Posted on 12/07/2016 1:18:21 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
[A few words about America’s two biggest parasites--]
if you’ve driven on southern interstates, you know kudzu. It’s that leafy vine that can cover the tallest trees. Finally, motorists see nothing but kudzu, which has earned the nickname, “The vine that ate the South.”
Kudzu envelops everything and eventually destroys everything.
In short, kudzu is exactly like Sight-Words.
Kudzu, indigenous to Japan, was touted as an ornamental shade plant at US expositions in 1876 and 1883. During the 20th century, government agencies promoted kudzu as cattle feed.
The Department of Agriculture also recommended “kudzu to help control erosion of slopes which led to the….government-funded plantings of kudzu…By 1946, it was estimated that 3,000,000 acres of kudzu had been planted.”
During this same period our government was also forcing Sight-Words into the public schools, an interesting parallel.
Kudzu was the classic invasive species, initially welcomed as an exotic import, and finally hated as a weed. It’s difficult and expensive to eliminate.
Similarly, Sight-Words were welcomed by the self-appointed experts in our Education Establishment, effectively a branch of our government. So now we have a kudzu epidemic and a Sight-Word epidemic. Which is more destructive? Sight-Words, because millions of children are damaged at the beginning of their lives.
Under the right conditions, kudzu is not a problem. In Japan, for example, winters kill off the above-ground growth so the parasitic aspects remain marginal.
Sight-Words, however, are the parasite that goes on a rampage and hangs around until you surrender.
Sight-Words, like kudzu, could only be promoted by a government bureaucracy with limited vision. However, experts in the Department of Agriculture were presumably sincere in singing the praises of kudzu. On the other hand, experts in the Education Establishment knew from the beginning that Sight-Words would not be an effective way to teach reading. Furthermore, according to famous research by Dr. Samuel Orton circa 1927, Sight-Words would cripple a child cognitively. It’s a shocking perversity that phony experts pushed Sight-Words and still do. Why? Typically, these experts are left-wing ideologues who want leveling in order to bring about socialist goals.
Not familiar with Sight-Words? Let me mention that the phrase refers to any words you memorize as a graphic design. You can’t spell it or sound it out. You learn it as a shape, just as the Chinese memorize their ideograms or you might memorize §. It’s a slow and difficult way to learn English words. Our experts clearly prefer SLOW.
For a background article, please see “Sight-Words—The Big Stupid.”
CODA: Here is a simple way to appreciate the folly of Sight-Words. Consider the tiny goals for a child’s first year. A typical kindergarten list aims for only three words per week. At the end of 16 weeks, children—even if successful— will know only 48 words. They are still illiterate and will be for years to come. Had they learned phonics, they would be able to read age-appropriate books by the end of 16 weeks….Also note that the three words for Week 16 are he, she, we. Note that these words look alike and sound alike. They are perfectly phonetic. But the official excuse for using Sight-Words is that some English words don’t obey any rules! Obviously, our experts think American parents can be lied to with reckless abandon.
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Bruce Deitrick Price explains theories and methods on his education site Improve-Education.org.
I also read of someone who was going to make ethanol out of it. The algae lobby locked him out of that. They didn’t want a two-fer.
Oh believe me, I have a 4 year old and I certainly do!
The stupid Ser and Say approach.
Phonics work just fine when properly taught
Kudzu jelly is quite nice. They also are making a due from it. Looks pretty good
I could already read by the time I entered school. My daughter could as well
As far as I know, schools gave up on whole-word learning 15 years ago when my son was in elementary school. They went back to phonics. I was on the school board at the time it was trashed. (This was a parish parochial school in Laurel, MD.)
When I taught at the elementary level, I taught the struggling readers in my class to sound words out phonetically. As I taught upper el, the damage had pretty much been done, but not entirely. When they would read, they would just stab at words they didn’t know, without sounding out the word. When they realized how easy it was to read by sounding out unrecognizable words, they had more confidence. After awhile, all words become “sight-words” once they’re familiar to them.
The theory behind the rejection of phonics as a legitimate teaching method is that readers will lose the context while wasting time sounding out words. But it was always my belief that in the early grades, 1-3, its more important to learn to read the words off the page fluently. Context isn’t necessarily as important at that level. Nor do readers sound out each and every word phonetically anyway as they become experience readers, just the occasional word. Additionally, if you learn to read phonetically, sounding out unfamiliar words almost becomes a reflex. But the theory that teachers are given is really a ruse. It’s part of the larger goal of dumbing down the population. Sam Blumenfeld always said teaching kids to read English using sight words was like teaching kids to read Chinese characters.
The American Educational establishment (teachers, teachers unions and PTAs) are idiots.
They ruined teaching reading back with Dick & Jane look-say basal readers, back in the 1960s.
I had the last wave of phonics instruction.
My kids in the 1990s has all look-say reading and “creative spelling” instruction known as “Whole Language” education as part of the World Class education initiative, in addition to New Math Mimosa program.
State testing reading scores got so bad that two teachers in the town next to me became famous of promoting their re-branded phonics solution called: Reading Recovery.
American public education is a disgrace.
Teachers and administrators are not held accountable for their malpractice, and our children suffer as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_reader
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
Mimosa math from Australia Destroyed our 1990’s US Intl test scores
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-09-11/features/9409110190_1_love-math-program-teacher
“she said. “We’re trying to get away from paper and pencil and getting into number sense and strategies,” Sladek said. “I love anything new and I’m willing to try anything, and this is nothing to be afraid of.”
To help primary-school-age children better understand math concepts, the program uses terms such as “and, put with, joined and went away” instead of the more traditional “add and subtract.”
Sladek and fellow teacher Jeanne Turnock introduced the Mimosa program last year in their 1st-grade classrooms and recently gave a glowing review of the program to the board of North Palos School District 117. “I have had more children tell me that they love math,” Sladek said.”
American teens’ math scores fall on an international test - LA Times
www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-pisa-2015-story...Proxy
1 day ago ... The U.S. average score was 470, below the overall OECD test average of 490. It was 12 points lower than it was in 2012 and 18 points lower ...
Fast Facts - National Center for Education Statistics - U.S. ...
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1Proxy Highlight
In 2012, average scores in mathematics literacy ranged from 368 in Peru to 613 in Shanghai-CHN. The U.S. average mathematics score (481) was lower than ...
Eff’ing grossly negligent bass turd curiculum director / teachers ought to be sued into dire poverty for the damage they’ve done.
Sight words are the exceptions when it comes to spelling
I know phonics was the primary focus when I learned to read ins school, and I'm 51. I remember the phonics cards posted up high all around the room. (The only one I definitely remember now is a multi-letter sound aw, with a picture of a boy with broken baseball bat.)(tragic, scarred for life by that broken bat) I did some searching - I'm pretty sure it's the Open Court reading program, but the picture I found was not the same one I remember (probably updated the artwork)
My younger siblings learned with The Letter People, which were definitely phonics-based. I didn't remember what they were called, but I remembered "Mr. T has tall teeth" and was able to find them. I remember hearing about the Dick and Jane stories, but I never actually read them.
That is the right way. Phonics first, then sight. Phonics is the fallback when sight fails (as it does frequently in the English language). Phonics is how I learned to read. First cereal boxes, then children's books, then newspapers and magazines and real books.
Mature readers read by sight. In particular, they tend to focus on the first and last letters of each word. Even if the intermediate letters are messed up, they can still puzzle out the text. Example:
Frsorcoue and sveen yeras ago our fatehrs bughrot ftorh, uopn this ceontnint, a new ntaion, cncoieevd in liebrty and daeceitdd to the pirotisoopn taht "all men are ceatred eaqul."Now we are eggnead in a garet cviil war, ttiseng whhteer taht noaitn, or any notain so cieconved and so dceatided, can lnog eundre. We are met on a graet bietaefltld of taht war. We hvae cmoe to deditcae a pitoorn of it, as a fnail rntseig palce for tsohe who deid hree, taht the niaotn mihgt lvie. Tihs we may, in all peptroiry do. But in a legarr ssnee, we cnoant deidatce, we cnonat cascrontee, we cnnaot hllaow, tihs gnruod. The bvare men, lvniig and daed, who srgugeltd hree, have hoalweld it, far avobe our poor peowr to add or dcatert. The wrlod will lttile note, nor long remeembr waht we say hree; wilhe it can neevr fgoert waht tehy did hree.
It is rhater for us the lnviig, we hree be dctiedead to the gerat tsak rnaienmig bfreoe us—taht form tshee horoend daed we tkae incersead deotoivn to taht casue for whcih tehy here gvae the lsat flul mausree of doeoitvn—taht we hree higlhy rlesvoe that tsehe daed shlal not hvae deid in vian, taht tihs naoitn slahl have a new brith of feeodrm, and taht gmrneneovt of the poeple, by the ppolee, for the plpeoe slahl not psreih form the etarh.
Link: https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/. Abstract:
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 toatl 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.
My oldest son went to a so called top notch private school. At the end of first grade not a single child in the class could read. As parents we were given the glorious story of whole language. Immediately called a Tudor to teach my son phonics.
So much for the brilliance of the educrats. They’re still at it.
I teach high school now, and it makes me sad to see how poorly many of my students read. They struggle to grasp the content in their science books, and they make mistakes on tests because they mis-read questions. From their questions and their mistakes, I can tell that they are trying to match memorized information with key words in the questions without really understanding the questions or the concepts. They have been ill-served by these fads in reading instruction.
So, Stuarts were unsuitable?
bookmark
Please help an old curmudgeon understand. I learned to read before the phonics methodology. It was rote memorization of words using the Dick and Jane text books. Is that similar to sight-words?
My mom taught me to read by age four so learning sight words in school didn’t affect me much. My husband was taught sight words and to this day he, an intelligent man, occasionally has to ask me how to pronounce a word. It didn’t hamper his love for reading, but it did for some of his brothers.
Yes.
At what point did you become aware of the sounds associated with letters and digraphs, such as how to pronounce the word ghoti? I.e, gh as in enough, o as in women, ti as in nation, etc. It's all so logical! Or the effect of a silent e?
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