Posted on 10/27/2025 12:36:36 PM PDT by CharlesOConnell
A Video is at the link-click, but if you have young children or grandchildren, it would be worth your while to get the book, work out how to perform it as poetry, and read it to them yourself--they'll always remember it.
This is avowedly biased on the side of Rudolph Flesch's 1955 "Why Johnny Can't Read"; if you're hydrophobic/distempered about this topic, please don't bother with any flaming in the comments. This is just Dr. Seuss fandom, no fanaticism intended. Bruce Deitrick Price's "Science of Illiteracy" is in the 1st comment, for those who maintain an open mind.
That damned Cat in the Hat took nine months until I was satisfied. I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the Twenties in which they threw out phonic reading and went to word recognition, as if you’re reading Chinese pictographs instead of blending sounds of different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country. Anyway, they had it all worked out that a healthy child at the age of four can learn so many words in a week and that’s all. So there were two hundred and twenty-three words to use in this book. – Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Arizona Magazine, June 1981
Theodore Geisel had been in advertising, including a bit of cheesecake. Perhaps he hit a low point in his career, when he got a windfall, which thanks to the anti-phonics movement in university educationalist psychology, propelled him into the stardom he later enjoyed.
As shown in the quote, his first work in "whole-language/look-say" was the original "Cat in the Hat".
I take in view of his comments that the effect was injurious, that the sequel, "The Hat in the Cat Comes Back", was his revenge, explicitly featuring not only the alphabet, but using consistent poetic meter, stompable to, he was defying the movement of regarding memorization as ignorant.
Emily Hanford became famous over the last several years for talking constantly about the Science of Reading. That's where children learn to read in the simplest, most efficient way and go on to enjoy many hundreds of books. Long story short, what she means by the Science of Reading is phonics — nothing less, nothing else.
The problem is that the left in our country forced phonics into oblivion starting in 1931. So what was going on for those 90 years from 1931 to now? A titanic and quite stupid con, that's what.
Basically, the professors of education at Harvard and such places identified and codified the things that work — and then (this is my summary) they made sure that none of those things are allowed in the schools. Only methods known not to work are praised in our classrooms. The simplest, most appropriate name for this approach is the Science of Illiteracy.
Sometimes the impression is given that these professors drifted around from one method to another. That's actually not true. They have only one method — but it has many names (such as sight-words and Whole Word) — and they are content to hide inside the confusion they create.
Reading consists of learning two things: letters and sounds. If you're not focusing on letters and sounds, you don't have phonetic instruction of a phonetic language.
Note how precise the pseudo-reading program is. You get rid of letters and sounds. You don't mention an alphabet, and you don't teach children what the alphabet represents. The Science of Illiteracy is really easy. You just leave out the valuable parts and let kids struggle.
One of the oddest spectacles you'll ever see is the top brains in American education all agreeing that the alphabet serves no useful purpose. How do you find fanatics like this?
These professors were monolithic; each one parroted the wisdom of the others. Each one finds a slightly different way of making the same dubious claims. Notice the smug, Olympian tone.
"Current practice in the teaching of reading does not require a knowledge of the letters," says Dr. Donald D. Darrell.
"The skillful teacher will be reluctant to use any phonetic method with all children," says Dr. Paul Witty.
Dr. Roma Gans tells it simply and starkly: "In recent years phonetic analysis of words at any level of the reading program fell into disrepute."
"Little is gained by teaching the child sounds and letters as a first step to reading. More rapid results are generally obtained by the direct method of simply showing the word to the child and telling him what it is." Thus spake Anderson and Dearborn.
"The words should be recognized as whole words. It is detrimental indeed to have the children spell or sound out the words at this stage." That's Bond and Wagner.
We have to thank Rudolf Flesch for creating a time capsule circa 1940 in the first chapter of his famous book Why Johnny Can't Read. He quotes all the schemers shaping our culture. A dozen of these people took children down the wrong path so they would become victims of the Science of Illiteracy.
The success of Flesch's book in 1955 was the first sign of resistance by ordinary citizens. The Education Establishment didn't wait six months before it set up the counter-group known as the International Reading Association. This was a massive organization intended to keep teachers and parents in line. It succeeded to a tragic degree.
How do the professors refer to their voodoo reading? In the most respectful terms, as if Einstein had written it out for them. On the other hand, Rudolf Flesch complained that teaching children to read English with sight-words means eliminating 4,000 years of progress, as we moved from difficult symbol languages (such as Egyptian hieroglyphics) to more efficient ways to let great masses of people read their language.
Nineteen thirty-one was the beginning of the end of our school system. Yes, 1931. That's when the education professors pushed phonics out of the public schools and imposed a sham method that virtually guaranteed that most students would become functional illiterates, evidently the goal of the Science of Illiteracy.
This power-grab in 1931 was historically remarkable. The Depression had just started. The country was nervous and unstable. The professors thought they had enough leverage to pull off a coup, almost as ambitious as the attack on Pearl Harbor but with even greater ramifications for the future.
I wouldn't be surprised if all these professors quoted by Flesch were members of the Communist Party (AKA the Communist International). They were clearly in control of K–12 education in America. All they had to do was befuddle and outwit the public.
Money was a big factor. All the top professors made millions by creating a series of little books often referred to as Dick and Jane basal readers.
Please remember that Dr. Samuel Orton did a famous study in 1928 that determined that sight-words would mess up a child's brain. Education professors had to pretend for decades that they believed in a method that they knew was fake. Their deception ushered in the Science of Illiteracy.
Throughout this saga, the Education Establishment bullied recklessly as they announced their visions, denounced all research that didn't support their chicanery, and forced the children and parents to accept their Science of Illiteracy.
We see this reckless swagger now in the way the Democrats try to control government the same way they control education. Americans can learn so much about weaknesses in our democracy by studying K–12. Our ideals break down quickly when ruthless people break all the rules.
We can easily save the public schools, but only if we adhere to the Science of Reading. Here's a four-minute version of that.
Bruce Deitrick Price's new novel is Frankie, about a robot designed to engage in smart conversation with humans. No other skills. Harmless. Chaos ensues. (For an excerpt, visit Frankie.zone.)
He was also a pinko. The “Butter Battle Book” was a polemic about the “arms race.”
No Fun with Dick and Jane.
Prof. Anthony Esolen has contrasting sets of textbooks covering the crucial divide in purging curricula, the period 1920-1930. The Christian acceptance of the classics of Western Civilization had been the norm, going back into the 1 room school institution where, in contrast with the “professionalization” of the not highly regarded schoolmaster profession, amateur, elder students tutored younger ones and it was far from unknown for students below 6th grade to be pursuing, what would be known in today’s dark ages as “academically advanced studies”, all in the little 1 room schoolhouse, nutritious, basic curriculum roughage that most college students today wouldn’t be able to manage. (School boards once local to communities, have been consolidated down from 75,000 to 15,000, the easier to ensure control by federal educrats.)
By 1930, the classic-oriented curriculum with a phonics foundation, had been purged in exchange for Fun With Dick and Jane, whole-word/look-see, early primary literacy, handicapping indoctrination. By the time of Rudolph Flesch’s “Why Johnny Can’t Read” 1955, no teachers had themselves been trained in classic literature, a prime goal of the atheist/agnostic/messianic secular-humanist founders of universal compulsory schooling from 1880-1920, the easier to ensure elite, top-down control of unruly lower masses in the interests of their tax-exempt non-profit foundation masters, the wealthy pathetic except for their inheritances who endowed the Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller foundations.
THE THIRD ROCKEFELLER GENERATION WERE INTELLECTUAL CRIPPLES: The Worm Eateth Its Own Tail (Ouroboros), The Rich Eat Their Own: Fabian Society founding member John Dewey (icon: yellow flag, black wolf dressed in white sheepskin climbing a flagpole, maroon flag with black letters “F.S.” for Fabian Society) was funded for his experimental Lincoln School by John D. Rockefeller II. The Lincoln School was attended by Rockefeller’s 4 younger sons Nelson, Laurance, David and Winthrop, some of the most powerful men in history who regulated the fates of millions of people.
With only the exception of the eldest son J.D. Rockefeller III, all four of the other Rockefeller third generation sons emerged from John Dewey’s “whole-word/look-say” Lincoln School as intellectual cripples unable to read a newspaper: they all had dyslexia. Dyslexia expert Dr. Samuel Orton informed university psychology department educationists in 1931 that whole-word/look-see causes deleterious brain changes in Kindergarten-Grade 3.
The saying is "from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations". This proverb describes the cycle where the first generation creates wealth, the second generation maintains it, and the third generation loses it, often due to a lack of financial education and mismanagement. This concept is also known as the "three-generation curse" and has similar expressions in other cultures, such as "rice paddy to rice paddy in three generations" in Japan.
I learned to read in 1956 and following.
I reed gud.
The author here cannot possibly be correct: the Boomers learned to read better than before, imho, and better than our children have learned in a lot of ways.
Yes we DID learn our letters and sounds. Yes we DID sound out words. Yes we DID use Dick and Jane books. “Look! Look! Look! Run, Spot, run!
Now we have a bunch of kiddos who can’t read AND can’t spell.
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back was my very first book. My grandmother got it for me Christmas 1958. As a first grader just learning to read, I read it over and over.Loved it.
I had Dr. Suess at home and Dick and Jane at school. Were those good or bad for learning to read?
The whole-word reading thing is why people commonly use the word “defiantly” when they meant the word “definitely.”
I remember those stupid readers from my early years in grade school. I learned to read before I was in Kindergarten, and was probably reading at a 5th grade level by first grade.
The “Dick and Jane” books were boring to me, and they insulted my intelligence.
I began learning to read in 1st Grade, Texas, 1958. I remember Dick and Jane books but was also taught phonics. My father bought a set of encyclopedias and a set of high-quality children’s books that I came to treasure.
By 2nd Grade I was reading in all these books and asking my parents questions about the things I’d learned.
Probably would have progressed even faster if this had been available.
Any four or five year old would, admit it.
They'd answer our questions in a way like "See over here it says ...., and over there it says ...., so you can see how the two sides reach their positions. Now here's what I see all over the New Testament about that topic. And if you read the whole Bible too you can know who's misleading you and who isn't." A lot of us took them up on their advice. As teenagers we'd meet other Christian teenagers from other churches, often at school, and we'd discuss things we'd read for ourselves in the Bible and how it compares to was still being taught traditionally in our different churches.
End result? A lot of the denominations in my area (in Alabama) aren't so tangential in their denominational beliefs as they used to be. In part because a wave of us Bible reading younger Boomers and Gen X'ers are now leaders in the churches. And in part because the other leaders know that we'll call them out, even if politely, if they stray from Scripture.
That's the power of a culture that can read well and enjoys it, especially reading the Bible.
This is why I homeschooled.
God designed dads and moms to teach their kids, and online private school companies to help provide good books and suggestions and even teachers to grade stuff where we might lack a skill or distance to weigh performance.
Seton Home Schooling.
If you want foctors, engineers, laeyers, farmers, skilled trades, great parents, and HELP....look them up! VERY Humble.
My grown kids and their spouses have committed to homeschooling. Only one grandbaby so far, not even a year old. My kids have joked with me that they’re counting on my financial planning for me to be retired early enough to have plenty of time to tutor the grandkids in math. LOL I plan to retire in a few years at around age 57 to 59 in part for that very reason.
We read Dick and Jane, but we also had phonics
The last time I saw a copy of ‘The Cat in the Hat Comes Back’ was on Dr. Seuss’s bookshelf in his study.
I was born in 1955. My mother taught me and all of my siblings to read by age four, using phonics and reading aloud as we followed along. We are all avid readers to this day.
Have to agree how inane and boring the school readers were. I still recall finishing the second-grade reader on the first day of school and wondering what to do next. The answer, of course, was to stir up trouble. These days, they’d call little six-year-old Hartley “ADHD” and fill him full of drugs.
Bkmk
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