Posted on 12/01/2005 4:25:16 PM PST by ncountylee
LONDON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Starting next year, all British school children will learn to read using the traditional technique known as synthetic phonics.
A report released Thursday said that, by the age of 11, children taught by the phonics method are typically three years ahead of others in reading ability. Jim Rose, a former director of the Office of Standards in Education and the report's author, also found that synthetic phonics works best when used alone and not in a combination of methods, the Times of London reported.
Rose recommended that children be taught nothing but phonics until they are 5, followed by a rich exposure to language. Under the present system, phonics is combined with the "look and say" method where whole words are taught.
"I am going to adopt the recommendations in this report to make sure that synthetic phonics is taught systematically and early in British schools as quickly as possible," Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said in a BBC interview.
END
Do away with the Department of Education. Return all education monies to the states. Let each local community run their schools.
Set up a plan where-by local schools would hire in a private administrative team to run the school. Let them do the hiring and firing, with the stipulation that tenure not be incorporated into the plan. Teachers would be placed on the payroll only after they signed a no-cause termination agreement.
Teachers would be non-union. If they did unionize, the local town could simply cancel the contract with the private school administration.
When a new administration entity came along, there would be no teachers hired from the former staff.
I know this is a tough love approach, but the gravy train was bound to end sometime. End it today!
Your plan sounds like a good first starter. I doubt that everything you propose would even get close to flying....but, getting rid of the Dept. of Education, and returning control to local schools, etc. I doubt that restricting the formation of unions would hold muster at the court level, though I agree with you...they're a huge part of the problem (mostly the NEA)...so, aside from getting completely rid of them, there needs to be control of what they do (mostly what they do know is act as a whacko leftwing anti-American, anti-families, political lobby with teacher dues). I don't think it's necessary to get rid of all teachers; there are a great many good ones out there; and many of them have been either intimidated by the liberal Superintendents/Principals to teach that which they'd prefer (lots better teaching ideas/methods than what the NEA wants done).
ooops "mostly what they do know" should be "mostly what they do now"
When our son entered first grade whole language was again in vogue, but thankfully his teacher persisted in teaching phonics. The school district finally changed its reading curriculum after test scores dropped dramatically. Our daughter was also taught to read with phonics.
Why can't these educational bureacrats get it ...phonics works and whole language doesn't.
Yep, the old timers knew this was the best method ever. What was the reasoning behind stopping phonics? Dumbing us down...IMO.
Hadn't thought about it much, but somebody made a buck or gained power as a result of the adoption of whole language reading.
I started out with some phonics before and during kindergarten. My mother drilled me. I guess that was 1956 and 57.
Phonics had its drawbacks. For years I (silently) read a word as paradiggim before hearing it said as paradime.
An understatement. At the time of the Korean War the US Army found about 15% conscripts were functionally illiterate (could not read at 4th grade level).
In WWII (the last generation before "Whole language") it was 2% - and 3/4 of those had not gone beyond third grade.
Did you know that according to Redd Foxx, his daddy is the one who named Worcestershire sauce. Said the porter handed it to him on a train in England and Foxx senior said, "Wuzzishere?"
Mom was a reading teacher, K-3rd, for 20+ years and would say evidence supporting the whole language approach is bogus and has been trumped up. She said occasionally she would run into a child who didn't do well with phonics but not very often.
As far as one-size-fits-all, I think some times it can't be helped. When it happened to my son (he needed a bigger challenge in math), I felt it was my responsibility to get it done, not the schools, and I did it myself.
I think a lot of parents are ducking their own duty when it comes to teaching their kids skills in education. I and my husband read to our kids all the time. My son's first sentence was "Mommy read book".
We see the government trying to usurp parents' rights and I think they think they can try to get away with it, because they have seen how parents neglect their responsibilities.
Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of “Balanced Reading” Instruction
by Louisa Cook Moats
10/01/2000
Whole language may have been disproven by scholars, but it still lurks in many corners of education practice: in textbooks for teachers, instructional materials for classroom use, teacher-licensing requirements, courses and standards for teacher education, and the professional context in which teachers work. As a consequence, too many children are not doing as well as they could be, and others are falling by the wayside in beginning reading, never to get on track, even though this failure is largely preventable. Not all children are adversely affected, to be sure; many children learn to read in spite of how we teach them, and many teachers are teaching reading well. Nevertheless, it is those children who depend the most on valid and effective instruction in school, including minority, low-income, immigrant, and inner-city children, who are most likely to be harmed by persistent whole-language ideology and its manifestations in practice.(57)[excerpt]
And this website gives more information/references for further reading, as well:
The Reading Wars Continue
Wednesday, August 4, 2004
By Nancy Salvato
The biggest hurdle facing education and our nation stems from the extremity of viewpoints dominating public opinion coupled with people who won’t hear or learn from what each have to say. Name calling, skeptic disregard for new developments and fear of losing credibility, all hinder cooperation between policy makers; blurring the issues needing attention and hampering progress toward what’s best for the children and society at large.In light of this, I shouldn’t be surprised to find that we are still having what are commonly referred to as “reading wars”. Scientific research that debunked the viability of whole language based reading methodology is apparently not enough for the education establishment to get rid of a dead weight that has been pulling down the reading scores for the past two decades. Instead of admitting failure and doing what’s right, the professors continue to teach methods courses which are based on these substandard methods for learning to read, under the guise of “balanced reading”.
* * *
Because some Kindergarten and First Grade students already have an idea of the sound/letter correspondence, they can learn to read under any approach. The problem occurs when researchers believe progress is made because of, not despite the teaching method. “At risk” kids need instructional approaches that are based on what we know about the phonetic code. Good reading results from a combination of phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, fluency, good vocabulary, and comprehension strategies.4
How does “whole language” fail at risk students? .....
[snip]
IMO, the key to good spelling is reading a lot, mainly because there are so many English words that don't follow the rules of phonics. You literally have to have 'em all committed to memory, and you can only get that by seeing them all the time. Reading is the only thing that does that.
Just a joke, people. Pointing out how British spelling is much less phonetically oriented than American. I think fonix r gud.
Something you'll never learn at Kings Bollege, Bambridge.
The sun is out, and it's a nuclear day. Perfect for going fission!
Unless it isn't, as in plough, bought and nought. GBS was indeed joking.
Well, if there are exceptions and memorization, then it isn't "straight phonics". I think reading should come with a good foundation of phonics in the early stages, with sight identification of works coming as the reading material gets more complex, say around the time chapter storybooks are introduced.
"It's a mystery to me why liberals don't like phonics."
It is because liberalism is a mental disorder.
You have heard how blacks not wanting to be too white will harrass black classmates who complete homework and get good grades. Do you think this is only a black problem?
How are liberals who clearly don't want children to learn to read different from the blacks who don't want other blacks to achieve?
I don't see any difference except for the race and social class of the offender.
Liberals know it is a competitive world in which they are losers. They are so bitter an adult liberal will try to prevent a little child from acquiring the tools to be a winner (reading).
It is the, "I can't have it so I don't want anyone else to have it," syndrome, taken to the extreme.
The Chaos
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough–
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give it up!!!
—Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)
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