionable, so I know the diagnosis was reasonably accurate. Further, as a result of the diagnosis, I was put on Ritalin, which helped tremendously with concentration issues I had been having up to that point (got mostly Cs and Ds in school despite my powerful vocabulary and reading skills). I graduated from a public high school, but my classmates were largely very intelligent, and went on to highly-rated schools.
mark
Do you really think his point was that it is impossible to learn to read by memorizing whole words? I don’t think that a careful reader would reach that conclusion.
Leaving aside your personal claims, which are unverifiable in a forum like this, Chinese characters are an example of a language system that requires memorizing whole words. Every Asian country that uses those characters must approach teaching reading in the same way.
Unfortunately, a whole language system like Chinese produces mass semiliteracy and illiteracy. Only those with photographic memories or prodigiously powerful natural memories are able to achieve a high level of literacy. This is why both mainland China and Taiwan have developed and use phonetic systems for teaching reading in the early grades. In time, it is very possible that a phonetic system will push aside characters in China just as a phonetic system eliminated the use of Chinese characters in Vietnam.
Memorizing entire words has been demonstrated to be an exceptionally poor way to teach reading, and it places far too high a value on memory. Contrary to what you wrote, phonics works for everyone, except those with unusual learning disabilities - in which case, the issue isn’t phonics versus whole language.
If someone has a photographic memory, he may learn a great deal simply by memorizing whole words, but without a grounding in phonics even a person with such a memory would be at a loss regarding how to pronounce an unknown written word. This is precisely the problem a Chinese faces when he sees an unknown character. With a phonetic system, a reader can usually figure out how an unfamiliar written word is pronounced. In many cases, once that is done the reader will know the meaning because the word is familiar from conversation.
Actually, I do point out that neither solution works 100% of the time. My issue is with the statement in the original article that claims that whole word does not work period end of line. When the author takes such an absolute stance I have to object, as it does nothing for the dialog.
“The Education Establishment used the identical gimmick in reading. They fabricated a sophistry which claimed that experienced readers recognize whole words THEREFORE children should skip the alphabet and start off recognizing whole words on day one. I dont believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there. So the sophistry—kids must ignore the baby steps and pretend to be experts on the first day”
First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a school that didn’t teach the alphabet to any child that didn’t already know it. Second, he claims whole-word readers don’t do what they do, and that it would take years to get there. Each of these claims is demonstrably false, and weakens his argument. Later in the same article, he contradicts himself by claiming that schools demonize memorization, and yet that is what he claims whole-word is.
Additionally, I also point to the ideogram-based languages like chinese and Japanese as evidence that whole-word is a viable method of learning, as millions of children learn just that way every year. Although pinyin is used in China, for example, it has little to no foothold as a tool for teaching. China and Japan have hardly collapsed, despite having used this type of language for thousands of years.
Interesting article. I basically agree with its premise;but I thinks its long on assertion and rather thin on specifics i.e., examples and actual items of the “dumbing down” process.
What they do is slowly change and blur the meaning of words which eventually prevents the mind from thinking logically.
For example:
Take something simple like a geometric shape. A square for instance.
We all know a square has four equal sides. The left would teach and promote the idea that while a square has four equal sides it’s not right to discriminate against a triangle for having only three sides. Just because one has three sides and another has four does not diminish the fact that they are both shapes and should be treated the same. Repeat this long enough and eventually some people are simply unable to distinguish the difference between a square and a triangle.
This is a very simplified example but this is what I believe is actually going on. I also think this distortion of words and their true associated meanings actually damages the brains ability to think logically. This explains the fact that those on the left often cant see truth when its right in front of their face.
My point in mentioning the character languages is that they have to be read using whole-word. It’s not possible to read them any other way, and therefore whole-word should not be discarded so readily.
They should have called the national education program the War on Ignorance. Then we would have known exactly what to expect: more ignorance.
So he thinks most people are really sounding out words when they read?
The paomnnehil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
The trivium - grammar, logic, rhetoric.
Of course there is a conspiracy....But I get tired of being flamed here when I speak of it.
“My issue is with the statement in the original article that claims that whole word does not work period end of line. When the author takes such an absolute stance I have to object”
At the risk of continuing an unprofitable exchange, the author actually wrote: “ I dont believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there.”
His point is quite plainly that although he doubts that experienced readers of english read words (at least entirely) as units, even if it were the case, IF you were to try to teach children to read by teaching them whole words rather than phonics, it would take years.
He obviously is not saying that it is impossible to teach children this way or that they would never learn to read if this method is used.
Until recently, phonetic languages such as english, not surprisingly, have always been taught phonetically. The “whole language” approach is a creature that has relatively recently (in historical time) slithered out of the precincts of the intellectual slums of academia - the schools of education. In America, phonics was the basis of reading instruction from the earliest settlements (you can see this in, for example, the New England Primer)into the 1930s.
I don’t know where your learning regarding Chinese and other ideographic languages comes from, but I would like to suggest that you are mistaken. As I pointed out before, although children in China, for example, have to learn whole characters, it is well known that this does not produce high levels of literacy because most people simply don’t have the memory or the time to learn what comes relatively easily in a phonetic language.
This problem was recognized years ago by the Chinese government, and it is why the PRC adopted “simplified Chinese” (i.e. reducing the complexity of characters) and pinyin. In Taiwan they use a different phonetic system (pronounced “ee foo how”).
As for the claim pinyin has “little to no foothold as a tool for teaching”, are you relying on Wikipedia or some other internet source? This claim is not only false, it is preposterously false. Children learning Chinese today are started on pinyin (or “ee foo how”, in the case of Taiwan) and then transition after a while to characters (simplified in the PRC; (mainly)classical in Taiwan). Even a rudimentary acquaintance with elementary level Chinese textbooks reveals that.
The fact that China has not “collapsed” because of its reliance on ideographic systems of written language is hardly the point.
The PRC would not have moved to simplified characters and pinyin if it hadn’t recognized that the system itself is a major barrier to widespread literacy and was an impediment to economic development. Whether characters are ultimately replaced by a phonetic system like pinyin will depend on many factors, not least of which is Chinese chauvinism.
In contrast to China, Japan has multiple systems of writing - Katakana, Kanji, Hiragana, Romanji - that are often used in combination and that, with the exception of Romanje, have been around for over a millenium.
I have to go to Beijing a couple of times this summer. I’ll let you know if anything has changed.
bump
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on the underlying hypothesis of the article author. As to my knowledge on Chinese, it comes from being married to a Chinese (from Shanghai) woman for ten years, and studying Chinese in college for two years.
Congratualtions on your marriage! Best of luck..
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