Education: If You CAN'T Read This, Thank A Public School

Private school kids can read. Classical academy kids can read. Montessori school kids can read. Homeschooled kids can read. Spot the pattern?

It’s only kids in public schools who can’t read. Why is that? You would think our education professors would figure out what the schools are doing wrong. In fact, they have not figured out very much in the last 80 years. Our professors seem mainly concerned with perpetuating the wrong ways to teach reading. And so the crisis continues.

Truth is, reading is easy to teach and easy to learn. All the phonics experts agree: reading is no big deal It should happen routinely in the first grade. Our brains are wired to learn to read. Many children learn to read with virtually no instruction. Reading is a problem only if the people in charge refuse to teach it correctly.

Here's the bad news. Our Education Establishment, starting around 1930, insisted on teaching reading the wrong way. Their favorite bogus method is called sight-words, Whole Word, Whole Language, and many other aliases. It doesn't work. (Phonics, on the other hand, does work. All the research confirms this.)

Here is additional bad news. Many school districts, after having shifted toward phonics for many years, are now recidivists. They have again embraced Dolch Words, Fry Words, high-frequency words, i.e., all the paraphernalia of bad teaching that virtually guarantee sub-literacy. Many schools and school districts now have websites which clearly tell children they must learn their sight-words, for example:

“Over half of every newspaper article, textbook, children's story, and novel is composed of these 300 words. It is difficult to write a sentence without using several of the first 300 words in the Fry 1000 Instant Words List. Consequently, students need to be able to read the first 300 Instant Words without a moment's hesitation.”

Savor the phrase “without a moment’s hesitation.” In education circles, such instant recall is referred to as “automaticity.” These websites make it sound so easy. In fact it's nearly impossible. Place on a table 25 objects— flags of Europe, brands of cars, famous people. Try to name all of them quickly with no hesitation. You’ll find it very difficult even with a small set of familiar objects. Imagine you need to know hundreds. Many children never gain automaticity with more than a few hundred words. All the other words they read in a fumbling way or not at all. And remember that these Dolch lists do not include proper names such as Benjamin Franklin and Germany. You see here the method by which our public schools create children who can’t read and don’t know very much.

Next consider a quote from a school site in Kentucky. The school dictates exactly what is supposed to happen but rarely does:

“SIGHT WORD POLICY—A high percentage of all reading material is composed of relatively few words. These high frequency words are called "sight words" because they must be recognized instantly, on sight, for reading fluency. Students in grades K-5 will be assessed on their grade level sight word list. All of the sight words are taken from the Fry Sight Word List. A report of this assessment will be included in the second grading report card. By the end of Kindergarten, students should be able to read 50 sight words. By the end of First Grade, students should be able to read 200 sight words. By the end of Second Grade, students should be able to read 400 sight words, and by the end of Third Grade, students should be able to read 600 words. By the end of Fourth Grade, students should be able to know 800 words. By the end of Fifth Grade, students should be able to know 1,000 words. In order to meet grade level goals, we are asking parents to work with their children on recognition of these sight words each day.”

So now you know why so many children reach middle school hardly able to read, and thinking about giving up. As fast as they learn new sight-words, they forget the earlier ones. These kids are just a mess. Even if they do retain hundreds of sight-words, that’s not a lot in the vast English language. These kids cannot read an ordinary book, newspaper, or brochure, for the simple practical reason that most words they run into are unknown to them.

In sum, the public schools teaching sight-words are engaged in deceit. They pretend they don’t know the best way to teach reading. (Hint: it’s called phonics.) They pretend to be nutty professors stumbling around in the dark, always coming up with odd new approaches and strange new jargon.

At this point in our history, it’s critically important that every American reject these methods and the jargon. Just say no to Whole Word, sight-words, Fry Words, high-frequency words, and the rest.

It’s also critically important that every adult knows what phonics is: children learn the alphabet, then the sounds of the letters, and then the blends. At that point the student is reading. Real readers do not guess. They do not hesitate. They do not leave out words. They do not substitute words. They read from left to right, syllable by syllable and word by word. Even with this minimal understanding of the process, adults can protect the next generation.

Our tragedy is that we have public schools that shamelessly use bad methods and get bad results. Then they stand around acting surprised that they’ve gotten bad results. The Education Establishment cannot admit they know what they are doing wrong. And they cannot blame themselves. Instead, they blame the weakest, most defenseless person in sight. That’s the kid who can’t read. Every one of these non-readers is said to have some sort of mental or emotional problem. They are ADHD. They have dyslexia. The family is alcoholic and dysfunctional. Etc.

Meanwhile, if we could check, we would probably find the kids in the public schools are, at the start of first grade, genetically and cognitively identical to all the other kids in the area. The differences, if any, emerge after the kids are in public schools for a few years. By that time they have raging cases of what might best be called “dysteachia" and “schoolitis"— that is, wholly artificial disabilities created in our classrooms.

CODA: “Why Johnny Can’t Read" by Rudolf Flesch was published 60 years ago in 1955. This is one of the most important books in America’s intellectual history. It explains in simple terms why there was an epidemic of bad readers. At that point the story got very strange. Our Education Establishment sneered at Flesch and went right on promoting their dysfunctional ideas. They do so until this day. The pattern is quite obvious: the Education Establishment will do to each community what the community will put up with. So if you have any hope of your children learning to read, you have to push back. Insist on phonics starting in K. Second-grade children should be able to select their own little books and read them. And thus the illiteracy crisis ends.

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>> “ If I’m not misreading it, your belief is that the most important element of schooling is the religious portion and if a school does not include a large dose of religion it is a failure and leads to godlessness. I will point out that we have had public schools in this country since before we were a country, and the 1800s and early 1900s did not appear to be a particularly godless time.” <<

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And now I will point out what you appear to have deliberately left out:

Until the mid 1800s the US government printed Bibles for the schools, and that Bible was more than half of the curriculum, when our schools were turning out great men.
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Your post is so filled with straw men that it is difficult to respond. I will point out one strawman.

Re: ...”yours ( meaning me) is a position that is fully supported by Grand Ayatollah Sistani.”

If anything it is the government school defenders who **are** the Ayatollahs!

Government school defenders are the people who defend a system of schooling that **FORCES** their religious worldview ( godless) on CAPTIVE kids! And...It is the government school defenders who defend FORCING their neighbors to fund their anointed religious and NON-neutral godless worldview.

Shame on these government school defending **BULLIES**!

It is those who are calling for complete privatization of all schooling who are defending CHOICE , and freedom. Let parents decide what religious worldview is best suited to their family's values and beliefs whether those beliefs are godless or God-centered.

Yeah! I am shouting. I am sorry but is it possible that you are deaf? I believed that I was very plain in my arguments in my previous posts and I know that a government school defender would never ( oh! never! ) deliberately misunderstand then totally distort an opponent's plainly stated arguments. I hope this clears things up for you.

I would agree with your post...but....by my grandmother's day ( born 1894) government schooling was essentially secular and generically lukewarm at those times it did nod in God's direction.

What does Christ do with the lukewarm? Answer: He spits them out of His mouth!

Only in a private setting can children receive the non-generic and fully warmed up religious worldview ( godless or God-centered) that most closely supports the values taught in the home.

Government should have never flopped its big hairy toe over the line into the business of schooling. Why? Answer: Because education can never be religiously, culturally, and politically neutral. Such a philosophic state of neutrality is impossible in the mind of any sentient human. Those political factions with the greatest clout will get to control the non-neutral worldview of the next generation of voters.

In the 19th century Protestant Christians had the most political clout. Today, it is the secular atheists.

So, let me understand this. I have NO problem with the current system of allowing parents the choice of sending their children to public schools, religious school, private schools, charter schools, or home schooling. Your position is the “complete privatization of all schooling”. You claim that this is the position of CHOICE (your caps), and freedom. How is your position taking away my ability to choose the method of schooling for my children the position of CHOICE, and freedom? If you don’t like the public school system, you currently have the freedom not to use it. However, don’t take a position that curtails my right to use the method I think best and call if CHOICE, and freedom.

Your characterization of the public schools position of leaving religion out of the schools as being an “anointed religious” position is very interesting. To quote Inigo Montoya from “Princess Bride” – I do not think it means what you think it means” Seriously, to take a non-religious position and call it an anointed religious position?

By the way – not deaf. There’s a little tinnitus in the left ear that I blame on not using ear protection at the range when I was younger, but my hearing is adequate.

Those promoting privatization are winning. Why? Because it is a good idea!

Privatization is a good idea for all the reasons I have outlined many, many, many times here on Free Republic and elsewhere. In the free market of ideas, good ideas win.

Vouchers, tax credits, charters, on-line schooling, co-ops, and homeschooling are growing every year. I fully expect to live to see the day when government owned and run schools are non-existent or very rare. It is possible that I might even live to see the day that there is complete separation of school and state.

Large and intractable institutions can lose their legitimacy seemingly overnight. Some examples are the Protestant Reformation, the American Revolution, slavery, Jim Crow, same-sex marriage. Government institutional schooling is not special. It can completely unravel....quickly!

Quite honestly, I am bored with this debate, especially since my position is winning politically, with parents, and with the voting public.

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