Can Bad Education Inflict Brain Damage?? (AN UPDATE)

FreeRepublic.com ^ | March 19, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Yes, many seek comfort in this thought. If the damage lasted only 10 years and hurt 5,000,000 people, I’d want to agree...But the damage lasted 70+ years and hurt 50,000,000 people.

[Sherman Logan]

I agree 100%. I was reading fluently before I was four years old, so I literally cannot remember not knowing how to read.

One daughter learned early by sounding out words, the other didn’t become a fluent reader till around 12 and from what I can tell mostly not by phonics.

But properly taught phonics have a statistically much higher level of success than the other methods. I suspect the kids who learn better by some other method tend to be natural readers and will pick it up regardless of how they are taught, or not taught.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Thanks for your comment.
Let me add to it this way. The USA has three great educators: Rudolph Flesch (via his books), Samuel Blumenfeld, and Sigfried Engelmann. (Each has a phonics program.)

I tremendously admire these three men, and tend to think they got everything right. I hope everyone will check out their books on Amazon, and pick the title that seems most congenial. You can’t go wrong.

[Myrddin]

I learned basic phonics in kindergarten. It has served me well in English, German, Welsh, French, Italian and Turkish. The mechanics differ slightly in each language, but the basic principles are the same. Irish and Scottish Gaelic have slightly more complex rules. The technique even works for Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. The hurdle for a native English speaker is the different set of symbols that compress the alphabets in those languages.

[DainBramage]

Weatherford High School alumni! The fighting Kangaroos!

[RipSawyer]

What is it that has produced all these adults who don’t know the difference between loose and lose, to, two and too, their, there and they’re, your and you’re, who put apostrophes in plurals and all the other purely goofy mistakes that would have had me flunking out of grade school?

While I’m at it whence came all the idiots who say things like, “five hundred times smaller” or “reduced up to three thousand percent”? If I had written stupid crap like that in the sixth grade I would have wound up in a home for the mentally retarded.

[Biblical Calvinist]

I’ve uploaded 18 Lectures by Samuel Blumendfeld on the history of American Education, in addition to many other topics, including an indepth discussion of the Whole Language methodology, contrasted with true Phonics.

You may download these mp3 files here =

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=ae0f1a52cdf6bd4175a4fc82078ae6c8dda4e223c272b95cf7e866bfb1230ce0

(These Mp3 files are in two large ZIP files. Simply upzip them with WinZip, or WinRar, to see the individual Mp3 files. Please let me know if you have any problem downloading these files.)

[Yaelle]

Do you have an education degree?

Did you see my post 17? I really don't need a degree to see how kids naturally learn to read. (I have a bunch of other degrees though...)

[Jeff Chandler]

I can put my anecdotal evidence against yours.

My first grade class had 52 pupils of assorted intelligence and ONE teacher with no assistant. We all learned to read phonics first in half the year. By the end of the first grade we knew how to read, and not just certain level basil readers, but anything we came across.

Meanwhile, our friends in public school learned to sight read and by the third grade could read silly Dick and Jane stories.

This went on year after year.

Written language is coded language. Learn the code, you learn to read. It’s been that way for 3500 years, because it is human engineered method of learning.

Maybe your genius kids were able to guess the code all by themselves, but they are the exception.

Analogy would be to musical notation. Some rare folks can play by ear, but most people have to be taught.