Posted on 04/29/2010 12:47:37 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
The best thing we can do for the country is to make sure all children read by the second grade. The Education Establshment continues to push non-phonetic methods that don’t work. Here’s a graphic video (only 3 minutes) that explains why Kindergarten Sight-Words Are Not A Good Idea.
This hoax requires that children memorize words as SHAPES or graphic designs, as we all memorize flags, currency symbols, hieroglyphics, cars, etc. A few hundred is difficult but doable; a few thousand is beyond most people. Even then, it takes a lot of time, so all of education is undercut. Once parents understand that Look-say, Whole Word, Sight Words or Dolch Words (all same thing) is a destructive fraud, we’ll see steady improvement in the public schools.
Reading may not be everything, but I often suspect it's half of everything. That's why the impostors in charge of education have devoted so much ingenuity to making sure kids would end up semi-literate.
---------------------------- if embed code doesn't work, click link ------------------------------
Thank DrSuess and lots of parents who think they are helping by reading these books to their young children. Seuss was paid to create CAT IN A HAT which introduces the base vocabulary for sight and say.
An illiterate nation is more easily CONTROLLED.
“Fuzzy” math programs are another problem. Can you imagine sending your child to a school that doesn’t use phonics to teach kids to read and has decided to use one of these strange math programs? No wonder kids act out in class. They must wonder what they are doing there.
Start over by having a completely **PRIVATE** system of K-12 schools!
Government schools **ARE** SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM CAN NEVER BE REFORMED!!!! GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS MUST BE SHUT DOWN COMPLETELY!!
As wintertime vociferously points out, the individual teachers are not the heart of the problem ... even the ones screwing the students. They are a symptom of the pathologies inherent in a government-run organization. For example, most teachers aren’t total fools: they would be teaching phonics and addition facts, if the system did not mandate less-functional forms of teaching.
Unfortunately, the logic of a government school system leads straight from Miss Wilder to what we have now. It wasn’t obvious with the small, isolated populations of pioneer communities, but control caught up with them, as it had earlier with urban schools.
I could open a Little House on the Prairie school. I’ve got the books and the skills. However, it would take a reorganization of other systems to make it truly competitive for students. For example, music and sports programs are heavily concentrated in government schools. I couldn’t compete with that, and the students couldn’t participate in county school programs. Enrichment activities would have to be organized at the community/city/county level, independent of schools, for a small-school provider to fit in.
I agree with you about sports. I use terms like “indentured servants” and “gladiators,” in fact ;-). Nonetheless, sports are now a major issue in the “education” market, from elementary to college level, and that’s something a private school, large or small, has to deal with.
In the bigger picture, though, all government operations are becoming more centralized. In my community, the state decides whether we can have a stop sign, and the federal government often pays for it. The same with education. Local funding is a fraction of the cost, and local influence is correspondingly picayune.
I would agree if it were only the parents who voluntarily participated and voluntarily paid for the teacher. It would be a **private** modern homeschool co-op.
One of the major problems with government education is that education is **never** religiously, culturally, or politically neutral. It is impossible. No matter how hard a government school board tries, it **will** establish the religious, cultural, and political worldview of the politically powerful, and undermine that of the less politically powerful.
Therefore...Even if school districts were the size of a suburban housing subdivision, the most politically powerful would be imposing their non-neutral religious, cultural, and political worldview on other people's children,...and..forcing their neighbor to pay for this worldview.
Compulsory government education ( forced attendance and forced funding) is a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination! ( Even if the school districts were the size of 50 homes.)
One reason sports are such a big issue is that parents have dumped their children’s whole lives on the school system. In the story I’m currently reading to my little boys (”Little Britches,” by Ralph Moody), the school runs from late morning to early afternoon, the students get themselves there on their own horses or mules, and the school year is very short. The curriculum was basic literacy and math.
Many parents (like the Ingalls, or the Moodys in our book) could have taught the same content at home, but housekeeping and baby-care duties were much more time-consuming than they are today. We’re now in a position - even without the Internet, only using a library - where almost any family could provide a decent basic education at home. My oldest daughter ran her own education from 13 to today, when she’s getting a real-world education somewhere in the South Pacific on a Coast Guard cutter.
Good watch; better read:
http://www.improve-education.org/id46.html
>Kids are not learning penmanship anymore. It is not uncommon now to find young people who only print and cannot read cursive script.
I myself only write in print; partly because I never really got the hang of cursive and partly because nobody else would be able to read what I’d written.
“that explains why Kindergarten Sight-Words Are Not A Good Idea.”
Thank God my nephew’s son will be able to read fluently before he ever goes to school. He’s not even three yet and he knows both his alphabet and numbers up to and past 10. His parents are staunch... no, make that RABIDLY conservative and their arsenal would put many FReepers to shame. (Nephew can usually quote muzzle velocities for various ammo of the top of his head when we talk guns.)
I’ve been encouraging them to homeschool, as the niece doesn’t work, but they think that the local school district is reasonably good, since they both went there. I think they may revise that opinion when the kid actually starts school and they find out just what his indoctrination will be like. And it won’t be conservative.
I would dearly love to help them homeschool him. I’ve got a couple of years yet to convince them. By that time the kid will be reading textbooks, I swear.
I agree with you. I remember the test Laura took to become a teacher - grammar, basic arithmetic (in her head!), American history. Anoreth could have done that - except for long division in her head ;-).
I don’t know if my family could get through a “long winter” with nothing to do but recite to one another, but we can handle a power outage: we can play instruments, read books to each other, draw or color. I sometimes declare “lights-off” evenings and make us all find something to do without tv or computers.
In the “old days,” people who didn’t have book-education had practical skills, because otherwise they would have died. Now we have a growing percentage of the population who can’t change a tire *or* write a paragraph ... can’t do anything but demand their “entitlements.”
OR when he starts school and they find out that the system can't deal with a 5-year-old who can already read, write, add and recite muzzle velocities. Wait for them to recommend "counseling" because the boy likes to talk about guns ...
May I suggest, as a tactical/practical matter, that we agree that there’s no need for sight-words. PERIOD. Nobody needed them for centuries. Most of the phonics experts I trust argue there’s no need for even one.
(Please Google “42: Reading Resources” for more on Sight-Word craziness.)
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.