Bruce’s material has been indispensable to me for fighting the nonsensical crap that is forced on my kids by the teaching establishment.
The first thing to notice is the intent to pigeonhole a kid as ADHD, or Asperger’s because of their faulty teaching methods. Once so labeled they then track them into lower performing classes.
My kids have had difficulties with reading and were significantly behind their peers. With general guidance and help from Bruce’s work in columns he’s written I have gotten my kids un-pigeonholed, and performing up to grade level in just under two years. You have to force them to teach the kids how to read. The old methods of phonics are eschewed for sight words. While adults read that way, beginning readers do not.
The one comment that Bruce made, was that sight words were like teaching the kids Chinese, and that Chinese was deliberately made difficult to keep the peasants unable to read. I have used his examples of the hieroglyphs and his ideas to beat down the edu-crats in my school district, and when they started actually teaching my kids phonetically, the kids “magically” were able to make it back to grade level in just under two years. My wife and I were significant contributors to this, but when the school district stopped fighting us, and started working with us to teach them phonetically, the kids progressed very rapidly.
Bruce is a hero in my book, and has helped me save my kids from a life of mediocrity. They are now excelling in reading, math, and science, are voracious readers of history. They are excited to be in school and are in the top 5% of kids in the state testing in all subject areas.
A heartfelt debt of gratitude to Bruce for being a champion in giving me the tools I needed to successfully advocate for my kids.
Ouderkirk, what an awesome post, thank you! Take a bow, very impressive - I hope your children know how very lucky they are to have you & your wife! I dread to think about their lives without your intervention.
I totally agree with you about the ADHD, blah, blah issues. I’m 58 & we never had all these problems when I was in school. All I can say is WTH?
You have me very excited to read more of Bruce’s work, so thank you for sharing your story.
My Mom, to this day, rails about how I was taught ‘new math’ & swears to this day that it was harmful to me. PTA meetings were especially her favorite soap box for this issue - do they still have PTA? LOL!
Could you please share some of Bruce’s work you reference in your post? TIA!
I know everyone can’t, but I know a few peeps who homeschool. I can’t imagine how anyone is able to do that, but one thing that sticks out to me is how amazing it is to talk to those kids. They are absolutely brilliant! I think the same is probably true of your kids & keep it up - what a wonderful parent, so inspiring!
People on FR often leave drastic comments such as everybody has to homeschool; or schools have to be torn down and we start over; or unions have to be moved out of education, etc.
Good luck. These are huge changes not likely to happen anytime soon if ever. Does that mean all improvement has to stop?
Ouderkirk shows what can be done by focusing on the individual situation, making demands, negotiating with the local officials, pointing out their failures, and explaining alternative approaches. That’s what I’m always hoping, when I write articles, that people use them in their local battles.
Mostly parents are at a great disadvantage. But there is one piece of good news. The school officials do not want to be hated. They don’t want bad press. At some point they will give up in order to protect past gains. They will wait for you to get tired, and then they will come back and reclaim lost ground. So that’s an interesting part of Ouderkirk’s story, at some point he won.
I believe that the Education Establishment deliberately creates a climate of confusion and misunderstanding. It’s a safe bet that even doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, community leaders and so on cannot explain the reading wars, the math wars, the knowledge wars, etc. I think a lot of these things are like magic tricks, very mysterious and impressive until the magician reveals the gimmick. Than we think, oh, so that’s all there is to it. When people understand the gimmickry in education, they are free.