Posted on 08/15/2011 3:49:34 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
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My first obligation is to protect the tutor; so I was vague on location and gender. But it was a Missouri anecdote.
My hope is that the media there will notice somebody picking on Missouri, and we’ll see some of the response you envision. Not just toward one school but throughout the state.
Bruce, here’s why exposure works.
Years ago, we were living in the Bay Area (California, San Francisco suburbs) and had preschool children at the time. I was just waking up to the realities of public school education and noticed an expose that happened almost by accident.
It seems that a 5th grader — nay, more than one — received an “A” on an book report that was replete with errors in grammar, spelling, sentence construction, word usage, etc. Sentences from the essay were printed in the newspaper. The community — San Francisco at that — was outraged. The writing was truly wretched, even for a 5th grader.
The school was embarrassed in a major way. The teacher was identified — an idiot liberal, no doubt — and was driven to tears by the humiliation; she had an explanation, of course, something to do with self-esteem and expression and that some essays were only graded for creativity and expression, not for writing. Nevetheless, the principal backtracked for days and agreed that a teaching philosophy that forgave flawed English, no matter what the circumstance, was wrong. I don’t expect, and I wouldn’t wish, that the teacher be fired. But I would hope that she keeps her sweet little lefty, feel-good teaching practices inside her head and just teach the three Rs.
That’s why you should expose what happened in Missouri. Take no prisoners. Let the details see the light of day. Okay, don’t mention the boy’s name or the tutor’s. But don’t let the teacher, principal, the school, or the district administration escape without a wrist slap or more.
I was going to say that. It is so much easier to just teach what the vowels combinations say. That rule doesn’t work in work in MOST cases.
That “rule” is actually the exception. It only works about 27% of the time. It is a bogus rule. Why teach that when you can teach what the vowels combinations actually say?
My four year old is learning these sounds.
‘ea’ can say /E/ as in beat, /e/ as in bread or /A/ as in break.
‘ou’ has four sounds as in the words ‘our’, ‘fourth’, ‘tour’, ‘famous’
‘ai’,’oi’, ‘au’, and ‘oa’ only have one sound each and may not be used at the end of English words
‘oe’ says /O/ and may be used at the end
‘oo’ has three sounds as in ‘food’, ‘took’, ‘floor’
‘ie’ say /E/ as in ‘thief’ and this is it’s most common sound
it also say /I/ as in ‘tie’
The English language makes more sense than the cutesy bogus rules would have you believe. No wonder children have such a hard time learning to read if they are being remediated with rules that only work 27% of the time.
If you know this tutor please send him this link. It may help the children he is tutoring. http://www.bhibooks.net/f/Senate_Speech.pdf
What process of deliberate non-education allows this?
School districts have elaborate mission statements stating something like “all students will learn at their maximum potential in a changing global society...blah, blah, blah”
But the reality is that they work really hard to ensure that they are in compliance with state and federal regulations. Lots of paperwork and so on to document that they are following the law. When it comes to children like the one described (and yes there are many), many districts put more emphasis in documenting, so they can protect themselves, rather than teaching.
That boy might not be able to read, but his teachers probably have pretty good documentation that the mandated material has been covered in the prescribed manner. Sad but true.
Thanks for posting this. These people are communists, that IS what they are.
And they’ve had great success so far.
They need to be stopped.
The teachers’ unions MUST be broken.
said. paid.
road. broad.
laugh. haul.
poem.
Exceptions. Always exceptions. ;)
When I was little my grandma would watch me when my parents were at work and she taught me how to read, I have no memory of it.
If she hadn’t I may have been illiterate to this day cause they sure as hell weren’t doing a very good job teaching it in kindergarten and 1st grade.
I don’t recall anything more than the most basic stuff being taught till 3rd or 4th grade.
I remember all through 2nd grade they made us do color by numbers. And the math problems were 2+5 and stuff like like, ridiculous. The tedious coloring was harder. I’m sure it’s gotta even worse since then. Today’s 8th graders are probably learning what my mom’s generation learned in the earliest grades.
And then in HS they bury you in homework.
The poor kids in year-round school (called Track E here in Chicago) went back last week. Lucky for them the heatwave ended before they got back.
The whole system needs to be reexamined.
Why I thought the last president had that old now dead lion of the Senate Teddy fix the education problem. Let US NOT forget that the majority of 40 and younger college educated voters, voted for our present ruler.
I can identify with your post!....I served on a local small town school board for many years...(Still hold the record for being out voted, but that’s another story) it used to infuriate me when we would receive the reams of paper hand-outs filled with spelling and grammatical errors.......I was lucky enough to attend a 4 room grammar school with 4 older and dedicated teachers serving 8 grades (that was before multi-classrooms had been invented)...our town would send 10-15 kids a year to a regional HS of 200-300 and invariably produce the valedictorian each year...(it eventually became an embarrassment to the larger town where the HS was located)
Ahhh yes!...lol...if schools spent 1/2 the time and money they spend on flowery phrased “mission statements” teaching kids....little Johnny could read!!
Whoa!!!!!...better change that to Track “A” or you'll ruin their self esteem..../s
Re 27% success of the two-vowel pronunciation rule:
Rules ought to work with very few exceptions, or they aren’t rules. I didn’t work out all of the combinations like you did, just enough to see it’s not a rule for teaching.
Thanks for carrying it all the way through. See, “ou” prounouces as “oo”, not as a “OH”, but you got that!
...‘oa’ only have one sound each and may not be used at the end of English words.
Except for boa, where the ‘oa’ produces two sounds and is used at the end of an English word. : )
That would be chife and brife.
or even "Shiite." Ah yes, islamic spelling...reject it.
See the Redneck Guide to islamic Spelling:
Shiite becomes either she-ite (or the obvious sh!+)....Either of which might be found in a mosk located in Guitar.
He's nine years old and in third grade, illiterate in reading and probably math as well. Why should we describe him as 'a smart kid'? Smart how?
Isn’t “shiite” pronounced by saying the name of the first vowel? ;-P
Yes there are exceptions but the are rare. The two vowels go walking ‘rule’ rarely works.
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