Vanity: Reading Resources

Improve-Education.org ^ | June 1, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

A special education teacher wrote to me about the abuse of Ritalin. The teacher said: “My students are on Ritalin. This is a brain shrinking, top tier heavily psychotropic drug, as you know. The authorities KNOW this is their weapon for the most intelligent boys... ”

The teacher believes this is a high-level NWO plot, which is not a road I like to go down. But the teacher got me thinking...

Here are the two parts I’m personally sure of:

1) The Education Establishment in this country, for 75 years, has used bogus methods (i.e., Whole Word) to teach reading. For many millions of children, the result is illiteracy and a COLLAPSE of each child’s confidence, with a concomitant increase in anxiety and misbehavior.

2) A separate set of experts (these are in the psychiatric community) diagnose millions of young children as having something called ADHD. The common treatment for this hyperactivity is Ritalin. Interestingly, according to a government site, “This pattern of behavior usually becomes evident in the preschool or early elementary years, and the median age of onset of ADHD symptoms is 7 years,” which just happens to be the age when children, taught with Whole Word, wake up to the fact that they are falling behind their friends and seem in some way to be damaged.

I would like to think that these two groups of experts are separate and sincere. The thought that the two groups are actually working together is almost too horrible to think about.

Here is my question: does anyone have solid evidence or personal anecdotes that can help illuminate this issue?

(Final thought: Inability to read will usually destroy a child’s sense that he is smart and in control. At the very least, shouldn’t all those highly-paid medical professionals assess the reading abilities of their patients, and then DEMAND that the education experts do more to make sure these children can actually read by the second grade? Even if these groups are separate and well-intentioned, it seems to me you still have a serious dereliction of duty if doctors are prescribing powerful drugs to children without understanding the actual cause of their anxiety and misbehavior.)

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(For more on why Whole Word causes illiteracy, see “42: Reading Resources” on Improve-Education.org.)

http://www.improve-education.org/id65.html

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[BenKenobi]

If I were teaching french it would be easy, because if you know how the word is written, I know how to say the word. English, not so much.

This is the problem. Whole word has them memorize words on a page and does not let them draw on the words that they already know by listening. Someone who know only whole word will not be able to write down the sounds that they know.

Someone who knows phonics, will write down what I did. Unless they are taught that berd = bird, they aren’t going to be able to decode it. You have to start with the sounds.

[wintertime]

It is just my anecdotal observation. That means a lot more would need to be done before it could be stated as a fact. It is my personal observation that I have never met an obese ( that means **really** fat) child who has been homeschooled from the beginning. Of that I am certain. I can't recall meeting a chubby one...but maybe in the mix there was a few.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

“But I have **never** met a homeschooler with ADD.”

Yes, this is a powerful piece of evidence: Thanks.

But even you, Wintertime, are not addressing the theory that the teacher wrote me about. In effect, the ed people make the kids illiterate and anxious SO THAT the medical people can give them drugs and doubly dumb them down.

It’s a terrible thing to contemplate. But the crazy eagerness of the psychiatrists to give drugs to kids is hard to explain. Bruce Shortt in “The Harsh Truth About Public Schools” talks about this. Are the shrinks owned by the drug companies? Are they all devoted ideologues hoping to destroy the country? That’s what the special ed teacher is saying. Just so everyone is clear on this, here’s more of what the teacher said:

“They want to eliminate individual thinking at all costs. Our entire population is being attacked. It is no exaggeration to state that the NWO is at war with humanity, and in particular with the US because we are the only country with a history of a sense of having ‘rights.’”

I don’t like thinking about this level of conspiracy; but as I said, I’m comfortable now saying that the Education Establishment used a reading method they had to know did not work.

[achilles2000]

Your children probably figured out the phonetic code on their own.

Whole word does work to a degree. It is like learning Chinese characters. This invariably limits literacy severely for all but a few who have lots of time and extraordinary memories.

Phonics, on the other hand, allows for a rapid connection between spoken and written language. Once the simple “phonetic code” is learned a child’s reading vocabulary almost immediately expands to match his speaking vocabulary. If words are treated as ideographs (whole word/chinese), there is no such easy correlation because the sounds and the symbols are unrelated. In China, Vietnam, and Japan, for example, Chinese characters are (were) used as the writing system for completely different languages.

I have seen this in action. Once a child learns to read in English phonetically, if he is also fluent in another phonetic language the child realizes that there is a phonetic code in that language, too. As a result, reading in the other language requires almost no instruction. In Chinese, on the other hand, progress is painfully slow because of the memorization required. This is why China has a massive hidden literacy problem.

Whole language is destructive. I’m pleased your children did well, but unless they have photographic memories they learned to read well in spite of Whole Language, not because of it.

[monkeyshine]

I associate the word bird with women and the 1920’s, though I don’t really know when that word started to be used (presumably, slang, perhaps having to do with dress or manners) to mean women. I know it was also used in the 1960’s.

But like I said, you said bird and my smart-ass mind thought of something totally out of the ordinary. It was the first thing I thought of. And seeing as birds flap their wings, it has a double association, all of which pretty much rushed into my head when you asked me to think of the word bird.

But I get your point. Bird, Berd, Burd. Fair enough. But those 3 spellings presumable sound alike, or not. Bird, Berd, Burd could be pronounced beyered, beerd, and boord among other possible readings.

How does whole work work when you get to more advanced concepts? Pronounce geometry, astrophysics, phylum, constipated. A word like constipated seems to me a perfect phonetic type word. Seems to me it would be very haard (ahem) to learn that word in one bite (ew!)

My initial reaction, as I said upthread, was to think phonetics was the better option. I will mull it over though. I will try to challenge my mind and find new words and see how I do it. I know, I have to deal with chemical names in my line of work, and I think I tend to do it phonetically - often putting the wrong emphasis or putting long vowels where people traditionally use the short word. Avastin, the cancer fighting drug, I always pronounced “Uh VAST Inn”, but others seem to call it “A Vust Inn”.

[cva66snipe]

You are misinformed about Ritalin. There is evidence of brain shrinkage and other worrying neurological problems. Moreover, how it affects the developing brains of children is largely unknown. I suspect from your eloquent post that you are allowing one or more of your children to be drugged or were drugged yourself.

For the likely one in a thousand who actually do have ADD ADHD then they likely would need it in the same respect an epileptic needs some very strong medications as well capable of possibly doing harm. Then again massive doses of Caffeine might work as well.

The use of a medication must weigh benefits vs risk in everything including an Aspirin. Then again some meds get bad names no matter how they are used. That happens because a minority abuses them and many doctors simply do not know how to correctly dispense some meds.

Most doctors would freak out at what I have taken every day 3-4 times a day for 17 years {Xanax} and tell me I can't do that. My wife is a 26 year user. But it's the only way I can function at all. Yea it can be dangerous especially higher dosages at 1-2 times a day. On the other hand a lower dosage 3-4 times a day keeps the seizures and brain fog away. {most the time anyway} LOL.

[achilles2000]

Bruce, The issue is almost certainly the relative inability to discipline children in traditional ways and the need for classroom order. In other words, children are being drugged to make them sit quietly, and in our intensely feminized government schools, the female faculty want the boys, in particular, to act like perfectly behaved girls.

I’m sure you know that boys are overwhelmingly the victims of psychotropic drug child abuse by our highly trained education professionals. Minority children are also disproportionately medicated. Go look at the DSM IV diagnostic criteria for ADD. They are absurdly subjective. The reading I recommended covers a great deal of material you need to become familiar with.

[Tax-chick]

The one to the right of the ship’s bell is 5’10” and 225 lbs. The baby isn’t even plump any more - he runs too much!

[Tax-chick]

I wish I had time to teach them to read properly, but I’ve got less than an hour a week to get through the whole Old Testament! It’s going to a disaster when those kids get to high school, and the school will probably (if they haven’t already) label them “disabled,” rather than acknowledge that the system failed to teach perfectly normal children to read.

[philman_36]

Explain to me how you teach that the sound, “berrd” is the same as the written word ‘bird’ using whole word.
Through imagery and audio input.
The way I did it was to write out the word (starting with personal words like Mommy, Daddy, hand, arm, leg nose, etc.) in large letters (about 4") on poster board.
Or you can buy flash cards like I did with my son and cover up the picture while they learn the word. Then you use the image and the word together.

You make a game of it and you repeat the word while showing the child "the picture" of the word ('cause to them that's all it is at this point is a picture). At first you don't ask the child what the word says. You just say it and put the card away.
After a while the child usually begins to start to make the connection between the written word/picture and the spoken word. As they learn more words you expose them to more words. One thing to keep in mind is that as the child learns more you have to learn the look in a child's eye as to when they don't understand a word when asked. You speak out what the word is and don't give the child the time to make a wrong guess. It's a lot of positive instead of negative reinforcement ("No, that's not right." discourages a child) and understanding your individual child. That's also why it isn't a good institutional method.

As an adult when you hear the word "bird" you probably get an image of a specific type of bird in your mind.

...and you may also get an image of the "whole word" bird as well. While a child is just learning an adult has had the experience of life to help fill in the gap between the two "images".

It was easy for me. It did require patience and knowing my children well. So no matter what anybody says it worked for me and my children and I've been proud of them as a parent when others stated how well read my kids were.
I guess the mileage varies for different folks, but saying outright that it doesn't work at all is BS.

[philman_36]

Why is it Bird and not Berd/Werd/Werd?
Ummm...because you have a higher intellect than the child you're teaching and you will teach them those things as they grow older and become more familiar with words.
You aren't expecting a child to know this on their own, are you?

Even in teaching with phonics there is a process of progress over time, isn't there?

[achilles2000]

The ADD/ADHD diagnosis has no valid diagnostic criteria. If you look at the DSM IV, which provides diagnoses for psychiatric “diseases”, you will find a list of highly subjective criteria that could fit anyone. Further, there are NO physiological markers of ADD/ADHD at all. In these respects, ADD/ADHD is in the same category of bogus diagnoses as “oppositional defiance disorder”, which is also in the DSM.

Although the DSM IV is officially a diagnostic manual, it can also be seen as the source of cashflow for psychiatrists and psychologists. If something is in the DSM, it has a “code”. That code allows the psychiatrist or psychologist to get paid by insurance and the government.

There are physiological problems that do give rise to what we call mental illness, but ADD/ADHD isn’t among them.

[achilles2000]

On the book I should have pointed you to pp 205-233 and the related notes.

[monkeyshine]

the ed people make the kids illiterate and anxious SO THAT the medical people can give them drugs and doubly dumb them down.

That's incredibly cynical and dark. Is that a theory or an hypothesis seeking proof (evidence)? I don't believe a conspiracy like that could survive.

I don't think I could go that far. I could see where teachers would want more docile kids, and therefor are more prone to "see" "Problems" where there are merely issues that need to be overcome. They in turn recommend psychiatry, telling parents how great other kids do on the drugs and so on. Psychiatrists are then put under pressure from parents who want smart, attentive kids and besides, the diagnostic factors for some of these diseases seem pretty broad from what I know of them - but I am no expert. Tell me, before these drugs, how many "boys would be boys"? Heck perhaps it is the urbanization of kids that make them ADHD, for lack of external (outdoor) stimuli? Just guessing here, but can kids learn to be patient in a culture full of cars & highways, fast food , rapid edits on films and videos, video games etc as compared to, say, waiting for that fish to nibble on the bait, reading a book, watching the stars and clouds, climbing trees, hiking, biking... but I suppose that is slightly off point, or upstream if you will.

Perhaps the example on this thread is a good jumping off point. I was asked what I first thought of when I heard the word 'bird', and I thought of a slang use that also had a secondary ironic attachment to it - a flapper. Every mind works differently, but I accept there is no way any teacher can figure out each mind they are entrusted. It is up to the kids and parents to find out how their minds work, and to develop approaches to learning that suit those minds.

Which is just yet another reason why we cannot, should not have these massive public school systems. Kids need to have their individual talents nurtured, and it is not possible if everything is rigid, structured or taught from rote. But again I digress... perhaps I am ADHD too :-)

[BenKenobi]

“Even in teaching with phonics there is a process of progress over time, isn’t there?”

Yes, but this is simple stuff. :) That’s my point.

[BobL]

“Schools all over America continue to force five- and six-year olds to start their education by memorizing 200+ sight-words.”

When I see this stuff, it becomes OBVIOUS to me that the teachers are doing ALL THEY CAN to inhibit American kids from learning to read.

Sure, they do blow off Sight Words in Third Grade and THEN switch to phonics...but they have then assured the kid will be a slow reader for life.

Any parent WORTH A DIME will teach his kids to read well before the schools get a shot at them. Either do it yourself (as I did, when my kids were less than 4 years old...and yes, it took a few spankings to get their attention), or go to Kumon, Sylvan or some other after-school learning center and let them do it the RIGHT WAY. Otherwise why not just cut off their left thumbs...you’re doing the same damage (if not more).

[BenKenobi]

Question:

When did you teach the alphabet, before or after you did this?

“Through imagery and audio input.”

So you taught her phonics. :)

“The way I did it was to write out the word (starting with personal words like Mommy, Daddy, hand, arm, leg nose, etc.) in large letters (about 4”) on poster board.
Or you can buy flash cards like I did with my son and cover up the picture while they learn the word. Then you use the image and the word together.”

What you are doing is teaching the child that the word “bird”, when you say it is the same as the letters on the page. If you took the picture away from it, the child learns the sound and associates the sounds with the word.

I suspected as much.

“It was easy for me. It did require patience and knowing my children well. So no matter what anybody says it worked for me and my children and I’ve been proud of them as a parent when others stated how well read my kids were. “

I am not saying that your approach was unsuccessful. I am arguing that your approach was not ‘whole word’.

?I guess the mileage varies for different folks, but saying outright that it doesn’t work at all is BS.”

It doesn’t. Whole word takes away the audio and leaves you just the pictures.

[philman_36]

Perhaps the example on this thread is a good jumping off point. I was asked what I first thought of when I heard the word 'bird', and I thought of a slang use that also had a secondary ironic attachment to it - a flapper.
And you've just shown that the method is sound if used patiently. You had an image in your mind that you associated with the word bird separate and distinct from the other unique image created when four disparate letters are combined together.
To teach the method you have to accept the concept of looking at the word as an image in it's own right to help the child make that connection.

Aside - I'm glad you didn't teach me, I might have gotten in more trouble than I did as a kid. {;^)

[philman_36]

Yes, but this is simple stuff. :) That’s my point.
It is to you because you see it through an adult's eyes! Isn't math "simple" for you now as an adult as well?
To a child it isn't simple stuff. They have to be taught it over time, just like they do everything else they learn.

[steveo]

Don’t change article titles to promote your agenda.