Posted on 03/22/2013 10:30:58 AM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
The Education Establishment continues a weird charade. They maintain that dyslexia is entirely caused by inborn genetic problems.
On the other hand, phonics experts have always found that if you teach children to read with sight-words, the children will get dyslexia. If you change the pedagogy from sight-words to phonics, the children will usually recover. Isn’t that fairly clear-cut?
Just recently on Edutopia a self-appointed expert left a perfect statement of the Party Line, which inspired an article on Examiner. (link below)
The expert’s key assertion is this: dyslexia “is not the result of ‘sight words’ or anything other than a brain difference.”
Well, I guess that settles it.
Now, if by chance, this is a new issue to you, it’s important to understand what they’re getting at.
If the Education Establishment uses sight-words in the schools and if they create millions of dysfunctional, semi-educated people, it’s NOT their fault. ALL THOSE PEOPLE HAD DEFECTIVE GENES! See how it works? They blame the parents and the children. They let themselves off the hook.
Bottom line: we’ve got to get rid of every last sight-word still used in the public schools. That’s the only way to clean up the education mess. Doing this, however, is very difficult if the status quo is locked in place by official lies.
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One of the most interesting aspects of this whole matter is that many children (and their families), once told that they are dyslexic, actually embrace the situation. Sometimes there are compensations--money or more time on tests. Sometime it's just a matter of having the thing explained in a way that makes them feel special. Dyslexics are told that they have a difference that is almost like being gifted. It then becomes difficult to tell them that they are victims of bad teaching, and that they probably can be corrected. I have a youtube video called " THE STRANGE TRUTH ABOUT DYSLEXIA," which makes these points. But many people leave obscene comments saying that I'm a ****** idiot, etc., etc.
There are almost 250 comments. Together they almost tell the history of this debate. Possibly some of these people are genetically damaged; I don't have anything to offer these people. But a great number of others have probably been damaged by sight-words. You might think they would be happy to hear that there is hope. Not so. They have been told another reality for so many years, it's become part of their lives.
If you go to the Examiner story, be sure to see the video of an English politician who caused a firestorm a few years ago by simply announcing that dyslexia is a myth.
END BLOG POST----
http://www.examiner.com/article/dyslexia-the-cover-up-continues
FOR SCHOLARLY UK ARTICLE SAYING THAT SOME PEOPLE DON'T MIND THE DYSLEXIC LABEL: http://www.druglibrary.org/special/davies/myth7.htm
.
I’M lysdexic
whats a sight word?
As someone who is not a party to this argument, I would at least question studies that are done by proponents of one side or the other.
Thanks for this link. (I’ll probably try to edit the thing.)
That’s the latest jargon. The essential point is that a word is treated as a diagram or graphic design, like a currency symbol or &. It has no phonetic content. You have to memorize it or you don’t.
From 1932 to 2000, reading was taught through the use of sight-words. Not the alphabet or the sounds. Children memorized every word as a sight-word. So we have massive functional illiteracy.... and dyslexia.
From 1932 to 2000, reading was taught through the use of sight-words. Not the alphabet or the sounds. Children memorized every word as a sight-word. So we have massive functional illiteracy.... and dyslexia.
Sight reading may have dominated during that period, but phonics was alive and well during my childhood. My parents, probably without even realizing it, helped me learn to read at the ripe old age of three by sounding out the letters of words.
By the way, there's nothing unusual about three-year-old children learning to read. Children who are read to tend to learn to read without instruction or apparent effort: simple, innate curiosity leads them along.
Learning to read by phonics was the standard method at the grade schools I attended. My mother, who later went back to school to become a teacher, taugt sight reading some while as a volunteer, only to realize phonics got the job done both quicker and with less effort.
I have to wonder what kids do in South Korea, Japan, China, and other countries with ideographic rather than phonetic alphabets. I have a hunch it could be worthwhile for someone who knows to draw some comparisons.
It is the whole “See Spot Run Run Spot Run” thing! Teaching PHONICS does not sell many TEXTBOOKS or FUND very many TEACHER’S “Universities” or have much GRANT MONEY for WORTHLESS “Educational” MA “Thesis’” or “DR” “Dessertations”.
“Follow the Money”!
I’m sorry, but are the people that wrote the article stupid or something???? Dyslexia is an umbrella term that just means someone with language issues. Nobody has it the same. My daughter has it and some of the issues are auditory processing disorder, visual processing disorder, etc. Now what in the heck does that have to do with sight words???
Maybe there is a group of people that have issues with reading because of sight words, but you can’t use a broad brush when talking about this disorder. It is disrespectful to those that have serious learning issues.
“...Dyslexics against drugs...just say ON!!”
But a thought: Site/Word reading removes the sequencing in the brain that aids in recall and spelling. Phonics or “sound it out” keeps the sequence in place and likely fights the potential for dyslexia.
Research suggestion: diagnosis of dyslexia over time compared to reading taught through phonics and then through whole word.
Thinking that the number starts to jump after the whole word begins to become entrenched in the curriculum.
I read to my children from the time I could put them on my lap and open up a picture book. We had a very small, Muppet Babies Alphabet Book which I used to start both of my daughters off in learning to read. We read constantly, and, by the time my eldest was two, she would point to words she knew and say them, and she would ask what words were when she saw one she didn't recognize. My youngest was different, and was not quite as far along as my eldest; but, she was reading single words by the time she hit 1st grade.
Learning to read by phonics was the standard method at the grade schools I attended. My mother, who later went back to school to become a teacher, taugt sight reading some while as a volunteer, only to realize phonics got the job done both quicker and with less effort.
The 1st grade teacher at the Catholic school both my girls attended used phonics and would send home little phonics games (home made) for us to work with our children at home. One time, while talking with a couple of the 2nd and 3rd grade teachers, they both said it was so easy for them, because they knew the kids coming out of her class (1st grade teacher) would be ready for the work in 2nd/3rd grade. (This school combined grades after the 1st grade. So, there were 2/3rd, 3rd/4th, etc.)
I was taught to re ad with what you call sight words, and I am not dyslexic.No one I went to school with and grew up with is dyslexic. So I wonder what you are talking about
Maybe there is a group of people that have issues with reading because of sight words, but you can’t use a broad brush when talking about this disorder. It is disrespectful to those that have serious learning issues.
You are absolutely 100% correct. Like pneumonia, dyslexia is a umbrella symptom, not a disease in itself. Dyslexia is a language/auditory/visual processing disorder that has varying degrees and facets. I knew that my child had a severe processing problem long before a government school teacher tried to teach him to sight read and long before I had even heard the word "dyslexia." While dyslexia may very well be over-diagnosed, it is not a fake disease invented by the public school system as an excuse to hire school psychologists and special ed teachers. Indeed, in my experience, the government school systems are in denial over dyslexia notwithstanding the evidence that dyslexia is a biologically based processing disorder that tends to run in families.
No, my children learned with phonics, as did I. My mother also insisted that I learn to SPELL all the words I was learning, starting in first grade.
I learned to read at four via sight reading and am a published author, so perhaps you want to reconsider your claim that sight reading breeds illiteracy.
I got my youngest son ready for school with phonics pre-reading. A year later, he came home guess reading.
He invented fantastic stories! Wrong! But very creative. He got stars and happy faces galore.
When it was time for homeschool, he told me that I am the meanest mother in the town because he had to we had to unlearn public school “methods” and relearn how to read and comprehend. That was funny...looking back. Not so much during.
If you learned to read at age four, you did not learn to read through any sight reading program used in public schools since you were not in school yet.
Since memory from that early age is quite spotty, how do you know how you were taught to read?
Because
1. My memory from that time is crystal clear. I recall seeing words on a billboard and reading them.
2. After that, my grandmother, who lived with us then, taught me from old books, starting with prayers.
1932? I was taught phonics in the mid-70’s. So was my hubby.
We were introduced to the sight-word teaching method in the mid-90’s with our kids and were very upset.
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