Posted on 03/22/2013 10:30:58 AM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Apparently, the more verbal kids always figure it out. They may lose a year. But they are okay.
Sometimes all it takes is a comment from grandmother, “That’s a B, say buh-” From that point on, the kid sees a B and knows he’s on safe ground if he tries buh-. Basically, at that point he is reading.
But in many whole word classrooms, the children were never taught the alphabet and never taught the sounds. Now suppose a kid has a facility with visual objects and he actually memorizes several hundred sight-words. Now he’s trapped. Because the next several hundred sight-words are going to overwhelm him. He’s trying his best to do exactly what he was told to do. But each month his life gets worse. And then they say he has AHDH or dyslexia or something, and he needs Ritalin.
(A large percentage of children can never master even 100 sight-words. So you can imagine if a kid is not one of those who makes the jump to phonics, he is basically finished, destroyed. Federal testing of fourth graders says that only one-third are proficient or above. Two-thirds are below proficient. They are the victims of sight-words.)
I too have crystal clear memories of reading whole words as a young child of four.
I don’t remember my mother teaching me the letters and sounds when I was an even younger child, but I do remember practicing reading with her and a McGuffy’s Reader.
Point is, I remember reading, I don’t remember learning to read. I only know because my mother told me.
If they are still alive, ask your mother and grandmother how you learned to read or how they taught you. You might be surprised at the answer.
I once had a very brilliant four year old in my pre-school that had learned to read watching Wheel of Fortune. His reading level was adult and he was doing 3rd grade math when he was brought to me.
RE: “I was taught phonics in the mid-70’s. So was my hubby.”
Look, it’s a huge country. You find variations from neighborhood to neighborhood in the same city. A lot of teachers went underground, and taught phonics when the door was locked. Any variation is possible.
But the history of the thing is that the Education Establishment massively introduced look-say circa 1931, to the degree they could get away with it! That’s the Dick and Jane books that everyone talks about. Simultaneously, the little weasels were going into public libraries and destroying phonics books as fast as they could find them. But not every school surrendered, not every neighborhood surrendered. And there were counterattacks and relapses. That’s why they’re called the Reading Wars. Flesch counterattacked massively in 1955. The professors counterattacked him with the International Reading Association in 1956. There was a massive outpouring of incomprehensible jargon. Most parents had no idea what was being done to their children, except they weren’t learning to read very well. This pattern continues to now. That’s why I write about it.
I’ve written 50 articles about this stuff and at some point I have to start making these generalizations and sweeping statements, otherwise I have to start over and explain everything again. Frankly, I am writing things now that, five years ago, I would not have understood myself. All I can hope to do is pull people along, and hope they look at some more articles. The broader goal, for me, is to raise the level of the public debate. One of our big problems is that an almost evil Education Establishment invents terms, changes the meanings, and in general tries to keep everybody perpetually baffled. THAT is what they are really good at.
Another interesting point is that most people have no clear memory of how they learned to read. You’re 4, 5, 6 or seven. What do you know? One of these commenters claims he read billboards at age 4. Wonderful. Why does he assume he was reading sight-words? He cracked the code quickly and he was able to read words. Unless somebody showed him that word at home and said, memorize this design, he was not reading it as a sight-word. He was taking those words apart with some sort of proto-phonetic insight, at least partially. I mean, that’s my guess. He was four years old, how does he know otherwise? (I still have no idea how I learned to read. But it was phonetic. And to this date I hardly know any phonics rules. I cracked the code, that’s all. A is for Apple. Probably my mother gave me some clues but I don’t remember them.)
Nonsense. Just complete balderdash. I grew up learning to read whole words, as did everyone else in my school. No one was dyslexic. Many went to Ivy League universities. My parents and grandparents grew up without phonics. They were all educated people. What you write is nonsense.
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 made no such claim, nor did I use the word "illiteracy" at all.
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