Posted on 09/13/2004 10:11:18 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Monday, September 13, 2004
By Vox Day
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
The Los Angeles Daily News recently lamented the tremendous increase in "functional illiteracy" among the working population of Los Angeles County. In reporting the results of a recent study, it said:
In the Los Angeles region, 53 percent of workers ages 16 and older were deemed functionally illiterate, the study said ... It classified 3.8 million Los Angeles County residents as "low-literate," meaning they could not write a note explaining a billing error, use a bus schedule or locate an intersection on a street map.
While the article took note of the wasted "hundreds of millions of dollars spent in public schools over the past decade," it blamed the terrible results on an influx of non-English speaking immigrants and a 30 percent high-school dropout rate.
But the dropout rate can't possibly explain the low level of literacy, because if the public school system was even remotely competent, the children would be reading adequately long before they ever reached high school.
Long-time readers may recall a column titled, "A Tale of 2 Children," wherein I compared two 3-year old children, one of whom was being taught to read by his parents and one who was destined for public school. The two children are now 5 years old, and I recently examined their progress.
The child in kindergarten is not yet reading, but he has learned his complete alphabet now. The homeschooled child, on the other hand, surprised me by reading at an error-free fifth-grade level on the San Diego Quick Assessment test. I verified his competence by asking him to read selections from C.S. Lewis' "Prince Caspian" to me, a book with which he was previously unfamiliar. While he occasionally stumbled on words such as versification and centaur, (he pronounced them "versication" and "kentaur"), his comprehension was reasonably good as well.
Suddenly, it was not so hard to understand how homeschooled children, on the average, test four years ahead of their public-schooled counterparts.
The problem with public schools and reading is not hard to grasp. Whole language, the favored method, is a disastrous approach to reading that is destined for failure. Children who learn to read while being taught this method learn to read in spite of it, not because of it. Anyone who speaks Japanese and has learned both kana (phonetic) and kanji (whole language) can testify to the ease of the first and the extreme difficulty of the latter.
It's a pity that the Daily News does not have access to studies tracking the reading ability of children who are schooled at home in Los Angeles County. It would be interesting to see how well those children read compared to these illiterate workers, particularly immigrant children taught at home, because as hard as it may be for the Daily News to imagine, people who speak other languages, even Spanish, have been known to be able to read. I can't confirm this, but I have even heard rumors that there are reputed to be one or two authors, such as the suspiciously foreign-sounding Arturo Perez Reverte, who actually write in Spanish, if you can believe anything so outlandish.
The truth is that it is extremely simple to teach any normal child to read. All it requires is a consistent 15 minutes a day between the ages of three and five. If a child is capable of rote memorization, he is capable of learning the alphabet and the basic phonics, and reading will follow within months. The fact that the public schools so regularly fail at this simple task is not indicative of anything but the absolute incompetence of the public-school system – an incompetence that is not only designed into the system, but is its very raison d'etre.
One need only look at an elementary school's curriculum to realize that the bulk of a child's education necessarily comes from outside the school environment. It may come from parents, peers or the television, but very little of it comes from the free day-care centers that are the public schools.
Fred Reed has a simple answer for America's education problem. It is an inventive, capitalist solution involving the intimate interaction of cement and potassium cyanide with the teaching colleges, and bounties on certified teachers. But, as he has said himself, America isn't interested in solutions that will work – much better to wring our hands, hope for the best and condemn yet another generation to illiteracy, ignorance and idiocy.
This is all the more reason to realize the money being spent is mostly just a waste.
In this region most the high schools have day care centers on the campus for the unwed mothers (mostly from Mexico) to bring their kids, huge amounts of money are being spent on drop-out prevention programs and a diploma can be had by attending just 3 years of high school --- still the drop out rate is very very high. It would be cheaper to just hand them their high school diploma in the 7th or 8th grade.
Your view on homeschooling is refreshingly realistic, and a more resounding endorsement than all the statistics on homeschool advocacy sites.
The biggest problem I see amongst my homeschooling friends is a reluctance to admit to any shortcomings in their own ability to teach. The most successful homeschooled kids I know had parents that immediately recognized their own limitations on what they can and cannot teach. Your kids are very lucky.
>>Homeschooling statistics "self select" for kids with involved parents, and so it is not statistically relevant to compare homeschooled kids with the general population of non-homeschooled kids. The act of homeschooling does not make any kid smarter in and of itself. The act of not Homeschooling doesn't hamstring any kid in and of itself.<<
The act of Homeschooling may not make a child smarter, however it does give a bright child the ability to learn in a non-teaching mill envirorment.
In today's public schools (my nephew was in a 1st grade class of 43! before his parents moved him to a charter) the bright kids are left to learn on their own while the teacher maintains the class. My own daughter was slipping because of the chaos of her class. Teachers are not allowed to discipline the way they once could so the classes are loud and disturbing.
I am not anti-public school, I just understand that this is not the learning enviroment for my daughters and I have only one shot at them.
Vouchers, for private schools and home schools
Amazing, isn't it?
"Dump their Tea into the harbor"
Probably easier to do in MT than most other places.....
That said, there's not anything in a basic elementary education that's beyond the reach of an adult with sufficient education to survive on FR!
>>The biggest problem I see amongst my homeschooling friends is a reluctance to admit to any shortcomings in their own ability to teach. The most successful homeschooled kids I know had parents that immediately recognized their own limitations on what they can and cannot teach. Your kids are very lucky.<<
Homeschooling is not for everyone, but I must tell you, I am learning WITH my daughters and I feel that this is what God gave us packaged curriculms for!
The Federal government needs to outlaw home schooling and add billions more to public education. That way, the kiddies will all be on the same level, dumb.
"(my nephew was in a 1st grade class of 43! before his parents moved him to a charter)"
FYI charters as a group perform worse than regular public schools (at least in the DC area), because, if you can believe it, there is even LESS accountability with charter schools.
I moved from the LA area because of the schools. There was a similar horror story to yours that I refused to put my kids through....taxes are so high in LA/CA that nearly all parents simply CAN'T homeschool because they both must work. It's a good racket out there for the NEA....
>>there's not anything in a basic elementary education that's beyond the reach of an adult with sufficient education to survive on FR!<<
Oh you've got that right!!!
Well, that's your opinion. However, it's up to the school to teach whether or not there is parental participation, and they generally do a poor job of it when they use fuzzy math curricula and look-see reading curricula. In fact, and this is just my own opinion, I actually think that when they confuse and frustrate students with fads, it actually contributes to bad behavior in the classroom. It's not the kids' or the parents' fault all the time, no matter how fervently school officials would like you to believe that.
There was a radio program on last night which featured an inner-city principal of a public school that does a great job of educating students. He placed the responsibility on the school administration and teaching staff. He said he knows that many parents can't or won't participate, but it was up to the school to teach the kids. His students go on to top-notch private high schools and colleges. He's doing something right.
The core of elementary and secondary education should be the trivium --logic, grammar and rhetoric-- none of which are taught in government schools.
Mastery of this one book (The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric) would do far more for a child than 12 years of confinement in government schools. < /preaching to the converted>
"....I am learning WITH my daughters and I feel that this is what God gave us packaged curriculms for"
Public schools are often criticised for having teachers teaching subjects in which they have no specialized education - (e.g. math, science).
Would this not also be an issue with pre-packaged curricula for homeschooling?
I think it's up to the parent to teach. Kids whose parents teach them do well enough in the public schools, but those kids whose parents make no effort do poorly. Even in the worst performing public schools, there are some kids who do pretty well --- but they're getting some education from their parents.
I think Vox Day challeneged Al Franken to a fistfight, Fight Club rules. This was after Franken challenged a National Review editor.
Part of the problem is that the spanish elite democrats adamantly demand English is not needed to unify the USA.
I submit they a tragically wrong. English and learning to speak english is something that must be learned and mastered by all immigrants.
As they always have, the elite want schools to crank out servants, not competitors
I have come to the same conclusion. My wife and several of my family members teach in the public schools. Parents who are not willing to make the slightest sacrifice of time or money to help their children get an actual education (as opposed to what happens in public schools) are abusing their children. Public schools are where you send your children to learn about drugs, pre-marital sex, racism, and the practical superiority of the law of the jungle. And the schools are forbidden by state law from teaching children how to deal with these fun subjects by the application of Judeo-Christian morality. Actually, with each new generation that passes through compulsory state schools, morality becomes ever more an obscure a topic in our society.
I'm not trying to formally debate here, just relating what I have seen with my own eyes.
Yep, vouchers are the answer. It would cause mass confusion in the public institutions for a few years but after that real education would follow.
As far as those espousing more parental involvement, maybe things have changed but my husband and I gave that a mighty try. Still we couldn't stop the stupidity. I guess my favorite one was the time we went to a teacher about an assignment one daughter had received that neither she nor we could understand. The teacher admitted she had made up the assignment and then said (I'm not making this up I promise) "But I never expected the kids to do it!" She then left the room crying. Mrs PD
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