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There Are Two Americas...And One Of Them Can't Read
right side news ^ | 3/5/11 | Bruce Price

Posted on 03/06/2011 11:45:45 AM PST by Nachum

Okay, folks, place your bets. Was it clueless incompetence on a cosmic scale? Or, was it John Deweys collectivist wet dream turned Clockwork Orange?

One of these ways or the other, we became a country with 50,000,000 functional illiterates, people who can't read a cereal box, never mind instructions on a pill bottle when that exact skill might save a life. Prisons are full of people who can't read. The country's schools wallow in mediocrity. All thanks to educational malfeasance, decade after decade.

Illiteracy_in_AmericaJ'accuse! J'accuse! The so-called experts in charge of reading are derelict and destructive. Please, remove these parasites from our weary carcass.

Reading was always something that kids learned, almost automatically, in the first few years of schools. Kids learn the alphabet, then A is for Apple, then the sounds of the letters, and soon everyone is reading.

(Excerpt) Read more at rightsidenews.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: americas; read; two
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To: pallis

“We will never make all schools great schools, but all schools would be exponentially better if parents would accept the responsibility of educating their children. Parents put their kids in school when they are six or younger, and that’s the end of their responsibility.”

You need to see “Waiting for Superman”. That will likely change your attitude about blaming parents for the failure of schools.


41 posted on 03/06/2011 1:17:08 PM PST by BobL (PLEASE READ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2657811/posts)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I used to work for a sort of technology company and some of those guys were good folks but had no reading or grammar skills at all.

Some of these guys went to a diploma mill for computers and did not know what RAM was, what it looked like, or even the types of slots it typicall fit in.

When the “test project” was closed down on me without nary a direct word and I left, it was reactivated and given to a couple of the poor guys that are propped up and supported by liberal mid-west managers.


42 posted on 03/06/2011 1:17:21 PM PST by wally_bert (It's sheer elegance in its simplicity! - The Middleman)
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To: Windflier

“Just a guess here, but the ‘good’ teachers have more than likely been thoroughly intimidated into silence by the union thugocracy.”

No doubt that’s a big part...but at the expense of sending off generation after generation of illiterates?

There is a point where the good people have to rise up and stop this crap...and if they don’t, they shouldn’t be part of it.


43 posted on 03/06/2011 1:19:48 PM PST by BobL (PLEASE READ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2657811/posts)
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To: BobL
No doubt that’s a big part...but at the expense of sending off generation after generation of illiterates?

I highly doubt that the 'good' teachers amount to anything like a majority. We're talking one here, another one there... I believe they're outnumbered, and in fear for their safety.

If they really want to fight back, they need to leave the group, and join with those outside the cess pool. You take your life in your hands, trying to fight this from within.

44 posted on 03/06/2011 1:27:16 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Nachum

Uh, uh duh besides the 50,000,000 that can’t read we have a president who can’t read without a Teleprompter.


45 posted on 03/06/2011 1:27:25 PM PST by Anna W
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To: conservativebuckeye
I can honestly say I have no memory of not being able to read.

Same here. My parents said I just started reading a cereal box to them when I was 2 or 3. I remember seeing them holding my younger siblings on their laps and reading to them while underlining the words with their fingers, and none of my sibs needed to be 'taught' to read either, so I assume that's how I picked it up too.

46 posted on 03/06/2011 1:29:19 PM PST by nina0113
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To: ClearCase_guy
What America needs is a "Great Leap to the Past" which involves more self-reliance, less government intervention, lots of pain and suffering, and in the end makes this country more like it was 100 years ago.

That's called an EMP.

47 posted on 03/06/2011 1:29:42 PM PST by Dr. Sheldon Cooper (I am one lab accident away from being a super-villian.)
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To: Dr. Sheldon Cooper
When Mao did it, he killed 60 million. An EMP would probably kill a similar, or higher, number.

I'd kind of like to skip that part. Keep the decent technology functioning, just lose the fascist economic, political, and social structure which has been holding us back for the past century or so.

48 posted on 03/06/2011 1:35:40 PM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: flowerplough

My, aren’t we PC...


49 posted on 03/06/2011 1:41:22 PM PST by buccaneer81 (ECOMCON)
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To: RockinRight

You can blame liberalism and feminism and democrats for the increase in fatherlessness. The same ones pushing for more and more money for “schools” (teachers unions).


50 posted on 03/06/2011 1:45:26 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: screaminsunshine
It cant add either.

It's not doin' too bad at multiplyin'.

51 posted on 03/06/2011 1:53:00 PM PST by MARTIAL MONK (I'm waiting for the POP!)
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To: BobL

Well many of the good teachers stayed in the schools to keep teaching. I’m not saying every single one that stayed is a good teacher, I’m saying they’d be the kind of teacher to keep teaching while the union lovers went to Madison.

The bottom line of this is:

1. teachers in general for the amount of time they work get good pay and benefits - most of the private sector doesn’t have it as good, and since almost no teachers quit, they think so too.

2. Everyone has stuff about their jobs they don’t like, teachers aren’t any different than anyone else. If you don’t like it teach somewhere else or get a different job altogether.

3. Stop complaining to the rest of society that doesn’t have your job security and benefits and decent wages for 9 months of work, whining about how hard you have it isn’t going to get people who have it harder than you do, which is most of us, on your side.

4. Either stop whining or don’t call yourself ‘professionals’ (that somehow have to have a union....?). No other ‘professionals’ have a union to protect them. And they don’t live off taxpayers either. They have to produce net gains, not net income drains. If you guys got paid according to results like the real world does, (ie how well the kids are doing) most of you would be earning far, far less than what you make now. And please, before you bring up “the greedy CEOs” make a real comparison to other working people, not top officers of a company. Compare your UNION BOSSES and SCHOOL SUPERINTENDANTS that make millions and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the CEOs, and compare yourselves to the average private sector worker and how they are compensated. You wind up doing better on average than the average person who’s paying your salary and benefits, by far.


52 posted on 03/06/2011 1:56:25 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: Secret Agent Man
All of the reasons for illiteracy mentioned here are true.

There's far more to it than what has been posted so far.

In the 1950s, Rudolph Flesch wrote the book, "Why Johnnie Can't Read".

In the seventies, he wrote the sequel, "Why Johnnie STILL Can't Read".

You will find he documents an unholy alliance between book publishers and professors. It's all about money and egos.

53 posted on 03/06/2011 1:59:24 PM PST by Mogger (Independence, better fuel economy and performance with American made synthetic oil.)
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To: steve8714
My girlfriend’s sister would get frustrated over his inability to read fluently that she would take the book from him and read aloud...in 8th grade. then she would figure his math problems, all the while screaming at him.

I guess I cain't read neither.

What do that say?

Is your girlfriend bi?

54 posted on 03/06/2011 2:18:04 PM PST by MARTIAL MONK (I'm waiting for the POP!)
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To: ClearCase_guy
When Mao did it, he killed 60 million. An EMP would probably kill a similar, or higher, number. I'd kind of like to skip that part. Keep the decent technology functioning, just lose the fascist economic, political, and social structure which has been holding us back for the past century or so.

Indeed.

However, there is no scenario I can imagine whereby we get to ditch the corruption-polluted bathwater of statism, but get to keep the technology baby.

I see both going, or even, God forbid, losing the tech and keeping the abominations. Vlad The Impaler didn't need high-speed communications or internal combustion to "Win The Future" of the mid 15th century.

55 posted on 03/06/2011 3:26:34 PM PST by Dr. Sheldon Cooper (I am one lab accident away from being a super-villian.)
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To: Nachum
What is this guy talking about?

The Wisconsin teachers UNION reassure us that they are worth every cent of salary and outrageous benefits they can get!

It's not their fault!

< /sarc >

56 posted on 03/06/2011 3:27:41 PM PST by Publius6961 (There has Never been a "Tax On The Rich" that has not reached the middle class)
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To: Windflier

Things may have changed since I was a teacher but the union provided a liability policy for teachers that was worth being a union member. Most of us joined for that reason.

My small, rural county teachers’ union was not like what I see today....but it was getting there even in the late 90’s, when I retired.


57 posted on 03/06/2011 3:31:42 PM PST by jch10 (Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war...)
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To: Secret Agent Man
(Please don’t rant, I qualified the teachers the comment is referring to.)

Please, never apologize.
We rely on the incompetents to self-identifying by ranting.

The few competent teachers do not belong to a union, or keep their silence.

58 posted on 03/06/2011 3:32:06 PM PST by Publius6961 (There has Never been a "Tax On The Rich" that has not reached the middle class)
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To: flowerplough
and an aside to umgud: Not polite, and probably racist to graphically imply that every young black man in the group fears responsibility and fatherhood. Is that your point, umgud? Are you a racist?

I can't resist jumping into this one.

The facts speak for themselves, genius.

Not all, but the overwhelming majority. That should be enough.
Do you need the statistics?
Do you even know what facts and statistics are?

I am not a racist.

59 posted on 03/06/2011 3:36:44 PM PST by Publius6961 (There has Never been a "Tax On The Rich" that has not reached the middle class)
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To: Cacique
The ability top read has nothing to do with intelligence.

Careful

Most in certain classes would conclude that the inability to read is the preferred moral and nobler condition.

60 posted on 03/06/2011 3:41:36 PM PST by Publius6961 (There has Never been a "Tax On The Rich" that has not reached the middle class)
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