Posted on 03/15/2010 1:29:51 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
The US is said to have 50,000,000 functional illiterates. Why? Explaining this is VERY difficult. My cynical view is that the professors of education came up with bogus theories, and then wrapped them inside many layers of sophistry and deception. To the point where even intelligent people could make little sense of the problem or what to do next...I’ve put a dozen graphic videos on YouTube that try to explain the craziness that is reading. Of course, homeschoolers know most of the problems. It’s the rest of the country we need to inform. The newest video (link) does a pretty good job in 4 minutes. Please check it out and tell teachers the news.
Title: "Rudolph Flesch Rules the World of Reading" (the video)
--------------------------------------
Here's the key sentence in the video: "All schools should be judged on this question: are average children selecting and reading real books in the second grade?"
(Note: this sentence is even more important since Obama described his education plans on Saturday, saying that reading scores can be given LESS weight in deciding a school's success. A really bad idea.)
And every single one of them voted for Obama.
69,456,897 votes for Obama - I think we have more than 50,000,000 functional illiterates.
If a kid doesn’t spend time reading, and doesn’t want to read, s/he won’t. That’s one reason why I’m refusing to get TV service: the occasional video is fine, but none of this always-on never-read nonsense. If my under-2 daughter wants a story she has to read it (while maybe she can’t read, she spends a LOT of time looking intently at page after page), with or without Mommy/Daddy.
They cannot read or spell and they are too lazy to even use a spell checker.
And many of those were illegals.
One of my sons once got in trouble for not reading along with the rest of the class. I asked what he had been doing and the teacher said he was reading a book of his own. I knew that my son was reading “The Odyssey” and was engrossed by it. I asked what the class had been reading and the teacher told me that they were reading “There is a Girl in the Boy’s Bathroom”.
I chuckled a bit and said maybe he needs to be in a class that challenges him just a bit more.
That depends on what is meant by "functional." I suppose that if I order a cheeseburger and fries and the server can find the pictures for them on the cash register well enough to present me with a bill for $3.05, then he is functional. And when I give him a five-dollar bill, and the register tells him to give me $1.95 change, and he gives me a dollar bill, 3 quarters and 2 dimes, he is functional. However, when I give him a five-dollar bill and, as he starts to give me my change, hand him a nickel so that I can get back 2 singles, he is no longer functional. Still illiterate, though!
TV isn’t the evil it’s made out to be. Mine watched hours of tv and videos. When they learned to read, I had to ground them from reading so much. Yes, I really did. Both mediums are gateways to adventure. Later, they all graduated in the top 2% of their classes.
But, they can be led to the voting booth.
Oh sure there are many exceptions (us included, I learned to read from Sesame Street), but to the point of the article methinks an awful lot of the 50,000,000 functional illiterates got there via homes dominated by excessive TV viewing to the exclusion of print media. (Not that I have anything to back that up...)
"Turn those lights out! Your brother needs to sleep! Get out of the bathroom! Who left the library books behind the toilet? You know you're not allowed to take library books in the shower! Get those books out from under your pillow! Turn the lights out!"
when I was a kid, my two favorite things to do were:
a) watch TV
b) read the encyclopedia (World Book)
I gues things balanced out.
This is exactly the right thing to do. Our children have not grown up with TV, so reading is a significant source of entertainment for them. Moreover, because they aren’t innundated with TV, movies, or video, on the occasions when they get to see a movie I’ve gotten from NetFlix, or they get to what some documentary clips from YouTube, they really enjoy it.
Mom?
“You are, too, tired! I don’t see you getting out of bed in the morning, do I? I’m not paying your library fines, either!”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.