[martin_fierro]

tl;dr

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[GeronL]

bump

[an amused spectator]

I don’t believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there.

Phonics guy & SRA Reader student from many decades ago. I can blow the Reading Doors off pretty much anyone I know.

[Mr. K]

We need to look for a CONSPIRACY

I am deadly serious.

How is it that MOST EDUCATORS ARE MARXIST/SOCIALISTS???

Do they require a litmus test when they hire you?

And do they discuss/plan purposely failing to educate? and/or indoctrination of marxism?

This can not all be coincidence.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

The state run education is all about taxing, spending money and providing jobs. Teaching and learning anything of value is secondary. I am starting to think that there is a new and somewhat malignant idea growing. There is not the same need for literacy that there was fifty years ago. Think of the computer touch screen where one presses little symbols. Most people in the future will be pressing little symbols thus do not need to be able to read, write and cipher.

In addition, if people are educated they think too much and that can be unsettling to some. Combine mass illiteracy with the encouragement of the philosophy of extreme hedonism to keep the troops happy and one has nearly endless control. Huxley may have been right.

[Noumenon]

Saxon Math series. Get it...

[Vinnie]

I agree. It’s been going on for years.

One problem is professional ‘educators’ justifying their jobs by dreaming up new ways to teach.

Another is school systems making useless administrative jobs in order to promote teachers. Often friends.

[Little Pig]

So if I were to look, this guy would probably have a vested interest in one or more of the “phonics” gimmicks.

“...I don’t believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there.”

Although anecdotal, I am proof this guy is wrong. I read “whole word”, and that’s how I learned too, at the age of 18 months. Suck it, Bruce.

It’s always the same; whenever you get someone making absolute statements like that, it becomes all too easy to refute them, because all you need is one example. Does “whole word” work for everyone? Of course not, and neither does “phonics”. To claim one special method is the silver bullet for education is nonsense. Eventually you get lumped in with the mythical guy who invented the 100mpg carburetor.

[Canedawg]

I’m all in for the pathetic regression we are reaping as a result of dumbing down the last two or three generations, and I’m down for a vast left wing conspiracy, but I just can’t wrap my brain around the reasoning for this:

“In the two most fundamental situations —learning to read and do arithmetic—the educators invented sophistries to justify jumping way ahead...These approaches demand that children learn set theory, algebra, statistics, geometry and boolean logic. But arithmetic? Who needs that?”

?

[Peanut Gallery]

ping

[Peanut Gallery]

ping

[Bigg Red]

mark

[Tainan]

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.

[precisionshootist]

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 can’t see truth when it’s right in front of their face.

[AZLiberty]

They should have called the national education program the War on Ignorance. Then we would have known exactly what to expect: more ignorance.

[eclecticEel]

They fabricated a sophistry which claimed that experienced readers recognize whole words ... I don’t believe experienced readers do what is claimed

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?

[goldi]

The trivium - grammar, logic, rhetoric.

[aruanan]

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.

How about this one: a Chicago elementary school was putting on a program called A Tribute to Cultures. Different kids from different countries did dances of their countries. The Iraqi boys were going to do a common traditional dance of Iraq. At one point the kid in the middle picks up a sword from the ground and waves it above his head while the others circle him dancing. The kids got a little foot long soft plastic pirate sword but they weren't allowed to use it because of a zero tolerance policy about "weapons." Instead, they were given a plastic replica of a soprano saxophone to wave around. As though a soprano sax couldn't be used as a weapon and inflict serious damage! At least it wasn't a bundle of plastic flowers.

[aruanan]

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 don’t believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there.

Who even knows what this last sentence means, but experienced readers do recognize entire words, but mostly from the length, the first and last letters, and the context. Children do this also and it doesn't take "many years." In fact, some children by the end of their first year or so of reading can read aloud better than most adults. The benefit of alphabetic writing for learning to read is that it can enable one to figure out the identity of a word he has already heard but has not encountered in print before. Fluent reading is not accomplished by blending together in the mind sounds associated with a string of letters. There is not enough time, neurologically speaking, between sight and understanding for this to occur. This doesn't mean that teaching reading by phonics is not a particularly effective method. It just means that that is not the method by which one actually reads.

[Lady Jag]

Outlaw the NEA.