Thanks again for your posts, hopefully at least a few FReepers will get the message and understand what’s going on and make what is a really a minimal effort to teach their kids to read well before the institutions get their hands on them (math, I’ll admit, is a significant effort, but still well worth it). For if they can read well BEFORE entering school, then, despite their best efforts, their kids will read well, really well (and spell great too!, a bonus of phonics), and there’s not a thing the schools can do to stop that - your kids cannot be ‘untaught’ reading.
“It’s puzzling to me that educational leaders are so resistant to Systematic Phonics.”
It SHOULD NOT be ‘puzzling’ to people on this site. We all know that the Left literally wants to SINK THIS COUNTRY down to Third World status, and the best way to do so is through the (lack of) education of our kids. The teachers themselves are leftists, although maybe not flaming leftists, but still leftists - so they will glob on to their masters, who are the actual BRAINS of this operation. Those are the ones in DC, who control the Leftist agenda. In fact, what would be ‘puzzling’ is if our education establishment actually supported phonics, as that would imply that they wanted America to be a wealthy and powerful country...totally contradicting everything they stand for.
As for myself. I learned how to teach phonics from an infomerical, I think for The Phonics Game...or something. They gave a simple example of teaching sounds, I ran with it, and had my kids reading by age 4, and reading fluently by age 5. Once the kids can read, they will DEVOUR everything they can find with words in it. In fact, it worried me a bit when my mom was lending my kids adult novels at age 7 or so...but it didn’t seem to harm them...and they loved reading them.
So, people, GET OFF YOUR DUFFS, your kids simply WILL NOT learn reading, or for that matter math, to anything beyond a very basic level, from our public schools, FOR CERTAIN, and from what I’ve seen, it’s questionable now in private schools, as they they somewhat follow public schools. If you want to know why Asians and Indians, who do go to our public schools, do so well - ask their parents, EVERY ONE of those kids had serious help outside of school, and it was all done AHEAD of the public school schedule, again, so that the kids were certain to learn this stuff correctly.
Thanks for your excellent comments.