cause it's the right thing to do??? i learned that way and so did all our kids...I believe that for people in the USA, observing the UK situation can be instructive. It's a smaller country with a more centralized government authority. Sadly, we may become more like the UK, because Common Core Curriculum will permit greater federal control.
First, this background: All the bad ideas found here during the last 75 years also appeared in the UK but in more virulent doses. Labour (i.e., Socialist) Governments did brazenly what American schemers had to do on the sly. But why, in the first place, did the UK embrace such an array of bogus theories?
Here's my take on the years after the Russian Revolution. The USSR wanted to destroy the USA most of all, but England was second on the hit list. It was closer and easier to sabotage. Simply fill the government with Fabian Socialists and "useful idiots" ready to advance their careers at the expense of kids and country. There is no satisfying explanation for idiotic reading policy unless you factor in that the people at the top wanted to sabotage the country. Education statistics tell us that Whole Word never worked. Everybody at the top had to know this.
As the great Samuel Blumenfeld noted in a recent article about the US experience: "We have known for quite some time that there is a socialist political agenda behind the movement to do away with systematic phonics and replace it with Whole Language and other similar sight-reading programs."
The thing that has saved American public schools from the worst ravages of our own far-left Education Establishment is our history of local control. As noted, I'm afraid that Common Core Curriculum will move our schools closer to the UK situation. In practice, what this means is that one bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. can persuade an obscure committee that Plan X should be adopted. Suddenly this clunker appears in every local school, for years and years, and you can't do anything about it. An incurable disease. (Reform Math, introduced around 1980, is still with us, a perennial example of incurable disease.)
What we saw in the recent Race to the Top campaign is the Obama administration using taxpayer money to bribe taxpayers, pretending all the while it was a friendly takeover. Not so, I predict. Hostile is as hostile does.
The astonishing thing about this story, in my part of Virginia, is how many newspapers, leading citizens, foundations, and retired military officers were willing to jump on the bandwagon. All of them should have enough sense to recognize a Ponzi scheme when they see one.
At this time, Americans can still communicate with their school officials in their city or state capitol. If you want to see what the future might look like, consider the world described in Mona McNee's booklet. The real power is further away and less accessible. Aloof politicians maneuver and dissemble. The basic gimmick is to continually diminish content, make tests easier, inflate grades, and proudly announce: look, achievement is rising!!! Of course, it's not. Achievement is less each year.
Meanwhile, your job is to stay home, watch TV, and don't get in the way. Experts are at work destroying another generation of readers.
-------------------------------------------------------
Phonics4free.org is a site created by Alan O. for Mona McNee. You can find a pdf (and other formats) of the new booklet “Why Billy can’t read.” (Site also includes Mona’s entire phonics program.)
“Step by Step” program can be found on Mona McNee’s own site: http://www.catphonics.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/contents.htm
“The Great Reading Disaster” is available on Amazon. Here’s a link to the five-star review by me: http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Reading-Disaster-Educational/product-reviews/1845400976/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
For my own short analysis of the reading wars, see “42: Reading Resources” on Improve-Education.org.
.
cause it's the right thing to do??? i learned that way and so did all our kids...The school system in which I teach uses a word memorization program. There is also very little grammar instruction. The results: Classrooms full of functioning illiterates. We will never deviate from the reading program because it is entirely scripted. The teacher does nothing except make photo copies. There is very little grading because the focus is on group dynamics and students helping each other (i.e. the smart kid does all the work).
Liberals oppose phonics because they work. Illiterate, ignorant people are much easier to control. For liberals, that is the ONLY thing that matters.
I’m dyslexic. The “Whole Word” scam would have doomed me to illiteracy. Damn those liberals who keep pushing it!
I disagree with nearly everything the good conservative freepers have posted in this thread. Whole word memorization is the best way to teach kids to read. They learn phonics on their own once they memorize enough words.
The problem with whole word memorization is that it needs to be initiated prior to the age of 3 (earlier the better). Whole word method probably sucks for school age kids. The fact is the method advocated by the NEA is the best except - they start it at an age when it may not be useful.
Don’t let the liberals see my post or they will use it as justification to put kids in public school at the age of 2.
See Sammy the Snake Slither....
Because otherwise she would be "Nona NcNee"?
Thank you for the links!