Posted on 02/13/2011 4:44:10 AM PST by IbJensen
-six years ago, in 1955 to be exact, the most significant book about American education was published and, with very good reason, caused quite a stir. It was written by Rudolf Flesch, who had come to America to escape the Nazis in Vienna, became highly fluent in English and got a Ph.D in English at Columbia University. The book was entitled Why Johnny Can’t Read. It became a best-seller and rankled the entire education establishment. In it Flesch explained why so many children in American schools were having such a difficult time learning to read. He wrote:
“The teaching of reading - -all over the United States, in all the schools, and in all the textbooks - -is totally wrong and flies in the face of all logic and common sense.”
He then went on to explain how, in the 1930s, the professors of education changed the way reading was taught in American schools. They threw out the traditional alphabetic-phonics method, in which one learns how to sound out new words, and replaced it with a new sight, whole-word, or look-say method that teaches children to read English as if it were Chinese. He said that when you impose an ideographic teaching method on a phonetic reading and writing system you get dyslexia, or reading disability.
Flesch’s book was the first salvo in the Reading War, which is still going on over a half a century later. The progressive educators, who had introduced the new reading programs, were not about to give up their crusade to use the schools to create a socialist America. Their view, as first stated by their leader John Dewey, was that traditional phonics produced independent, individualistic readers who could think for themselves, while the new whole-word approach produced readers dependent on the collective for meaning and interpretation and were thereby easier to collectivize and control. And anyone who has visited a public school lately will become aware of how socialistic the curriculum has become.
In this socialist crusade, behavioral psychology would play an important role. For example, Dr. Paul Witty, professor of education and director of the psycho-educational clinic at Northwestern University, was interviewed by Nation’s Schools in July 1955. Flesch had singled out the professor as one of the whole-word gurus. So the magazine prefaced the interview with this paragraph:
“How does one tell a gullible public that it is being exploited by a biased writer — as in the case with Rudolf Flesch and his book Why Johnny Can’t Read? It will take time and patience for parents to learn that Mr. Flesch has mixed a few half-truths with prejudice to capitalize on two misconceptions. The first is his superficial notion as to what reading really is. The second is his misrepresentation as to how reading is taught.”
By now we know exactly what the progressives mean by “what reading really is.” The word method is now called Whole Language, and in 1991 three Whole Language professors wrote a book, Whole Language: What’s the Difference?, in which they defined what they mean by reading. They wrote:
From a whole language perspective, reading (and language use in general) is a process of generating hypotheses in a meaning-making transaction in a sociohistorical context. As a transactional process reading is not a matter of “getting the meaning” from text, as if that meaning were in the text waiting to be decoded by the reader. Rather, reading is a matter of readers using the cues print provide and the knowledge they bring with them to construct a unique interpretation.…This view of reading implies that there is no single “correct” meaning for a given text, only plausible meanings.
This is the kind of pedagogical insanity that now reigns in our colleges of education and has filtered down to the classroom teacher. Most parents assume that our educators are sane human beings who use common sense in their classrooms. Unfortunately, few if any parents have access to the writings of these so-called professors of education, and so are totally ignorant of the kind of crackpots who are educating their children.
Of course, back in 1955, the educators had every reason to denounce Rudolf Flesch because he put in jeopardy all of the new programs that were created to deal with the reading problems children were having as a result of the new teaching methods. An article in the May 1953 issue of High Points had described the new world of remedial reading which had come into existence:
Nearly every university in the United States now operates a “reading clinic” staffed by psychiatrists, psychologists, and trained reading technicians, and equipped with novel mechanical devices such as the metronoscope, the ophthalmograph, and the reading rate accelerator…. In addition, an entirely new professional group of private practitioners has arisen, whose specialized training in the field justifies their hanging out their shingles as “reading counselors” and rating large fees for consultation and remedial treatment.
So in addition to the education establishment and the new basal textbooks they wrote promoting the new teaching method, a whole new field of psychological therapy had developed to take care of children’s reading problems. Indeed, as early as 1944, Life magazine was writing articles about the epidemic of dyslexia among American children. The article stated:
Millions of children in the U.S. suffer from dyslexia which is the medical term for reading difficulties. It is responsible for about 70% of the school failures in the 6- to 12-year-age group, and handicaps about 15% of all grade-school children. Dyslexia may stem from a variety of physical ailments or combination of them-— glandular imbalance, heart disease, eye or ear trouble — or from a deep-seated psychological disturbance that “blocks” a child’s ability to learn. It has little or nothing to do with intelligence and is usually curable.
The article then went on to describe the case of a little girl with an I.Q. of 118 who was being examined at the Dyslexia Institute of Northwestern University. After her tests, the doctors concluded that the little girl needed “thyroid treatments, removal of tonsils and adenoids, exercises to strengthen her eye muscles.” No one suggested teaching her to read with phonics.
No wonder Flesch’s book hit a sensitive nerve among the educators, psychiatrists, psychologists and “reading specialists.” They all had an economic stake in the continued use of teaching methods that produced these thousands of affected children.
The result of Flesch’s book is that it awakened many parents who then began to teach their children to read at home. But the public schools continued to use the teaching method that continued to produce reading disability. And by now the full story of the deliberate dumbing down of the American people has been fully documented by such books as Charlotte Iserbyt’s the deliberate dumbing down of America and John Taylor Gatto’s monumental, The Underground History of American Education.
And yet most American parents continue to put their children in the government schools where the dumbing down curriculum is still in place and does its job of destroying their children’s ability to become good readers and successful human beings. And yet, the idea of reforming the public schools still resonates among the public who constantly approve of the government’s efforts of reform by throwing billions of dollars at the educators.
But Flesch knew how difficult the job of reform would be. He wrote:
It’s a foolproof system all right. Every grade-school teacher in the country has to go to a teachers’ college or school of education; every teachers’ college gives at least one course on how to teach reading; every course on how to teach reading is based on a textbook; every one of those textbooks is written by one of the high priests of the word method. In the old days it was impossible to keep a good teacher from following her own common sense and practical knowledge; today the phonetic system of teaching reading is kept out of our schools as effectively as if we had a dictatorship with an all-powerful Ministry of Education.
And the situation today is about the same as it was back in Flesch’s day. My contacts in the teaching field tell me that not much has changed since 1955, despite the fact that many books have been published since then corroborating Flesch’s findings. But it seems that only the homeschoolers have bothered to read them.
Back in the 1970s when I became aware of what was going on in the schools, I decided to write a phonics reading program that could easily be used by any parent to teach their child to read at home. I eliminated the use of any pictures and simply taught the student our English alphabetic system in a rational, systematic way. Its title is Alpha-Phonics. By now it has been used by thousands of homeschooling parents quite successfully, proving beyond any doubt that we can restore high literacy to this country if the will to do so is there. Unfortunately, it isn’t among the educational establishment.
Meanwhile, just about everyone who reads a newspaper knows that we still have a severe reading problem, which is not helping our country compete with all of those students learning English in China, South Korea, Japan, and India.. Indeed, the National Endowment for the Arts was so concerned about our declining literacy that they conducted their own survey which was released in November of 2007 entitled “Reading at Risk.”
According to the Report, the number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. About half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.
Endowment Chairman Dana Gioia stated: “This is a massive social problem. We are losing the majority of the new generation. They will not achieve anything close to their potential because of poor reading.” The survey found that only a third of high school seniors read at a proficient level. “And proficiency is not a high standard,” said Gioia. “We’re not asking them to be able to read Proust in the original. We’re talking about reading the daily newspaper.”
Well, as you can imagine the Report had as much influence on our educators as Flesch’s book of 1955. By the way, Flesch wrote a new book in 1983, Why Johnny Still Can’t Read. That book was totally ignored by the educators, who had so completely solidified their control over reading in the schools, that they couldn’t have cared less about what Flesch had to say in his new book.
and you can’t even spell Pete
I used Sam Blumenfelds books to teach my own to read, alphaphonics is great!
Here is a link to Brian Reagan joking about Phonics... funny stuff.
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtJLAWXO5vY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Teachers Colleges need to all be defunded until they teach Phonics to the educators.
Whole Language Curriculums are evil and those who promote their use should be locked up as enemies of Liberty.
I used Alphaphonics for those of my children who didn’t wake up reading on their own before I thought about teaching them. It is very effective. I used to have two copies, but gave one to another FReeper a while back. I still have one if I need it with Tax-chickadee #9.
Reading is the key to expanding the mind, imho. I think one would find that most FReepers were avid readers.
Harrison Bergeron is becoming real, and we didn’t even have to pass the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments yet.
“Patrick’s way may lead to a rarefied academic career, while Anoreth is a sailor and Sally is likely to marry pretty young and have lots of children.”
Ooops! You’ve strayed too close to a passion of mine, so be forewarned that I usually get verbose and excitable right about now. :)
Yes, your son might well be headed to a life as an academic — and we need good conservative ones. But a gifted scholar doesn’t have to be in a university.
You can tell by my screenname that I’m a pastor, but I do not believe that being a pastor should have ever been a “profession.” That goes back to the earliest centuries of the Church. We have replaced the need for every believer to learn and to pass on what they know, and have given it to an anointed few who are supposed to do it because that’s their job. We professionalized the “Ministry” and therefore took it out of the hands of the “laypeople.” We are left with two groups of people — “clergy” who know things, and “laypeople” who don’t. And the laypeople don’t know things because the clergy never expected them to retain what they were taught.
We, both the Church and America, need brilliant scholars. We need thinkers. We need teachers who want to pass on knowledge of the Bible, American history and conservative scholarship. But we don’t necessarily need them to be stuck in a university or a pulpit. We need them in every aspect of life.
We need scholars as authors. We need scholars as entrepreneurs. We need scholars in the media. We need scholars in finance and education. We need scholars in the pews and scholars in the pulpits. Passionate, logical, committed with minds on fire.
We also need scholars as sailors and scholars who “marry pretty young and have lots of children.”
I think life is bigger than “I am this” or “I am that.”
That being said, someday when I have kids and they grow up and go off to college, I’ll have to warn them to be careful if they get a Greek professor named Patrick. I’ve heard he’s rather tough. :)
And prone to bizarre psychotic fits if they look at him funny, move his spoon, or say "parabolic" during a full moon. But that's another story ;-).
Excellent rant overall. Pat is a special case, and it will be interesting to see if normal life has a place for him. But Anoreth is a conservative scholar, spreading Thomas Sowell and the Gospel in far-off places like Brunei and Seattle. And there's no mission field like your own family, because they can't get away from you if they want meals.
I agree that "clericalism" is a problem in Christianity. With the universal literacy made possible by modern printing, every Christian should be a Bible scholar. And a historian. And a scientist. If you don't want to pay full price on the courses from "The Teaching Company," get them discounted on eBay. Anyone can learn Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: the curriculum is there for children as young as 4, and Pat's the proof.
One thing we find on Free Republic is passionate conservative scholars. I got beat up a bit in my first couple of years, because I thought I knew a lot. Whoops! Just because your family says "Uh-huh" all the time doesn't mean you're making sense. I love it when I find a whole new way of approaching a problem, or a great author I'd never heard of.
Just one request: Lady up!
You got that right. The nuns made you learn. No excuses. They should employ those methods today. I sympathize with your situation, but the people who write those alarmist books make it seem like the great majority of kids coming out of school can't read. I've always wondered if it was because they can't read or they won't read. As you have indicated, the education for many poor kids leaves a lot to be desired.
What a bunch of nonsense. Reading is a process of generating hypotheses? Then what are the null hypotheses, without which hypotheses are meaningless? I think we have here the real reason Johnny can't read: he's being taught by scholars that have no clue how to put a coherent, meaningful sentence together.
Speak for yourself. Misspelled words leap out of the page at me and attack my eyes with little boxing gloves. I don't even have to read something or know what it's about to see the misspellings.
No; forgive me, but according to Blumenfeld, (I have his lectures on tape discussing this in depth) “Dyslexia” is actually caused by teaching the Whole Language scheme; there are NO records anywhere that Dyslexia was even in existance before this scheme was introduced on a mass scale in America, in the mid ‘30’s..
Look at the history of education in this country..in the early days of this nation, children could not even begin to attend school until they learned to read. Small children were universally home schooled. Most learned to read before age 5. There was no such thing as “Public Education” before the mid 19th Century..
Here are a number of lectures in mp3 format, that Sam Blumenfeld has given on the origins of The Whole Language system, also on The History of Education in America..you will be amazed at all the research he has done. These lectures are in two zipped files..
The first zipped file is here = http://www.mediafire.com/?dwchzznzmkc
The second zipped file is here = http://www.mediafire.com/?0amh40yjxkj
If anyone is at all interested in learning how the Socialists have taken over the Educational establishment in America, and what their goals are.. these lectures are a must listen.
Sam Blumenfeld is a friend to Conservatives, he has done massive, scholarly work in revealing exactly what is the problem with Education in this country.. he was also one of the first advocates of Home Schooling in the early ‘70s..
Blumenfeld has pointed out that people who have been “diagnosed” with so called “Dyslexia” can recover by learning true Phonics. (NOT with a combination of Whole Language and phonics, as this has been often tried, and fails every time.) Sam Blumenfeld has done the research; he has proven time and time again, that by teaching phonics to people of any age, with so called “Dylexia”, that this “Illness” can be reversed in fairly short order, by teaching phonics by the tried and true method.
True Phonics works well, Whole Language is a proven disaster !
I've taken time to complain at some businesses and stores about this sort of innumeracy, but even managers look at me like I'm some sort of talking cow.
Somewhat related phenomenon: two years ago (almost) I went through the line at a McDonald's and noticed that the salad dressing they gave me was Newman's Own. I expressed my pleasure and gratitude for the company's considerateness in providing a good product made by a good company. Young employee stared at me uncomprehendingly. Newman's Own? Blank look. Paul Newman? Blank look. She was nearly twenty and had never heard of Paul Newman.
It's called cultural illiteracy. Under my administration it will be a capital offense. Summon Professor Guillotine.
Didn’t a large number of Republican reps and senators vote for the Dept. of Educ., signed itno law by GA’s Jimmy Carter? Our problem comes from within our own ranks too.
Around here that wouldn’t be noteworthy only because it’s the expected norm.
Shelves stacked 2 rows deep plus on top and in front of each row, on the top of the bookshelf clear to the ceiling, repurposed energy drink display racks (excellent ghetto bookshelves), huge Rubbermaid tubs stuffed to bulging...
I don’t know who voted for it, likely many repubs.
Sounded like a good idea at the time, raise the education of the kids, blah-blah.
If only that were true. Most of today's 'government, union' teachers are a gaggle of losers many of whom can't spell and couldn't find Washington, D.C. on a map or anything else for that matter.
Thanks for sharing.
That's why the God-less power brokers of Mexico kicked out the Spaniards and the Catholic Church. They were educating the peasants.
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