This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already!
Posted on 06/09/2016 5:43:25 AM PDT by detective
Public schools are expert at creating illiteracy. Our K-12 system can usually guarantee that students don't become fluent readers. The system is nearly foolproof. Parents and teachers can make children illiterate or semi-literate simply by following this well-tested seven-step formula:
1) FORGET ABOUT THE ALPHABET. Do not teach the alphabet, the sounds, or the blends. Reading maestro Frank Smith maintained in Reading Without Nonsense (1973): "I have said that children should not be taught the alphabet[.] ... Until children have a good idea of what reading is about, learning the names of letters is largely a nonsense activity."
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I do it, too, and I was taught to do it when I was young. The difference is that I was taught to do it after I had a solid foundation in basic arithmetic.
Common core does not mandate the content of textbooks. The textbooks seem to emphasize shortcuts in order to get at alternative explanations for the principles. They de-emphasize the foundation in order to solve the problem. That’s great for people who understand math. It confuses people who don’t.
It also doesn’t help that a friend of mine taught at a university and observed, “Education majors are the stupidest people at the school, including the janitors.”
He showed me examples. :)
Pretty good article overall, except for the well-worn canard about Ritalin. Ritalin does not turn kids into zombies. I will say that there is probably some overdiagnosis/misdiagnosis of ADD, and I could be persuaded to support not prescribing ADD medications until 7th or 8th grade except in extenuating circumstances.
That said, most kids who get diagnosed as ADD are brighter than average, and often can read better than their peers. I was diagnosed as ADD in high school after struggling for years, and put on Ritalin, and the difference was astounding.
I think the problem with CC is the top down ‘edict from on high’ manner it is being forced on the schools. I’m sure parts of it are good, and I’m sure parts of it are bad...and schools/teachers aren’t allowed to pick and choose the best parts. Rather, they have to swallow it all - sort of like bundled cable.
And I’m sure that there is a lot of social engineering going on with the social studies and history courses. I couldn’t imagine leftists keeping their hands off of an opportunity like that.
So, I am a fan of CC math...but not a fan of the entire package that is CC.
Well put.
and about this: “Education majors are the stupidest people at the school, including the janitors.”...
I had a 5th grade teacher who described gravity as a shallow band of invisible material covering the Earth, and she believed wheels rolled because their shape enable them to move through the gravity material the best.
And the third grade class next to mine had a coke snorting addict for a teacher who would pass out at her desk :)
So some of these teachers are not rocket scientists.
Ever read “Brain Matters” by Dr. Perlmutter? Interesting stuff in it on ADHD..
This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already!
Teaching worked when I was a kid. All these academics have ruined education.
Thousands of charter school, magnet schools, etc., and kids are worse off now than before.
A dumb and ignorant constituency are a politicians best friend, as those are the people most easily controlled as they believe whatever crap politicians dish up. For your entertainment hand a Wall street Journal to most high school grads including many adults as well and ask them to read a chapter or two and you be amazed of the shudder and stammer. Not to mention if and when some one has to write a resume for a job application, as good many aren’t even capable of putting a few sentences together, let alone spelling.
While I understand your point, I have to counter by asking if you are sure your opinion at this time might be just a bit of atavisim? The idea behind teaching everyone the new method is to give them a new way of approaching numbers; a way that we only learned through either inference by experience, or just stepping away from anything beyond arithmetics.
I understand the old way "works," but the new curricula makes the transition from arithmetics to algebra utterly seamless. And if there is one thing I have noticed about our society in general, we just don't have the mathematical acumen to think of "using what we know to find out what we don't" as an integrated thought process.
Actually, I have been pretty vigilant at not trying to "rewrite" the teacher's methodology, though I must confess I'm not good enough at it to resist defaulting to the ways I learned to solve the problems I guide my daughter through when doing homework.
Also, I do not practice "tolerance" of word errors, and baby has learned she has to get the words "right." Further, that giving the same word over again is NOT correcting the problem.
And thank you for the kudos!
Whole heartedly agree. Unfortunately, I think OUR math skills are of such poor quality that most of us railing at Common Core just don't understand "why" it's better.
As I said before, many folks step off the math train after arithmetics.
Probably. Over the years, lots of folks who were weirded out by, or otherwise wary of, the “mainstream” method of treating ADD have suggested reading up on nutritional or alternative-medicine (herbal, meditation, etc) methods of treatment. Early on, I read through the ones that at least tried to be logical, and actually tried some of the ones that didn’t involve obvious quackery. Unfortunately none of those methods ever showed any kind of positive result.
The main reason for failure is that most of the proponents of those methods didn’t actually understand the mechanism behind ADD, and as I learned more about ADD it became easier to weed out the methods that had no chance of working because they didn’t address the root of the problem. Unfortunately, most of those alternate treatments were nothing more than money-making ideas aimed at people who likewise didn’t really understand the science behind ADD, who tended to be medical reactionaries and were therefore eager to try anything that didn’t involve “big pharma” or unfamiliar drugs.
It’s a very recent book... the theory (and Dr. Perlmutter’s success) is about bacteria
Thought you might enjoy this one
——the theorists-—
That’s how they get plastic Masters and Phd’s in education
That’s the way they get more money
The quality of the educational product is not relevant. The educational system is for the educators, not for the students
amend that: (she is 11 years old)
“only downside I’ve seen with teaching sight words is her tendency to conflate similar words.”
Only?
This is just in the first grade when the students only know 100 sight words. Wait a few years when she is supposed to know hundreds. The confusion will grow exponentially. You are praising this method but actually revealing how destructive it is
Hardly. She's reading on the fourth grade level after just finishing first grade, and is no longer dependent on "sight words."
Furthermore, your argument is just "gun control" with different elements. (i.e. ignore the preliminaries, just wait and you'll see I'm right)
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