Posted on 09/27/2023 3:58:00 PM PDT by CFW
For 40 years, Lucy Calkins dominated literacy instruction in much of the country and especially New York City. She built an empire both intellectual and financial.
In the past year, Teachers College in Columbia University tossed Lucy and her Reading and Writing Project out on the sidewalk. According to The New Yorker, there was a problem, especially in New York City: "literacy rates remain dismal." Uh-oh.
The big question is, how can a person who got everything wrong be the brains of a world-famous education juggernaut? Calkins was an elementary school teacher — not an original thinker, but probably well intentioned. Nonetheless, she appropriated the wrong-headed clichés created by the Education Establishment during the last 90 years. One popular gimmick assumes falsely that children are natural readers: just put a book in their hands. In sum, she concocted yet another version of Whole Word, which Progressive educators put into play starting in 1930. Rudolf Flesch explained it all in his 1955 book Why Johnny Can't Read — namely, the schools refused to teach phonics and instead made Johnny memorize Whole Words, AKA sight-words. Literacy rates became dismal.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I didn't realize how many times my mother read those "A,B,C'" books to me until I had children of my own and was doing the same. I could lay on the bed with my children and with my eyes closed read those books to them, over and over again.
Due to parents that loved to read, and passed that love down to their children, I read fast! We may have been poor little dirt road southern kids, but books were plentiful in our house, and we were expected to be able to read before starting school.
We need to return to phonics if our educational system is going to be rescued. I read more and more of schools returning to that method of teaching. When they do, their testing scores increase, and if more schools will return to that method, children will once again be able to read.
No wonder kids have such frustration in their lives. Can you imagine walking down the street and not being able to read the signs? Or purchasing a product and not being able to read the instructions included?
Our enemies have worked hard in dumbing down America. We need to fight back against that deliberate destruction of our educational system.
How many of us here remember the articles of concern from the 70s and 80s warning that children were entering school without knowing basic words such as “ball” or “cat?. Then it was concern that five year-old children didn’t know their “ABC’s”. Now, the concern is that the children aren’t potty-trained.
Destroy the educational system and you destroy the nation.
Thanks to my grandmother, I started the First Grade already able to read. I remember that syllables and phonics were the way I was taught, even if those words weren’t used.
LOOK. The first word in my first grade reading book, Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot, and Puff. For the first years of school I hated to read.
Also need to return to Flash cards for math.
Reading to our small children is one of the most developmentally important tasks that one can do as a parent. It is also wonderfully bonding for both.
(Johnny Can’t Read)
Oh, so that’s how rap got started.....
For 5 years my late beloved wife fought an educational guerilla war against Lucy Calkins. She avoided going to her workshops at Teachers College. When Calkins came to her Queens school she challenged her methods to her face in a civil manner. She organized her classroom as Calkins prescribed but taught her kids her way, except when a supervisor entered , then she switched to the Calkins method and switched back when the admin left. Her kids, 3rd graders from Maspeth, were in on it and loved it. She fought this fight till retirement and her kids are the better for it. The youngest of them are 21 now. She was called home 10 years ago. When I read this in the NY Post I drove to her resting place and said, “ You won!”
That’s what I mean by those nights sitting with Mom, Dad, Grandpa, or Grandma and reading those “picture books”. “C” is for “cat”. “C” has always been for “cat”. Just like “B” has been for “ball”. “F” is for “Fish”. “M” is for “moon”.
Decades ago, that is the way parents taught their children their letters and how to read before starting school. With my oldest grandchild, “M” for “moon” meant we had to go outside and look for the moon. He was fascinated by the moon. And, that was all due to reading. Of course, then there was the book, “Goodnight Moon”. There is no telling how many copies of that book I gave to expectant parents at baby showers! LOL!
And then there was pointing out the things in the house or outside and asking your child to guess what letter it started with. My children came up with some interesting answers at first, but always remembered the “fun” lesson. For them, we were just playing.
My dad read Gulliver's Travels to me, my brother and sister when we were very young. I still have that book.
“For 5 years my late beloved wife fought an educational guerilla war against Lucy Calkins. She avoided going to her workshops at Teachers College. When Calkins came to her Queens school she challenged her methods to her face in a civil manner. She organized her classroom as Calkins prescribed but taught her kids her way, except when a supervisor entered , then she switched to the Calkins method and switched back when the admin left. Her kids, 3rd graders from Maspeth, were in on it and loved it. She fought this fight till retirement and her kids are the better for it. The youngest of them are 21 now. She was called home 10 years ago. When I read this in the NY Post I drove to her resting place and said, “ You won!””
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What a great legacy for your dear one. There is probably an untold number of her former students who owe their ability to read to your late wife. She is receiving her reward in heaven!
When I was litle, my Mom read all of Edgar Rice Burroughs works to me, and Jules Verne as well.
I honestly cannot remember a time when I could not read, and read well. It’s weird.
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg
National Commission on Education, 1983 (under Reagan)
We’ve known we have a big problem for a *long* time.
Reminds me of a story I heard of a young child in England. Grew up during WW2 in London, and had to deal with blackouts at night. The first time she saw the moon it scared the hell out of her.
My grandmother had all the ERB books, I read them all probably late elementary to early middle school. Plus tons of other stuff, Asimov, Heinlein, etc.
Those would've been good books to learn early. It seems I've always read. Still do, a lot. One of my favorite thing.
When I taught at a hippie school way back in the day they practically had a shrine to Lucy Calkins. Like many on here I learned to read by phonics. It is truly the only lasting way to learn to read. You also learn to decode unfamiliar words with ease.
I can even decode & pronounce foreign words. Phonics all the way.
What a beautiful tribute to your wife.
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