Posted on 08/15/2011 3:49:34 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
A reading coach in Missouri told me a revealing story.
A nine-year-old boy, unable to read; showed up for remedial help. Pointing at “bead,” the tutor explained, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”
The puzzled third-grader looked up and asked: “What’s a vowel?”
Which prompts the question: “Has the state of Missouri lost its mind?”
Specifically, the school board members, administrators, superintendents, principals, politicians, civic leaders, and all the other people in charge of public education, all the people who let a smart boy reach the third-grade without being able to read. What process of deliberate non-education allows this?
“What’s a vowel??” Isn’t that like asking what’s a number, what’s a street, what’s an hour?
I blame all these officials, these Hard Hearted Hannahs, who seem not to care that reading is the one essential skill. What are these officials afraid of, that American children might actually become literate? That they might become engineers or skilled workers, people who can build a TV or something else to help us compete against the Chinese. On the other hand, such kids might learn to think for themselves. Perhaps some officials don’t want to take that chance.
Of course, this anecdote indicts only a single school in one Missouri city. To be fair, literacy statistics suggest that tens of thousands of schools, all over the country, are equally indictable. Here is what must be the single most-repeated phrase in all of American journalism for the past 50 years: “One-third of fourth graders can’t read at grade level.” That’s the third that won’t finish high school, many ending up in jail after stealing your car.
To recap: this is a smart kid. He’s nine years old. He’s in the third grade. He can’t read. And he wants to know, “What’s a vowel?” He should’ve learned what a vowel is in the first-grade at the same time he was learning to read.
How does this happen? Because many schools refuse to teach reading in the common sense, practical way generally known as phonics. All phonics experts say that kids routinely learn to read in the first grade or, for sure, by the second. Who in their right mind would choose a method that’s slower, much slower? By third-grade children should be reading simple (but real) books that they select for themselves.
Some in the Education Establishment are still addicted to Whole Word, Sight-Words and Dolch Words (all the same). This rigamarole pushes phonics out of the schools, exactly the opposite of sane practice. When you’re talking about a phonetic language, phonics is just another word for common sense. Conversely, sight-words are the artificial, exotic, alien, weird, sophistical, more or less sociopathic plan. That’s not too strong a word. Whole Word does not work; second, it invariably creates psychological difficulties (e.g., ADHD, dyslexia). Hard Hearted Hannahs, indeed.
Around 1950 top educators were quite candid about their goals. They wanted to remove academic content from the schools. Instead, they wanted to stress “real needs” and “life adjustment”--practical things like filling out application forms. Literacy was not a priority. One principal famously said that his colleagues looked forward to a time when reading would not be considered any more valuable a skill than sewing or baking. This quack’s intellectual descendants are winning.
Learning to bake a cake leads to baking a cake. Reading opens up a universe of possibilities, including thousands of career options.
Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld summed up the whole sorry story in a few sentences: “The top educators took power over the education system by promoting their own disciples and excluding all others. They took control of the major colleges of education: Columbia, Chicago, Palo Alto, etc. They commissioned books to be written promoting whole-word instruction. And they got publishers to publish the new programs because the professors were in a position to get these new primers purchased by virtually every public school system in the country. Many whole-language advocates are simply the latest of the socialists who are willing to destroy this country in order to change it.”
Those are the people who run Missouri, evidently. And you can bet that huge sums of money are wasted on bad programs, even as the leaders of this state announce in speeches and on websites their deep devotion to education.
Kind of reminds you of a song, doesn’t it?
They got a gang there,
A mean old gang there,
With a heart just like a stone.
I saw them at the seashore with a great big pan.
There were Hannahs pouring water on a drowning man.
They call them Hard Hearted Hannahs,
These Scamps from Savannah,
The meanest gang in town.
--------------------
(Technical note: many schools brag that they teach “intrinsic phonics” or “embedded phonics,” both being examples of partial phonics. What’s needed is real phonics, that, is, children learn the alphabet, then the sounds of the letters, then the simple blends (ba-), then more complex blends (bat-), then they’re reading. If kids in your local schools aren’t learning to read by second grade, find out what bad program is being used and why.
Protect your children from bad reading programs. For a short description of the steps most people follow in learning to read, see “56: Preemptive Reading--Teach Your Child Early."
http://www.improve-education.org/id81.html )
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A nine-year-old boy, unable to read; showed up for remedial help. Pointing at “bead,” the tutor explained, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” The puzzled third-grader looked up and asked: “What’s a vowel?”
He probably meant “what do a vowel be?”
That rule works for "bead", but not for "chief" or "brief" or even "Shiite."
The public schools have never been bastions of educational excellence. Americans were complaining about them from their first day. Obviously, they’re getting worse. In my own case, I was helped by shows like Sesame Street, Zoom, and The Electric Company, as well as my mother teaching me to read. If not for them, I can’t imagine how little I’d know.
What, in Heaven’s name, is a “Dolch” word?
We need more schools like this one:
http://www.ridgeviewclassical.com/
Socialist revolution first (through the minds of the children) - academics later.
This is why the children coming out of the government schools are ignorant and more like untamed animals than humans. No morals, no ethics, no reason, no laws.
There are always exceptions to the spelling/phonics rules and good teachers point that out. This is no reason to throw out the entire system as they did starting in the 60’s.
Look-say, Sight Words, Whole Word, Whole Language, Dolch words, and others —all mean the same thing.
The Education Establishment constantly invented new marketing terms for their favorite gimmick, so parents would be too confused to resist.
You can Google “sight words” or “dolch words” and find hundreds of websites that are promoting the same lists of words that kids are supposed to memorize.
(Edward Dolch was an educator.)
Look-say, Sight Words, Whole Word, Whole Language, Dolch words, and others —all mean essentially the same thing.
The Education Establishment constantly invented new marketing terms for their favorite gimmick, so parents would be too confused to resist.
You can Google “sight words” or “dolch words” and find hundreds of websites that are promoting the same lists of words that kids are supposed to memorize.
(Edward Dolch was an educator.)
“What are these officials afraid of, that American children might actually become literate? “
Honestly, yes.
I agree--I'm a big phonics fan. I don't remember the stated rule of the leading vowel running the show from my learning days, tho.
Back in the 70s, my wife and I went to our daughter’s 9th grade open house at her junior high school. Mr. So-and-so gave all the parents the courtesy of showing up wearing a hunting shirt, jeans, and barefoot except for sandals . . . also unshaven. This slob (that’s exactly what I though he looked like), who was on the taxpayers’ payroll, looked like a he had no respect at all for his job or his students’ parents.
He passed out a 4-page handout to the parents. After a brief review of the handout, I found eight (8) grammar errors. I was furious. I teach English and math at a private school for far less pay and benefits than this ba$tard gets. My wife told me not to bring these errors to Mr. Slob’s attention, or he’d take it out on my daughter. So, I sat there just steaming.
When Mr. Hippie told us about their journals that they had to write and turn in each week (my opinions of journals could be the subject of another post). I asked him if he checked them for grammar and spelling errors before he turned them back to the students. “No,” said Mr. Jackass, “I don’t want to hurt their self-esteem.”
I could have screamed, but my wife was right . . . he’d probably single out my daughter (who, by the way was a straight A student). So I remained mute. To this day, I wish I’d have gone after this high-paid ba$tard who showed up looking like he’d just changed a tire.
And we wonder what’s going wrong with our screw-el systems.
Sight words, whole words, Dolch words, all lead to the utter paucity of the American vocabulary.
Why should students memorize lists of words when they can easily sound out words phonetically?
Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill, and it’s so dishonest, too. I imagine schools can drag out reading instruction for years.
“Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill, and it’s so dishonest, too. I imagine schools can drag out reading instruction for years.”
EXACTLY.
Vowel ? Silly foo. Dat’s where your poo go thru.
I learned to read whole words at four and a half. “look” and “see” were the first words.I learned, in a Dick.& Jane book. It was smooth sailing from there. Any kid who gets to third grade and doesn’t know what a vowel is has illiterate parents, not just a bad school.
¿que?
"A reading coach in Missouri told me a revealing story."
"[A] puzzled third-grader looked up and asked: 'What’s a vowel?' "
Bruce, suggest that next time you name the school, its location, and its principal.
There is no reason to politely and respectfully keep them anonymous.
If you shame them publicly, then they will change. The media will force them to.
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