Math Instruction Seems Skillfully Designed NOT To Work

Hubpages.com ^ | August 15, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[wintertime]

I’ve been forbidden to
exhibit the alphabet to people being tutored.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Why would they forbid this? What is their reason?

Also...Are you tutoring government schooled kids or illiterate adults?

[cycjec]

This was orientation for tutoring adults of limited or
no English language literacy. The only reason given was
“these people aren’t *ready* for the alphabet.” Really
and truly.

[petercooper]

bttt

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Please explain this. Forbidden by whom? What people?

You were supposed to use only sight-words, is that it?

I’d love to know more.

Bruce Price

[cycjec]

sight words, reading aloud, “cloze” games (guess the word
that should fill in the blank, context clues (picture of
half a road sign ... that one’s a big scary isn’t it?)
and so forth. But no list of the letters A to Z or any
instruction based on that. Also the head instructor came
outright and said “there’s no sense in English spelling
it’s a crazy language” This is in fact not true. This
was at two different public library systems in the greater
New York city area, and as I said it was 10 years ago or
more. One still needs the alphabet to locate books in the
stacks, although online catalogs (that’s another rant)
have diminished one immediate need to know alphabetical
order. I’m surprised at the surprise here.