Teaching Reading, The Alphabet, and Literacy

[From article]
Public schools are expert at creating illiteracy. Our K-12 system can usually guarantee that students don't become fluent readers. The system is nearly foolproof. Parents and teachers can make children illiterate or semi-literate simply by following this well-tested seven-step formula:
1) FORGET ABOUT THE ALPHABET.[. . .]
In her strikingly insightful 1970 book Programmed Illiteracy in Our Schools, Mary Johnson noted: "It was frequently stressed that English was 'not a phonetic language' and that children did not need to be told the separate letter sounds. 'Surely we don't have anyone here who is old-fashioned enough to tell children the sounds of the letters!' teased one consultant [from a publisher]."
2) MEMORIZE SIGHT-WORDS.
[. . .]



3) GUESS OR SKIP. The ultimate advice given by Whole Word and Whole Language gurus really came down to two ways to surrender: guess or skip. Frank Smith argued that "the first alternative and preference is to skip over the puzzling word. The second alternative is to guess what the unknown word might be." If you're in a foreign country and trying to make sense of a menu, what are your options? You can guess each word, or you can skip each word. This is what illiteracy looks like. Real readers do not guess or skip.
(4) USE CONTEXT CLUES. The official method says that children can use context (i.e., the nearby words which they often can't read) to read the word they are trying to read. Unless you rig the example, this is typically a useless technique. "The man looked out the window and saw a ____." Even the smartest, best educated people can rarely figure what X is.
[. . .]



5) USE THE ILLITERATE'S MANY HANDY WORKAROUNDS. Pre-read; post read; prediction; picture clues; summarizing the passage; relying on prior experience; and, of course, guessing. If there's a picture of an animal you can identify, assume that the word will be in the passage somewhere. Go ahead and find it. Again, all of these techniques are what any illiterate person does when he doesn't know how to read. None of them is reading. All are floundering.
6) PIT (sic) A GOOD SPIN ON FAILURE. When you experience weird reading problems, view them as "a gift." This is how dyslexia organizations describe the cognitive disorientation that sight-words induce in children. Not to worry. We are told that many of the world's smartest people were dyslexics. This claim is supposed to make you feel better about being abused by education professors.
7) ACCEPT THAT DRUGS WILL BE AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR READING PROGRAM. You won't be able to read, but you won't care, thanks to the magic of Ritalin and other chemicals. So don't waste time being fidgety, impatient, and unhappy. This is the brave new world of school-induced acceptance of mediocrity.



As you see, this is a simple, straightforward program. Follow the seven steps, and you can turn anybody into a functional illiterate. If you do it to a high degree, he will simply be illiterate; he won't function at all.
Conversely, if you ignore all these rules and do the opposite – i.e., what all phonics experts tell you to do, your children will become real readers and real students.
NB: Summer is a good time to teach children to read, before the schools can mess them up.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/how_to_create_functional_illiteracy_in_7_easy_lessons.html

June 9, 2016
How to Create Functional Illiteracy in 7 Easy Lessons
By Bruce Deitrick Price

College Professor Perplexed At Lack of Skills of Students

[From article]
On the other hand, a grave disservice has been done to those students who are interested in learning and have genuine academic credentials. Because businesses can no longer be certain that college degrees indicate anything meaningful, they insist that their new employees take additional classes to obtain various certifications. Often these workers have to spend inordinate amounts of money and time to increase learning because the university degree has been so devalued in the first place. Dumbing down education results in many victims.
Low IQ levels, total indifference to learning, no curiosity, specious logic, no in-depth training in critical thinking and writing – these are the real-life factors that face college instructors. Low grades are frustrating for many students, because they truly don't know what they don't know.
Often I will be told that I am the rare instructor who insists on correct formatting for a research paper even though this is an integral item. One student gave me a paper for which she had received an "A," and on the very first page, there were syntax and grammar errors that the other instructor had apparently ignored. Is it any wonder that so many students think they are writing "A" papers when no one has actually pointed out their substandard writing? They were never taught basic English grammar in the first place, so how can I hold them responsible?
Too many instructors are reluctant to do their job because (a) the errors are so numerous that the work involved in correcting them is monumental, (b) they fear student retaliation, (c) often the chair of a department will not back up an instructor's decision, and (d) the status of teachers is so poor that we are viewed as mere facilitators rather than purveyors of knowledge.
And yet, as college instructor Daniel J. Smith wrote in May 2015, "the expectation of high grades without merit is on the rise." He explains why bumping up a grade leads only to "reducing the opportunity for people to experience the life satisfaction that comes through earned success," whether in the academic or business world. I concur. But again, I ask: How can I possibly grade these students? And how can we stop penalizing students who actually belong in college when the very degree they are seeking is so devalued?

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/how_can_i_possibly_grade_these_students.html

March 22, 2016
How Can I Possibly Grade These Students?
By Eileen F. Toplansky

Myth Of Dyslexia

[From article]
If Samuel Blumenfeld (1927-2015) had a flaw, it was that he generally published articles that were longer than most people wanted to deal with. So his great wisdom did not reach the influence it deserved.
For one very good example, he wrote a terrifying 3,200-word article telling this country just about everything there is to know about dyslexia. The sardonic title was "Creating Dyslexia: It's as Easy as Pie."
[. . .]
And so we know from the experiments conducted by Pavlov and Luria in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and '30s that the psychologists had developed the means to artificially create behavioral disorganization. I submit that the symptoms of dyslexia developed in perfectly normal, physically healthy school children are the result of a collision of reflexes that occurs as the child advanced to the second and third grades. ...
[. . .]
By teaching this five-year-old child a sight vocabulary before he could master the letter sounds, he was being put on the road to dyslexia. This is particularly harmful because the child's brain at that early age is still in the process of organizing its patterns of thinking, its cerebral habits, habits that are very difficult to unlearn later in life. That accounts for the great difficulty dyslexics as they grow older and their thinking patterns become more firmly established. It is possible that the brain can be permanently deformed by early development of thinking patterns based on faulty teaching methods.
[. . .]
Thus, you can see how easy it is to cause dyslexia. Simply have your child memorize a sight vocabulary and develop a holistic reflex. That's all there is to it. That professors of education have perfected the process indicates that they know how it works and what its results in. That is why parents are never warned about teaching their children sight vocabularies. It's a vital part of the dumbing down process that underlies curriculum development in our education system and is supported by professional associations, journals, publishers, federal programs and funding, and the establishment as a whole.
[. . .]
Blumenfeld summed up our national predicament this way: "K-12 education is a criminal enterprise from top to bottom."
Isn't it disgusting to find that our Education Establishment relied on the "research" of psycho-sadists Pavlov and Luria? In order to serve their Motherland, these guys would torment humans and animals until they cracked.
Throughout our culture, dyslexia is typically treated as a genetic defect that a child brings to the school. If the child has this defect more or less from birth, it certainly can't be the school's fault if he doesn't learn to read. How convenient!
The same malfeasant Education Establishment that promotes sight-word memorization then promotes dyslexia as an all-purpose excuse for widespread illiteracy.
[. . .]
Dyslexia organizations like to claim that dyslexics have different brain patterns, and that's the big problem. Blumenfeld and phonics experts (such as Don Potter) claim that sight-word memorization creates those altered brain patterns, and that is the big problem. As Siegfried Engelmann put it, "when a respected 'educator' indicates that a plan is based on new research into the development of the brain, the typical parent is not in a good position to say, 'Baloney,' but odds are pretty good that it is baloney." Engelmann coined the phrase "academic child abuse." So-called dyslexia is a prime example of the results.
Reading and phonics should be thought of as more or less synonymous. That's the way it was from the time of the Hebrews and Greeks forward. Starting around 1930, even though they already knew it wouldn't work, our education experts forced Look-say on the country, and we have had an illiteracy crisis ever since.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/dyslexia_is_a_myth.html

February 7, 2016
Dyslexia Is a Myth
By Bruce Deitrick Price

Improved Methods of Teaching Reading Holds Children Back

[From article]
Marva Collins said that she could teach all children, no matter their age, to read by Christmas of their first year of schooling. A mere four months.
Conversely, in most public schools, by Christmas of their first year, most children have learned next to nothing. What's gone wrong? Why do we have an illiteracy crisis in our country, with more than 40 million functional illiterates?
Here we get to the great bait-and-switch of the 20th century. The Education Establishment changed the set of items to be memorized from 26 individual letters to several thousand large, complex designs known as words.
[. . .]
Starting circa 1931, this country's official reading theory stated that children could memorize the entire English language with automaticity, or at least 100,000 words of that language. (This nonsense is comparable to saying that all children can fly.)
So if you want to understand why reading is difficult, it's because the commissars who took over the field of education changed the game. They moved the goalposts, oh, about a mile. They changed the very nature of the activity from something that is as basic as walking, which everyone can do, to a much more elaborate activity, much like dancing in a Broadway show, which very few can do.
[. . .]
The bottom line is this: if you let your local schools teach sight-words – that is, kids must memorize words as graphic designs – you are contributing to a sophisticated kind of child abuse.
The biggest challenge we have in education is to make people take responsibility for what they are allowing. Every local newspaper and TV station should be held accountable for what it lets its public schools get away with. Ditto the Chamber of Commerce, religious organizations, local and Ivy League colleges, and community leaders. Parents need help in understanding what is being done to their children; otherwise, how can they fight back?
[. . .]
Here is the first thing parents need to know: reading starts with the alphabet, memorized with automaticity.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/why_kids_cant_read.html

November 25, 2015
Why Kids Can't Read
By Bruce Deitrick Price

In Order To Pass The Bill Congressmen Cannot Read It, If They Read It They'll Vote Against

[From article]
Mr. Magaziner was the brains behind the Clintons' failed attempt to take over one sixth of the U.S. economy in 1994.  As has been noted, HillaryCare did not pass with a Democratic majority in 1994 because those elected members of Congress actually read the bill Mr. Magaziner helped to write.  The reason why a Democratic Congress passed ObamaCare in 2010 is because Democrats didn't read it!  "We have to pass the bill," Speaker Pelosi assured them, "so that you can find out what is in it."  Right.  Take this medicine now – only then look at the WARNING label.
Mr. Magaziner has maintained a rather low public profile since.  But The New York Times found him ensconced at the Clinton Foundation.
[. . .]
[Bill Clinton] confiding in aides that despite Mr. Magaziner's managerial weaknesses, he was a visionary with good intentions. The former president, according to one person who knows them both, "thinks Ira is brilliant — and brilliant people get away with a lot in Clinton world."
Actually, brilliant people – like Ira Magaziner, like Jon Gruber, like Bill and Hillary, like Barack Obama himself – get away with a lot in Liberal Land.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/if_you_like_jon_gruber_just_remember_ira_magaziner.html

November 21, 2014
If you like Jon Gruber, just remember Ira Magaziner!
By Ken Blackwell

I Don't Got To Read No Stinkin' Books

[From article]
In an oral presentation assignment where students were asked to research the effect of Obamacare on millennials, the student presenter was asked how he could explain that Obama lied more than 20 times about Americans keeping their doctors and their health insurance plans. In response, the young man said that "it was just an oversight" on the part of the president!
So while businesses keep looking for critical thinking in their employees, instructors are faced with students who lack the ability to question, to research, to connect dots, and, frankly, to think.
[. . .]



But the 'cult of ethnicity' has its price. If pressed too far, it may portend a dangerous new turn in American life, even a return to racial segregation." In fact, "instead of a nation composed of individuals making their own free choices, America increasingly sees itself as composed of groups more or less indelible in their ethnic character." As an example, "the teaching of history ... has been used increasingly as a therapeutic tool to build a sense of self-worth among minority children. But 'feel-good history'... is a betrayal."

http://americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/i_did_not_come_to_college_to_read.html

November 8, 2014
I Did Not Come to College to Read
By Eileen F. Toplansky

Reading Online Differs From Reading Books

[From article]
The 2011 Freshman Survey from UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute found that the top reason for attending college was "to be able to get a better job" (86 percent of respondents, up from 70 percent just five years earlier).
[. . .]
(Adult fiction remains the best-selling category of e-books in both the United States and Britain.)
[. . .]



The bottom line is that while digital devices may be fine for reading that we don’t intend to muse over or reread, text that requires what’s been called "deep reading" is nearly always better done in print.
[. . .]
In this country, 26 percent indicated they were likely to multitask while reading in print, compared with 85 percent when reading on-screen.

http://chronicle.com/article/How-E-Reading-Threatens/147661/

July 14, 2014
How E-Reading Threatens Learning in the Humanities
By Naomi S. Baron

U.S. 15-year-olds Slip in International Rankings of Reading, Writing and Math

[From article]
For the first time three U.S. states - Connecticut, Florida, and Massachusetts - received separate scores.
Massachusetts’s average scores were higher than the U.S. and OCED averages in all three subjects, and Connecticut’s average scores were higher than the overall averages in science and reading.
Florida fared less well and was below both the U.S. and OCED averages on all three subjects.
[. . .]
Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek warned that the lagging performance would eventually start to have an impact on economic growth.
‘Our economy has still been strong because we have a very good economic system that is able to overcome the deficiencies of our education system,’ he told the New York Times.
‘But increasingly, we have to rely on the skills of our work force, and if we don’t improve that, we’re going to be slipping.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2517499/American-15-year-olds-falling-reading-maths-science.html

American 15-year-olds falling even further behind Asian and European counterparts in reading, maths and science global rankings
While the academic performance of 15-year-olds in other developed countries is improving, it has remained static in the U.S.
As a result the U.S. is losing ground and economists fear it will have a knock-on effect for the nation's prosperity
The top performers across reading, maths and science were all from Asia, including Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan
The U.S.'s under-performance was most striking in maths, where the average score of 481 was well below the average of 494
Three states received separate scores and Florida managed to under-perform the U.S. average on all three subjects
The nation's largest teacher union has blamed the mediocre results on high poverty rates
Even students from high income families did worse than those with similar backgrounds in other countries
By DAVID MCCORMACK
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 10:42 EST, 3 December 2013 | UPDATED: 13:34 EST, 3 December 2013

Less Than One Third NYC Public School Students Passed Reading Exam

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/less_than_third_reading_exams_public_gGQdfTWObFecMAsHsnti3I

Less than a third of NY's public school students passed math, reading exams last year
By YOAV GONEN
New York Post
Last Updated: 1:08 AM, August 7, 2013
Posted: 1:06 AM, August 7, 2013

No Need To Read The Letter, Just Answer It

US Rep. Michael Capuano with former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who explained about Obama's Health Care Bill, "We have to pass the bill in order to learn what is in it." 


US Rep. Capuano, who extended The Pelosi doctrine to letters from constituents.

Have US Congressmen given up on ever learning how to read? We know they do not need to read the bills they vote on making them into laws. But now it appears they do not read letters from their own constituents who elect them. I do not know who is more to blame--voters who elect these bozos or the bozos themselves.

[Letter to US Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA)

Dear Mike Capuano,
You must be thinking of some other constituent's letter.  I wrote that if the State was getting
rid of shooter games at MassPike rest areas, we should look into changing the toxic atmosphere
in our halfway houses for juvenile offenders(I worked at one.)  At times, all 3 floors had  violent rap,
violent videogames, and violent movies on a jumbo screen going simultaneously.
To build a true therapeutic community costs money: instead, staff bonded with their charges over these games
and rewarded kids with increased access to it.  Gunfire, screaming, explosions, blood:
that's our babysitter!

Yours in gun control and other kinds of control, too, I hope,
Ian

On AprJuly2625 20132004, at 1:47 PM, Congressman Michael E. Capuano wrote:

April 26, 2013

Mr. Ian Maxwell MacKinnon
11 Suffolk St
Cambridge, MA 02139-2712

Dear Mr. MacKinnon:

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns that violent video games are receiving unfair blame in the wake of recent tragedies, such as that in Newtown, Connecticut. I agree that holding video games responsible for violent behavior is unproductive and that what our country needs is to implement real reforms that address gun violence.

Reading, Writing Keeps Mind Active

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2238753/Forget-brain-training-gadgets--just-writing-letter-reading-newspaper-mind-active-old-age.html

Forget brain training gadgets - just writing a letter or reading a
newspaper is enough to keep your mind active into old age
The simple activities all helped stave off memory loss
Those who also played chess, watched a play, or regularly visited the
library had 'younger brains'
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 13:10 EST, 26 November 2012 | UPDATED: 13:24 EST, 26 November 2012

Here's Why US Senators Are Bozos


http://www.redstate.com/hogan/2009/12/16/sen-coburn-forces-reading-of-767-page-amendment-sen-baucus-admits-senators-dont-understand-the-bill/

Sen. Coburn Forces Reading of 767-Page Amendment - Sen. Baucus Admits Senators Don’t Understand the Bill
Posted by hogan
RedState.com
Wednesday, December 16th at 12:44PM EST

Reading is Dangerous

Reading is Dangerous

J. Edgar Hoover recognized the dangers of reading books. People get ideas. Then they talk about them and write about them. They start asking questions and cause all kinds of trouble in a peaceful Conformist loving city like Cambridge. The City Manager knows best. Better to give money to MIT and to Harvard and to prevent trouble in this city by the Charles, by keeping the number of hours for library access down to a minimum. People can watch television or listen to their iPods or MP3s. No need to read books. Don't worry, be happy!

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/opinions/x817678081/Impact-of-library-closing-detrimental

Letter: Impact of library closing detrimental
GERALD BERGMAN
Elm Street
Cambridge Chronicle
Tue Feb 17, 2009, 02:45 AM EST