Posted on 02/20/2014 3:43:06 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
Part of the process was “scientific” racism programming. Lots of people today believe that black or Mexican children can’t learn to read, because they have marginally lower average IQs than white or Asian students. Never mind the fact that practically everyone’s IQ was lower a few generations ago ... when malnutrition was the standard, rather than the exception ... yet, children instructed with phonics learned to read. Children drilled in math facts learned to do arithmetic. Children drilled in penmanship could write.
Public School is Child Abuse. (AKA Government School)
It is interesting when you read the original and the rewrite and see how much even then schools were failing.
After a few basic lessons in the sounds that letters make, My kids learned to read on the internet for the most part, and read WAY above their age level.
I’m sure that would be interesting. I didn’t start reading Nancy Drew until the 1970s, and I don’t know how many of those were new versions vs. older ones still on library shelves or in garage sales.
You won’t realize the huge decline in education until you see textbooks from the early part of the 20th century. Third grade to sixth grade readers had selections from Shakespeare, the Bible, Lincoln, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Rudyard Kipling and other literary giants, now read only by top students in high school and college. Hard to believe but true.
Any parent could counter that simply by reading to their children every night. Read books that are above the child’s reading level, so they can HEAR proper language, and explain words that they may not know; THAT will increase vocabulary. Then have them read to YOU so they’ll have more practice. Get them a Library Card and USE it, or, if you have a Kindle, download lots of books for them.
Malpractice. Nothing simpler than phonics. I am not a "credentialed" teacher but taught two of my tykes to read... with phonics. We didn't even finish the book and they "got it" and took off reading.
Evil.
bttt
Where was malnutrition “standard”?
Across much of the South, for example. Remember the studies that showed pellagra was a nutrient deficiency disease, rather than communicable?
It is interesting when you read the original and the rewrite and see how much even then schools were failing.
I recently read the Nancy Drew mystery The Hidden Staircase (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1930), which was a favorite of my mother's when she was growing up, and found it to be a well-written story that even grown-ups could appreciate. I started to read the revised version from the 1960's, but it was so dumbed down that it failed to hold my interest after I had read only a few pages.
And then there is iodine deficiency which is still the leading cause of preventable mental retardation.
I’m reading a book about the Italian campaign in World War II, 1934-44. One point that struck me was how little food people had in Sicily and southern Italy, even before the war.
There is a reason why SciFi writers had the future being a very hungry place, they were looking at the past and projecting.
Prior to the 1950s people did starve to death in the West and the further you go back the more common it became.
The Great Depression wasn’t even 100 years ago. I was talking about guns to someone at church yesterday, and he wondered what people storing guns and ammunition expected to happen ... the Zombie Apocalypse? I told him about the book I was reading, and observed that those people didn’t expect the Zombie Apocalypse (or the German 10th Army, or Bomber Command) either, but World War II happened all over them.
Stuff you don’t expect can happen.
Didn't work out as planned.
Like the man who moved from the battlefield at Gettysburg and ended up on the battlefield at Appamattox.
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