Posted on 08/27/2022 12:09:27 PM PDT by jdege
Commentary: Why Johnny can’t read — 100 years of teaching without phonics
Minnesota reading scores will remain dismal, and the gap between African Americans and Latinos and whites will persist, until our schools adopt systematic pure phonics to teach our children to read.
The Minnesota Department of Education just released test scores for 2022. More than 50% of Minnesota third-graders didn’t pass the state reading test. Over 70% of African-American third-graders didn’t pass. Eighty-five percent of African-American third-graders in Minneapolis Public Schools didn’t pass.
How did this happen? Because a majority of our schools still do not truly embrace systematic phonics instruction.
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(Excerpt) Read more at alphanews.org ...
That's ... debatable.
There is no substitution for phonics.
Debate away...seems like literacy took a big dive when phonics was introduced.
MOST boomers read/read pretty danged well.
I taught three kids to read using phonics only, and it was the simplest thing in the world. Start them out at about three years old learning the sound values, and don’t worry about them catching on ... at some point between age five and six they will start reading anything and everything, just like magic.
I don’t think phonics or whole word teaching has anything to so with it. Take a look at those not up to standard and you will find they are mostly of one race. And even the race has nothing to do with it.
It has to do with the families from which these children come. I’ve read that over 70% of them are born to single mothers and have no father figure in their life. They live is dysfunctional homes where there is no respect for authority, no discipline, no appreciation for learning.
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Johnny cannot read because Shaniqua is a shitty teacher who likely cannot read herself.
How is it that e.g. Japan and China have done so well without “phonics”, since their languages cannot be read any way but “whole word”?
Phonics was "introduced" by the ancient Greeks.
Unless, of course, it's even older than that. Hebrew, for example, is arguably a phonetic language.
In any case, we're standing on the shoulders of giants. Phonics is baked in to the foundation and fabric of ALL European languages and many others as well.
Why Johnny Can't Read was written in 1955, solidily in the middle of the "baby boom".
MOST boomers read/read pretty danged well.
That's ... debatable.
I think it’s hilarious that if you spell “phonetically” phonetically you’ll spell it wrong.
English, it’s a messed up language, there really are no good ways to learn it, good luck.
Yeah ... teaching a child to twist screws into wood with a screwdriver is also simple. Teaching a child to install screws with a hammer is a bit more difficult ...
Written language is a tool; it's best to use it as designed. English is a phonetic language by design.
You are incorrect. “Whole word” reading is a myth unless the written language is pictographic.
When I read, except when I encounter a word that is new to me, I don't spell out individual letters. I don't even look at the individual words, really. I'm scanning and recognizing half-a-line of text at a time.
I'm trying to learn Spanish, and even there I'm not spelling out words, when they're words I recognize.
Whole word is the way experienced readers read.
It's not the way they learn.
Societal internal self-discipline I guess is how Japan & China do it.
My mom was a 1st through 3rd grade reading teacher.
In the early 80’s, the school district where she worked decided to switch from phonics to sight reading.
Mom went to war and she won!
Japanese and Chinese are not phonetic languages. The symbols don’t represent sounds, they represent concepts.
English, and French, and Spanish, and German, and Portuguese, and Greek, and Latin, and Russian, and Polish, and Hebrew, and Hindi, and Arabic, and Farsi, and ... are all phonetic languages. The symbols represent sounds, not concepts.
Please quit trying to drive nails with a screwdriver.
I was taught to read in a one room school in Vermont before the effects of the invasion by the NY, NJ and CT trust fund hippies detroyed the state.
Everyone in my family, my parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews, we all had learned to read before entering school. Before preschool, really.
I mean, you start sitting with a child, reading stories, as soon as they're out of the crib. You start reading along with them as soon as they can hold a book.
I'd like to hold a strong opinion on reading pedagogy in the schools, but in truth I don't think it makes much difference. Depending upon the schools for education is a mistake.
I learned with the Dick and Jane books and never found it difficult. We read the words out loud and wrote them out. We compared sounds when reading down a list of words. We did a lot of reading out loud in elementary school. For instance, we went around the room and everybody took a turn reading a paragraph from a third grade textbook about living on a farm.
Splendid! I can certainly agree with that!
Written Japanese uses a syllabary - the symbols in katakana and hiragana represent individual syllables.
Of course, Japanese also uses kanji, which are Chinese characters. And Romaji, which are latin letters.
Japanese is, in truth, a holy mess.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean all have standardized simplified phonetic alphabets for common use in addition to the fancy logographic writing that are only used by artists and historians.
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