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......

[Night Hides Not]

For my 3 kids, my plan was simple: once they find a book they like, keep priming the pump with similar authors or themes. Until I was 16, I read only sports books outside of school, and I tested at 12th grade level when I was in sixth grade. My parents saw me reading, that was enough for them.

My youngest likes historical fiction, to include Rush Revere...so we keep buying those for him. My oldest son liked Goosebumps.

My youngest has also taken a liking to Civilization V, which my wife hates. When he's playing a game, I'll ask him about the historical figures, to include military and cultural leaders. I was awarded Epaminondas, a great Theban general from 4th century BC. I had never heard of the guy, so I looked him up.

I'd like to create a blended history class for kids around the game. I think it would be a lot of fun, and the students would learn civics, military tactics, history, and much more.

[Slyfox]

Sounds interesting. Have you ever heard of KONOS? It is a history-based homeschooling program that teaches everything except math and science. You might be able to get some good ideas from it.

[Night Hides Not]

I’m not familiar with KONOS, thanks.

[impimp]

No, I think it is a much bigger problem to target teaching toward the dumbest kids instead of treating all of the kids equally.

[Slyfox]

You have proved my point exactly.