Sight-Words: the Kudzu smothering K-12

if you’ve driven on southern interstates, you know kudzu. It’s that leafy vine that can cover the tallest trees. Finally, motorists see nothing but kudzu, which has earned the nickname, “The vine that ate the South.”

Kudzu, indigenous to Japan, was touted as an ornamental shade plant at US expositions in 1876 and 1883. During the 20th century, government agencies promoted kudzu as cattle feed.

The Department of Agriculture also recommended “kudzu to help control erosion of slopes which led to the….government-funded plantings of kudzu…By 1946, it was estimated that 3,000,000 acres of kudzu had been planted.”

During this same period our government was also forcing Sight-Words into the public schools, an interesting parallel.

Kudzu was the classic invasive species, initially welcomed as an exotic import, and finally hated as a weed. It’s difficult and expensive to eliminate.

Similarly, Sight-Words were welcomed by the self-appointed experts in our Education Establishment, effectively a branch of our government. So now we have a kudzu epidemic and a Sight-Word epidemic. Which is more destructive? Sight-Words, because millions of children are damaged at the beginning of their lives.

Under the right conditions, kudzu is not a problem. In Japan, for example, winters kill off the above-ground growth so the parasitic aspects remain marginal.

Sight-Words, however, are the parasite that goes on a rampage and hangs around until you surrender.

Sight-Words, like kudzu, could only be promoted by a government bureaucracy with limited vision. However, experts in the Department of Agriculture were presumably sincere in singing the praises of kudzu. On the other hand, experts in the Education Establishment knew from the beginning that Sight-Words would not be an effective way to teach reading. Furthermore, according to famous research by Dr. Samuel Orton circa 1927, Sight-Words would cripple a child cognitively. It’s a shocking perversity that phony experts pushed Sight-Words and still do. Why? Typically, these experts are left-wing ideologues who want leveling in order to bring about socialist goals.

Not familiar with Sight-Words? Let me mention that the phrase refers to any words you memorize as a graphic design. You can’t spell it or sound it out. You learn it as a shape, just as the Chinese memorize their ideograms or you might memorize §. It’s a slow and difficult way to learn English words. Our experts clearly prefer SLOW.

CODA: Here is a simple way to appreciate the folly of Sight-Words. Consider the tiny goals for a child’s first year. A typical kindergarten list aims for only three words per week. At the end of 16 weeks, children—even if successful— will know only 48 words. They are still illiterate and will be for years to come. Had they learned phonics, they would be able to read age-appropriate books by the end of 16 weeks….Also note that the three words for Week 16 are he, she, we. Note that these words look alike and sound alike. They are perfectly phonetic. But the official excuse for using Sight-Words is that some English words don’t obey any rules! Obviously, our experts think American parents can be lied to with reckless abandon.

Bruce Deitrick Price explains theories and methods on his education site Improve-Education.org.

“How do you phonetically pronounce ghost?”

Fist, but only when you’re trying to be a wise guy.

Phonetics pertains to the **sounds** of the letters, and the sounds of the syllables, which in turn are the building blocks of words which have **meanings** representing things and ideas.
But phonetics is not the study of the **meanings** of the words. Phonetics is the study of the ** sounds** of the hieroglyphics on the page.
I learned to read the sounds by learning phonetics. Sound it out, I was told.
I learned the meaning of ‘Mama’ when she pointed to herself; and how to read the word two years later. Sounding it out makes it immediately clear that the word is one syllable spoken twice.

As I did say, first you learn the rules of how the letters (and combinations) sound : p is puh, h is huh; then you learn the exceptions to the rules: ph together makes the f-sound, fuh, not puh-huh.
All I meant is that it’s a whole lot easier to memorize few sounds and exceptions, than trying to memorize all the words in the freakin’ language by looking at flash cards.

“I did not fully grasp English comprehension until I was taught Latin and Greek word formations (root words, prefixes, and suffixes) and the difference between Teutonic and Latinate contributions to our language.”

Well of course I learned these things too. My study of Latin and a little bit of Greek in high school still, 4 decades later, enables me to pick apart words and discern their **meanings** without always needing a dictionary. I can break down the word and figure it out. Phonetics in reverse, as it were. Complementary, not contradictory, as you seem to imply.
But before I could parse prefixes, roots, suffixes, and discern the **meanings**of multisyllabic words, first I learned the letters and their sounds; I learned to READ and was taught how to look up words in a dictionary, events and concepts in an encyclopedia.
And my point, rather belabored, I’m afraid, is that these building-block break-it-down analytical **processes** aren’t being taught in most American schools anymore.
Do you even realize the average college freshman has no clue how to look up a word in a dictionary? No clue about root words, prefixes, suffixes, antonyms, hominems, synonyms, diacritical marks.

Guten—who? Did he know phonics?? He must have known some rudimentary fore runner of phonics. He certainly knew the alphabet and the sounds the letters were supposed to make. Otherwise that whole moveable type thing would have turned out badly, methinks.
Shakespeare? Chaucer? Students of Greek and Latin, not of American schools. Did they know phonetics? On some unpracticed, instinctive level, I think they did.
Latinate? Teutonic? Whuh? Ohhhh, some kinda European stuff.That’s racist. Elitist. Not.

We need to return to phonetics and Latin and Greek and reading and critical thinking. And no, it’s not brash or simplistic to say this country is in deep trouble because our putative educational system is turning out a nation of nitwits.

You know that I almost agree 100 percent. Whether the method is sight-words or phonics though, the stress must be on the teaching.

My mother was a school teacher and was most upset by the meddlesome administrators and edicts from on high, that hampered the ability to teach.

My problem in school was a backward very rural community in Georgia that still employed teachers hired during WWII, without four-year degrees, in a small, grade one through twelve, school that had exempted them from certification requirements.

I will never forget the day that, as a third grader, I tried to explain to my Sunday school teacher who was also the fifth grade teacher at my school, what a footnote was. One of the children asked what a word in our lesson meant and she did not know. I told her that it was explained in the footnote (Mom had taught me about footnotes). She looked at me like I was from the moon. I could not make a fifth grade teacher understand what a footnote was.

That is part of the reason my mother was motivated to go back to school to become a teacher. She got her degree the year I graduated from high school. She got her M.Ed. on the same day two of my brothers got their bachelor's degrees. My mother later taught there at my old school, after some of those older teachers had already retired. I learned firsthand at an early age about incompetent or unqualified teachers. The method matters not at all if the teacher does not teach.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.