Why Kids Can't Read

American Thinker ^ | Nov. 25, 2015 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

[SUMMARY: K-12 schools force children to learn to read the hard way. Therefore, few children learn to read.]--In all reading theories, there is a fundamental concept known as automaticity. This means you know or can do something instantly, automatically. Reading happens fast. If you do not know something with automaticity, you might as well not know it at all.

So the question quickly becomes: what exactly are children supposed to learn (that is, memorize) with automaticity?

Traditionally, children memorized 26 English letters. Virtually the entire population can do this in a month or two, even at a young age. At the end of the process, people can look at a large group of letters and instantly identify each one, no matter the size, color, or typeface, no matter whether it is uppercase or lowercase, no matter whether it is tilted or slightly defaced, And humans can do this at a quite extraordinary speed (about 2 per second) and with no errors and no guessing. That is automaticity in action.

Focus on what an accomplishment this is. Flexibility is as dazzling as speed. Anybody who has looked at a book of typefaces knows that each letter can appear in thousands of different ways. There are scripts and novelty faces. I suspect that we can read letters upside-down almost as quickly as right-side-up. All this is possible because the symbols we are trying to memorize are simple and compact, with the minimum of strokes needed to create a distinctive design.

This set of 26 symbols, instantly identified, is the basis of phonetic reading, and the traditional starting point for all education. Children learn the symbols, and then the sounds that they represent......

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

RE: “because they won t or can t read...”

Thanks for your comment but I think that’s a little simplistic. The point of the article is that children in the public schools are being systematically DEPRIVED of literacy, as surely as if you put some poison in the water and watched them shrivel and die.

I’ve written almost 30 articles trying to explain why sight-words don’t work. I think this is one of the best. But no matter how you explain it, these sophistries are slippery, and that’s why the Education Establishment can get away with their nonsense after all this time.

Meanwhile, Marva Collins was saying: “No problem. They’ll read by Christmas.” You would think our Education Establishment would be ashamed. But they don’t seem to be capable of that emotion.

.

[A_perfect_lady]

I don't know if this is true or not, I'm not privy to modern-day elementary school approaches. As I remember, I was taught the old-fashioned way: we learned the letters as little people. Mister K like to Kick. Mr. B liked Buttons. The vowels were the only females. We didn't do them in order, I think we started with very stable ones like M and P.

But what I do observe is that most children I meet nowadays (my students) seem to grow up in houses with no books, but huge televisions in every room, as well as computers, iPads, and phones. Their lives are a blur of screens. They go from screen to screen, and dabble in short, amusing videos that do not tax the brain, or video games with lots of action and immediate feedback.

They also eat every hour. Constantly sneaking snacks into their mouths. Usually nothing of any nutritional value, and I'd go so far as to say what they put in their mouths and what they put in their brains is about the same: tasty nothings that stimulate without filling. So they are always hungry and rather crabby about it, always afraid of being bored, always on the look out for the next quick jolt of stimuli, be it sugar or salt, a song, a funny video, or a game. Neither their brains or their stomachs are accustomed to digesting much bulk.

[Little Pig]

So all of China, Japan, Malaysia, Korea are all illiterate? Ideographic languages cannot be learned through phonics, and yet these countries are (mostly) outstripping the US academically. Phonics is a great tool *for some students*, but it isn’t a Silver Bullet. I learned on sightwords, and very early at that, and am highly educated as a result. The problem isn’t the lack of a particular tool; it’s the teachers themselves and the system they operate in.

[arthurus]

Way back when out on the frontier children used to learn to read upside down. In the evening Daddy read the Bible to the children across the table and the kids would be looking intently trying to figure out how what he spoke was indicated by the print in front of him while hr traced his finger under the words as he read. In church a few years ago I noticed many 35 year olds looking from the hymnals their elders were holding back and forth to their mouths. I suggested to several sets of parents that they follow the words with their fingers as they sang. Some of them began to do that and to finger the words in the books they read to their kids at home. The kids learned to read. That, I suppose, is look-say after a fashion, but it develops into the kids asking the parents why and the parents using amateur phonics to explain.

Wife teaches special ed to 1st and 2nd graders. SPED is the ugly stepchild of the Education system so administrators dont pay attention and wife teaches phonics and times tables and all that stuff from the Jurassic Era and her kids, even some who are low IQ, enter third grade way way ahead of their peers. She heard one third grade teacher say to another- So-and-so is simply not smart! How is it she can read like a fifth grader?

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

The work your wife is doing is so awesome. Good for her. Thanks for your post. I really enjoyed reading it. Good stuff.

[SAJ]

It’s even worse than you describe, m’FRiend. They’re — speaking generally — teaching an alphabetic language as an ideographic one, e.g. Mandarin. They have, quite literally, “designed” a teaching “method” (pardon me while I choke) that is actually guaranteed to fail in the large majority of cases.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[wgmalabama]

But yet he does it day after day, week after week, month after month, tear after year. Ask yourself why som are allowed to mock others for following the rules why others are banned for following the rules. Don’t question the issue, take the blue pill.

[T-Bird45]

All of these skills are now filed under “white privilege” and are no longer permitted (IOW, getting an education = “acting white.”) The lack of these basic skills helps explain what is happening on college campuses.

QFT and bears repeating. Those "educators" decrying your list of basics as "drill and kill" ought to be immediately bum-rushed out of every school building.

[windcliff]

ping

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

RE: “so all of China, Japan, Malaysia, Korea are all illiterate? Ideographic languages cannot be learned through phonics,.....”

A month ago somebody on American Thinker wrote to me about this very issue and here is what I sent back to him:

---

“Hello, P.

You’re in luck. I’ve run into this question a lot and obsessed on it quite
a bit.

English has a million total words and scores of little words, for
example, in constructions such as “has been running.” You can get by
with “runs.”

English could never ever work as a sight language. If you want to have a
ideographic language like Chinese, you have to invent and use new words
very sparingly. You have to eliminate all unnecessary words. I suspect
that the sentence we translate as “A journey of 1000 miles begins with a
single step” is in Chinese something like: “Many steps start with one
step” or even “Steps start step.”

Similarly, Chinese might say something like “No ticket, no laundry,” a
total of three different symbols. The English says “if you do not have
your ticket, you cannot have your laundry.”

Interestingly, Chinese is much more like math or programming. If A, then B.

Another huge factor is that we have many different shapes for each
letter, preeminently uppercase and lowercase. Chinese symbols come in one
form and typically, there is a pictorial element. (Note that the shift
from they to THEY means that every part of the symbol has changed. In
sight-word memorization, this is going to be devastating.)

At the end of high school, our smarter students probably read a hundred
thousand words. At Chinese high schools, they are only expected to master
a few thousand symbols. (Phonics is the key to all those million words.
But in a sight-word language, if you have memorized 2000 symbols, you
still cannot recognize 2001st.

Also, I think they’re very opportunistic and creative in combining
familiar terms to create a new term. Paper and tiger are probably two of
the words they learn earliest; so why not put them together to designate
a weak opponent? (in English, the historical tendency is for the writer
to look to Greek or Latin or some exotic source and thereby to find a new
word.)

I read years ago that only the very smartest Chinese know even 20,000 of
their symbols. That’s your PhD professor, probably a scholar. This low
number tells you everything.

I appreciate your enthusiasm for the article....

Bruce Price

FYI: I have many related items on American Thinker, on my site
Improve-Education.org, and on YouTube.”

[BobL]

He does seem like the type of guy that walks his neighborhood with a clipboard, taking notes for write-ups, and gets off on HOA board meetings.

[A_perfect_lady]

We've become a nation of toy lovers who have mastered all sorts of gadgets but haven't a drop of wisdom.

So true. So terribly true.

[Daffynition]

[NorthstarMom]

My mom taught me to read before kindergarten - she must have used phonics. My husband was taught the whole word method at school. He is very intelligent but often asks me how certain words are pronounced. It is very hard for him to sound out words as he was never taught how as a child.

[Nifster]

Parents who read to their children have children who can read

[BobL]

I’m sure you’re familiar with MANY SUCCESS STORIES regarding phonics-only reading instruction. I’m familiar with a few too, my own kids. Also same with Saxon Math.

As they grew up, they were between 4 and 8 years ahead of their grade level (taking SATs at ages 10-12, and doing well, for example).

Needless to say, they’re doing great. But my reason for bringing this up (other than bragging, of course) is my TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT with other young parents (back then). They didn’t mind hearing about my kids, but they figured that they were superhuman or something - they politely listened when I blasted Whole Language (this was a bit before the ‘site word’ craze) and blasted New Math. In some cases they thought I was a nutcase for saying that schools ARE DESIGNED to slow kids down...they just could not believe it was possible - they must ‘good intentions’ they thought and only use ‘the best’ teaching methods. What the hell qualified me to pass judgment on them. And perhaps the sweet low-level teachers did have those good intentions...but the people at the top, calling the shots, are IDENTICAL in philosophy to the people that support Obama. In other words they want to ‘transform’ the country into something else, perhaps a ‘more-sustainable’ country, where America is no longer wealthy and special, but instead is an ‘average’ country in the world community...perhaps on a par with Mexico economically, to be specific.

Anyway, the bottom line was that, with two exceptions, NO ONE was interested in how I did it. In one case, I went through teaching phonics, but suspect the guy never followed up and taught his kid. In the other case, it was an immigrant, that did follow through (Saxon Math in her case), and her kids are years ahead of the others now...they still go to public schools, but more for day care and socialization than anything else. She also let her immigrant buddies in the scheme (LOL) and their kids are kicking butt now. But that’s it. Of the dozens of Americans I talked to, no one showed any interest in doing anything. And now their kids are trying to figure out what to do with their lives, living at home, as they enter their mid-20s. Really, really, sad.

I’ll NEVER FORGET hearing the late Tony Snow, after his daughters were in public school, say something to the effect (on his radio show): “God these public schools are TERRIBLE. I remember hearing Rush say that, but I thought he was exaggerating for effect. But he’s right.”

Tony was SUBSTITUTE HOST for Rush but still didn’t believe him in this area, until he experienced it first-hand. That’s how bad it is. I’ve pretty much gave up on the political end. If people as conservative as Tony Snow aren’t going to believe what they hear from our side...how on Earth are ‘regular’ people going to believe us?

[Arthur McGowan]

You can deny facts all you want, using a single counter-example.

I know a couple of people who just LOVE their Obamacare!

Obviously, if a language doesn’t use a phonetic alphabet, it would be difficult to teach phonics.

Since our language is written phonetically, it is, as the article says, child abuse not to teach reading phonetically.

[impimp]

I am a big fan of whole word learning and I try to steer clear of phonetics. I have taught several children to read this way before the age of 2. According to the author I have engaged in child abuse. In reality the author is ignorant.

Whole word learning is superior for very young toddlers and infants. It is not child abuse. And they do learn to extrapolate and read phonetically if they learn whole words at a young age.

PS I have been influenced by Titzer.

[driftless2]

Parents who read to their children have children who can read

I agree that's a very good idea, but my parents never read to me (nor anyone else), and I was reading above average in the second grade.

Most of the students in my class were reading as well. That was close to sixty years ago. We learned the alphabet, started out with simple classbooks, and went from there. I clearly remember getting good at reading sentences and paragraphs early in my second grade class.

I don't think there's anything too complex about learning how to read. Not when you have nuns demanding that the students memorize the alphabet and other word-related lessons.