Posted on 03/30/2018 12:09:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
Aldous Huxley devised a single beautiful image for capturing all of these hopes and fears: a hi-tech assembly line where infants were manufactured to specification. In particular, oxygen levels were adjusted to create babies of very low, low, medium, and very high intelligence. This image, this metaphor, was stunning in its concreteness. A huge industrial operation, all clean and shiny, all stainless steel and glass, did what nobody had thought of doing before: control human intelligence in embryo.
It turns out there is an activity in the real world, in real society, that is exactly parallel. That was the creation of readers to order. By the simple device of depriving some children of certain key information, they were stunted, no longer able to become professors, more or less predestined for low-level jobs.
As Huxley in the year 1931 was doing the final edit on his book, this country's Education Establishment built a new sort of assembly line for producing flawed children. Instead of withholding oxygen, this factory withheld the alphabet. Parents were told that the ABCs are not essential and could be ignored. As one famous expert announced dogmatically, "[c]urrent practice in the teaching of reading does not require knowledge of letters." Really?
It turns out there is an activity in the real world, in real society, that is exactly parallel. That was the creation of readers to order. By the simple device of depriving some children of certain key information, they were stunted, no longer able to become professors, more or less predestined for low-level jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
When I transferred to public school in seventh grade, most of my peers were still at a first or second grade or level. It was bizarre. Like I was a giant among insects... and I didn’t want to be. It should never have been like that.
K-9 might yield better results.
Once upon a time, young people in America graduated from High School with the ability to read real books, perform complex calculations by hand, and discuss history, geography, and civics with good understanding. As Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have noted, this was true in many black schools as well as white schools.
The Powers That Be decided to change that. The education establishment today is intentionally short-changing kids. I have no doubt that this is deliberate. It is a means of control.
The problem is government in education. That’s the worst thing that ever happened to this country. Government can’t manage a 2-car funeral, let alone education or health care.
My experience is much the same. Mother taught me reading/arithmetic with flash cards, was promoted from Kindergarten to 1st Grade, private schools until 5th, switched to public school reading at University level. Of course being smart, and the youngest in the class, makes you a target, not popular.
I was taught phonics in public school in NJ (born in 1970) and my husband (same age) wasn’t. The difference in our reading ability to this day is like night and day.
Lack of phonics instruction at our highly regarded northern VA public school is what made me finally pull our older son out to homeschool (and never send the younger to begin with).
bump!
My granddaughter has had similar experience with phonics, starting with learning the alphabet at an early age, and consistent messaging from those of us who care for her, led by her mother. She is in first grade, can read almost anything. I expect her little sister will have the same skillset.
I personally believe that reading to babies very early on is critical in their development. Just the exposure to stories helps them to develop a sense of how people and things relate to each other, including all of the early learning of colors, animals, body parts, shapes, textures.
We are lucky to have fairly high quality public schools in this area, but do really believe that so much of this learning begins at home, and very early.
The Dems/liberal culture would have you think that only the government can succeed in this area.
I got to the 7th grade and was put in the retarded division. I could not read or do math. My parents took me aside and taught me to read and write. The next year I was placed in advanced division and never looked back. I am dyslexic but the public school called me lazy and stupid and punished me.
“Instead of withholding oxygen, this factory withheld the alphabet. Parents were told that the ABCs are not essential and could be ignored. As one famous expert announced dogmatically, “[c]urrent practice in the teaching of reading does not require knowledge of letters.”
And the vast majority of people, INCLUDING CONSERVATIVES, use the public schools, meaning either believe this crap regardless of what they’re told, or don’t care what it does to their kids (or don’t want to downgrade their ‘lifestyle’ to keep kids out of the public schools).
Back in Iowa in 1962 when I started school they pounded the alphabet into us. When my son started school here in California in 1990 this crap was going on. Thank god he went back to Texas. He learned to read and is a writer now.
School is one thing
The PARENTS are another
WE are responsible for our OWN kids 100%
Right conservatives ?
“My granddaughter has had similar experience with phonics, starting with learning the alphabet at an early age, and consistent messaging from those of us who care for her, led by her mother. She is in first grade, can read almost anything. I expect her little sister will have the same skillset.”
It comes down to whether parents are able to ACCEPT the fact that public schools DO NOT ‘educate’ kids in the best interests interests of the kids - they have higher priorities (like ‘leveling the playing field’ so minorities have higher ‘self-esteem’). From what I can tell, the vast majority of parents still ‘trust’ the public schools to do what’s best for their kids. Many parent eventually do catch on, but by then the damage is already done to their kids.
Parents essentially have ONE CHANCE to ‘get it right’ for their kids, when they’re roughly 3 to 9 years old. If they learn reading then (properly, through phonics), they’ll be great readers through life. If not, they will still eventually learn reading...but not nearly as well (after all, phonics now starts at Grade 4 in the public schools, with ‘Sight Words’ being used to delay their learning when they’re younger). Math is similar, teach them right when young, although that window is when the kids are a couple of years older than for reading.
I invite my fellow FReepers to review my childish and illiterate posts from circa 2009 when I first joined this site.
I was then a newly minted high school graduate who was emblematic of the deliberate ignorance being inculcated in the public schools.
Only after redoing my high school education as a home school curriculum did I truly learn not just to read, but to LOVE reading and discovering the knowledge that was once hidden to me.
Our public schools MUST be retaken from the leftists and globalists who see destroying education as a sure way to destroy the USA.
Excellent post young lady.
Private schooling whether it be religious, homeschooling, or independent, is the only way to stop the education child abuse that occurs today in the public system.
The other thing that happened in the old days is that kids who wanted to dropped out when they wanted to.
No one was forced into the teacher-jobs programs called school. Many left to learn trades with functional literacy.
I had a similar experience. I was educated to read using phonics. This was in Canada in the late 50’s. I transferred to a school system in the US when we moved here (US). I was about a year ahead educationally and I was able to tell. It was weird. What I found really strange was a student from California came into my school. He was about a year behind my classmates.
And the vast majority of people, INCLUDING CONSERVATIVES, use the public schools, meaning either believe this crap regardless of what they’re told, or don’t care what it does to their kids (or don’t want to downgrade their ‘lifestyle’ to keep kids out of the public schools).
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this should be repeated over and over and over.
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