I found this podcast from this 
post:
I subbed today for a 7th and 8th grade teacher. I’m not exaggerating when I say at least 50% of the students were at a 2nd grade reading level. The students were to spend the class time filling out an “all about me” worksheet, what’s your name, favorite color, favorite food etc. I was asked 20 times today “what is this word?”. Movie. Excited. Trait. “How do I spell race car driver?”
I've only listened to one episode so far, but it's really well produced, seems well-researched and very well put together.
From what I gather so far, the ways that the American public school system "teaches" kids how to read is not only completely wrong, but actually saddles them bad habits which fundamentally hinder their reading comprehension.
A huge swath of American adults are functionally illiterate, and I think I'm starting to understand why.
I remember reading about how some 1st/2nd gen young immigrants (like under 10) not really being able to speak any language cause their parents didn't speak their language at home with the hope of helping the kids get a leg up - except they weren't stellar at English and could've used a lot of adult ESL classes. So those kids never really got their parents first language and they couldn't really speak English, and they were kind of a mess at school for a bit. The official guidance was, just speak to them in your most proficient language and the school system will catch them up in Kindergarten and Grade 1.
"...at all. The more one read, the more one was subject to indoctrination, which is something which of course I experienced myself. This is the reason why achieving “literacy” is always the first aim of communist regimes. Elementary."
that's the chaser that lets you know it's not a bit and therefore even funnier in a twisted way
A lot of people are commenting about how, so what, lots of people can read and are also stupid. Except this isn't about being stupid. Or dumb. Reading and writing is a skill you gotta be tutored into. You won't learn it through intuition. You won't learn it through osmosis, guesswork or because the Holy Ghost descended from the heavens to enlighten your soul. You have to be taught, step by step, how to decode writing in order to then develop it into other skills, like different levels of reading, making annotations, making summaries, prose writing, and so on. All of these things should ideally become second nature to you through a long process of 'scholarization', one that is formulated with full understanding of what kids of different ages tend to need, and what kids in particular may require of their teachers.
Think about it. This isn't like zoomers being unable to use Windows because they have phones. It's like not having a school system in the first place. Good god, the districts that keep this scam pedagogy in place are gonna create a lost generation.
There probably is a reasonable argument to be made about it being very difficult to make reasonable democratic decisions if a person can't read and therefore can't seek information and views outside their immediate social circle.
Of course, also not surprising that some people would interpret that as "Afghans stupid."
But then you'd have to elect one of the 30% of people who can read.
But then you'd have to elect one of the 30% of people who can read.
Not the case. I worked a while ago with a couple of comrades who weren't able to comprehend the texts we had to tackle in our union work and what they do might interest you. They did speak with people about it and were often better informed than those who read the texts but thought they understood them.
you see that with foreign workers the ones who can speak english have outsised status and influence among the others
Yeah, there are ways to mitigate the problem but widespread illiteracy is probably one of the factors that contribute to liberal democracy along the American model being an absolute shitshow when imposed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Not that American style democracy isn't also a shitshow in America, of course.
hmmm...I definitely am on the side that a functional democratic society requires literacy at high levels. Look at all the Communist countries for which one of the very first initiatives was literacy campaigns.
A literacy campaign could be started in Afghanistan, too. I'm not sure how that would look in Afghanistan specifically because I know nothing about their history and current context beyond US intervention and the Taliban being in power, but if a proletarian government took power I'm sure that'd be one of their first steps.
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA),[a] renamed the Republic of Afghanistan[b] in 1987, was the Afghan state during the one-party rule of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) from 1978 to 1992. It relied heavily on assistance from the Soviet Union for most of its existence, especially during the Soviet–Afghan War.
The PDPA came to power through the Saur Revolution, which ousted the regime of the unelected autocrat Mohammed Daoud Khan; he was succeeded by Nur Muhammad Taraki as the head of state and government on 30 April 1978.[3] Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, the organizer of the Saur Revolution, introduced several contentious reforms during their rule, such as land and marriage reforms and an enforced policy of de-Islamization alongside the promotion of socialism.[4]
Education During communist rule, the PDPA government reformed the education system; education was stressed for both sexes, and widespread literacy programmes were set up.[149] By 1988, women made up 40 percent of the doctors and 60 percent of the teachers at Kabul University; 440,000 female students were enrolled in different educational institutions and 80,000 more in literacy programs.[150] In addition to introducing mass literacy campaigns for women and men, the PDPA agenda included: massive land reform program; the abolition of bride price; and raising the marriage age to 16 for girls and to 18 for boys. [151]
if only the CIA hadn't fucked them up so badly by funding and training all those far right religious extremistsNever let the United States run Educational Aid in your country
I am not an expert I would check zerobooks or haymarket or verso books for the possibility of a non-brainwormed take. This one caught my eye - The forty year war on Afghanistan
But I dunno if it just comes down to both sideism or is there a more nuanced take on Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
Hopefully someone will convince the taliban people need to be taught to read to study the Quran
also illiteracy is a humiliating thing to admit to in our society and it isn't rich kids not being taught to read. mocking illiteracy is classism
in this case it's also rich kids. teachers/schools bought into the hype at all levels despite governments telling them no stop. the difference is the rich kids can afford private tutors when their parents realize they can't read.
the difference is the rich kids can afford private tutors when their parents realize they can't read.
So in other words it's not really also rich kids
what I mean is that rich school districts were also using this method. there's a bit in the podcast where rich parents in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the US were going to the library to ask where they could get materials to teach their kids how to read.
Yeah my MIL used to be a public school teacher in a district that no one would ever call poor. Not the richest, but definitely not poor. For the last several years of her career all I ever heard from her was along the lines of "what the fuck am I supposed to be doing again? I have a room full of 9th graders who can't read." No idea what method they were using in the earlier grades, but well off suburban districts are definitely pumping out illiterate kids as well.
it's probably the method outlined in the podcast. the people peddling the scam were "rockstars" in elementary education circles in anglophone world.
MILLENNIA of funny SQUIGGLES on stone tablets, papyrus, and PAPER
There are only THREE sounds in the word "EIGHT", why are there FIVE letters???
They have played us for FOOLS
This isn't like zoomers being unable to use Windows because they have phones.
damn is that an actual thing ?
I have heard this anecdotally. That Zoomers don't really know how to use like actual computers that well. I think when I was in high school ('10 to '13) having like a personal lap top and using it for everything Including school was more of a thing. Smart phones weren't quite as ubiquitous people still did a lot of social media and stuff on an actual computer. Now social media and casual internet browsing and media consumption are so accessible through a phone that kids aren't really having to use as much computer stuff. I barely use actual computers except for gaming and photo editing. Like how many Zoomers do you think know what the Command Prompt is and does, ya know. I'd guess not a lot.
You won’t learn it through intuition.
You don't? I taught myself how to read. How would you call that?
Depends. If we mean "without a personal teacher" sure, but no one is looking at a book of a language the don't know and just suddenly learning it.
i would call that "I taught myself how to lie".
I was about four or five, and I figured out that certain groups of glyphs in the book I was read to synchronized with the words I heard.
I did the same thing when I was 2 years old, though just because I could read them didn't mean that I necessarily comprehended what they meant. I used to get particularly upset by 'to let' signs because I thought they were misspelling 'toilet'. I complained to my mother about it on the way to nursery, and she realised that I could read well enough to notice an 'incorrect' spelling.
you've used the word taught, which implies reasoning. which is by definition not intuitive. reading was never innate to you or anyone else.
I was thinking about this in the context of the UK the other day, and it makes sense to wear down the educational system as much as possible, mainly for two reasons.
Quality isn’t necessary. The education system up to 14-ish years old serves essentially as free(ish) daycare so parents don’t have an excuse not to work. This then allows rent/house prices to inflate up to what a couple can pay, rather than a single parent.
The uneducated masses are easy to control. I work/live in a very well-educated environment, but have regular contact with less educated people. It’s insane the things they’ll believe in.
I think education-as-daycare became really apparent during the first year of the pandemic. Businesses and the gov were really pushing for kids to go back to school so they could send their parents back to work.
People have just accepted that American public education is a failure and the parents have to do the real teaching. And yet so many parents don't even know there's anything wrong until way too late. Even if the schools are passing kids despite not being able to read, an engaged parent should be able to notice it very early on as long they read with their kid at home. My mom read to me nearly every night until I could read on my own. She would read a page and then have me read a page after a while. Eventually, I was reading whole books to her and I loved reading so much that when I got in trouble one time she took my bookcase away, leaving me with a TV that sat unused, while I bawled my eyes out.
when I got in trouble one time she took my bookcase away,
Giga Chad mom casually lifting up an entire book case and moving it out of your room.
No she just glared angrily at the bookcase until it left of its own accord
Even if the schools are passing kids despite not being able to read
And schools should always pass kids. The body of literature, theory and experiments in that regard for teaching education in Europe is quite extensive. If your society is structured around passing grades then the way to built up on the ability of students isn't to force them for years in the same rooms, but to change what they experience, keep up the social links and give specific support.
Besides that even if a school isn't able to give specific support it is better for kids to not be put in repeating classes.
What you write is true though, having cultural attitudes at home that do sometimes center books are great. They ought to be somewhat supplemented even for kids that are praised as being smart with other things, that are beneficial for social and physical aspects. If your kid likes a certain series, try to enable the kid to visit a fan conference about it or alike.
Just like in Le Guin's Earth Sea, one of the most important lessons for the young magician's apprentice wasn't to control magic. It was to chill under trees and find calm as well as connection in nature.
A special ed teacher who had been working for decades and who knew many students who had been held back told me the same. Even as adults these students would tell him that things had been going okay until they had been held back. One administration hinted at doing the same to one of our kids because he didn’t speak English at an academic level, but we worked our asses off to bring him up to speed in a matter of months, and the same special ed teacher told us that parents don’t actually need to hold their kids back if they don’t want to (something the principal failed to mention). Soon enough our kid was reading, writing, and speaking at his grade level (which he’d already been doing in his mother tongue) and the principal acted like she had never even suggested that she wanted to hold him back. And shit like this could have ruined his life! School is already difficult enough without every figure of authority telling you you’re too much of a fuckup to advance with your friends to the next grade!
And schools should always pass kids.
I'm absolutely not familiar with the literature you're talking about here, but I have failed a lot of classes in my time, probably even a majority of them a couple years (7th and 8th grades) and I know that I would have been miserable (or more miserable I guess lol) if I'd been made to repeat things for that.
I did actually once have my French teacher try and make me start over from the beginning with French the next year instead of advancing to the next level, but I ended up unexpectedly moving to Québec the following year instead where my French was good enough within the year to join in the regular French first language classes so lmao
she took my bookcase away, leaving me with a TV that sat unused
My intuition suggests that this contravenes the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26.
tbh i still wouldnt take away the bookcase, if anything i might swap the books out for more boring educational ones.
People think school should prepare you for your future job in an amazon warehouse
We're gonna start seeing Playskool babies' first parcel scanner toys soon.
That exists and kids love scanning things with something that goes BEEP really loud
I guess it's just daycare to these people...
That's mostly what it is after a certain grade level anyways
Parents are essential for student growth and education but that doesn't make them responsible for all of it. The entire point of school is to take on the the major burden of teaching kids with expertise and efficiency and providing a place for children to be with other children.
Making everyone desperate and afraid seems to be working wonders! Capitalism is so cool
That’s why I personally don’t want to have kids. Considering the state of labor in the west, how are parents supposed to be able to spend time with their kids? Granted when I was growing up, my mom always stayed at home because she could. She didn’t have to work because my dad made more than enough to provide for a family on a single income (pre-2008 recession).
Stay at home moms have to be hella rare in this age of rampant exploitation, so I have no idea how kids are being raised. Add on the fact that there’s no guaranteed parental leave in
and I’m at a complete loss
I think adult illiteracy is pretty high in the U.S. as well. I have had multiple middle managers who cannot write a coherent paragraph to save their lives, to the degree that I have had to go literally ask them what they mean because otherwise it would be reading tea leaves.
Even worse is people who are lifer manual laborers, they can be very smart and great with their hands, but ask them to read something above very basic text and their eyes just glaze over. Something has gone seriously wrong here.
this one?
You can look at any existing socialist country— if you don’t want to call them socialist, call them whatever you want. Post capitalist— whatever, I don’t care. Call them camels or window shades, it doesn’t matter as long as we know the countries we’re talking about. If you look at any one of those countries, you can evaluate them in several ways. One is comparing them to what they had before, and that to me is what’s very compelling. That’s what so compelling about Cuba, for instance. When I was in Cuba I was up in the Escambia, which is like the Appalachia of Cuba, very rugged mountains with people who were poor, or they were. And I said to this campesino, I said, “Do you like Fidel?” and he said “Si si, with all my soul.” I remember this gesture, with all our souls. I said “Why?” and he pointed to this clinic right up on the hill which we had visited. He said, “Look at that.” He said “Before the revolution, we never saw a doctor. If someone was seriously ill, it would take twenty people to carry that person, it’d go day and night. It would take two days to get to the hospital. First because it was far away and second because you couldn’t go straight, you couldn’t cross the latifundia lands, the boss would kill you. So, you had to go like this, and often when we got to the hospital, the person might be dead by the time we got there. Now we have this clinic up here with a full-time doctor. And today in Cuba when you become a doctor you got to spend two years out in the country, that’s your dedication to the people. And a dentist that comes one day a week. And for serious things, we’re not more than 20 minutes away from a larger hospital. That’s in the Escambia. So that’s freedom. We’re freer today, we have more life.” And I talked to a guy in Havana who says to me “All I used to see here in Havana, you call this drab and dull, we see it as a cleaner city. It’s true, the paint is peeling off the walls, but you don’t see kids begging in the streets anymore and you don’t see prostitutes.” Prostitution used to be one of the biggest industries. And today this man is going to night school. He said “I could read! I can read, do you know what it means to be able to read? Do you know what it means to be able not to read?” I remember when I gave my book to my father. I dedicated a book of mine to him, “Power and the Powerless” to my father, I said “To my father with my love,” I gave him a copy of the book, he opened it up and looked at it. He had only gone to the seventh grade, he was the son of an immigrant, a working-class Italian. He opens the book and he starts looking through it, and he gets misty-eyed, very misty-eyed. And I thought it was because he was so touched that his son had dedicated a book to him. That wasn’t the reason. He looks up to me and he says ‘I can’t read this, kid” I said “That’s okay dad, neither can the students, don’t worry about that. I mean I wrote it for you, it’s your book and you don’t have to read it. It’s a very complicated book, an academic book. He says, “I can’t read this book.” And the defeat. The defeat that man felt. That’s what illiteracy is about, that’s what the joy of literacy programs is. That’s why you have people in Nicaragua walking proud now for the first time. They were treated like animals before, they weren’t allowed to read, they weren’t taught to read. So, you compare a country from what it came from, with all it’s imperfections. And those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms? The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and civil liberties of those fascists who are dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has gotta be perfect, it’s gotta be flawless. Well that isn’t my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those people who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies that couldn’t eat, that died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support. Not blindly, not unqualified. And the Reaganite government that tries to stop that kind of process, that tries to keep those people in poverty and illiteracy and hunger, that gets my undiluted animosity and opposition.
—Michael Parenti
lmao dam these days I can't read Parenti without tearing up
That part about his father is straight up my grandmother, she can't read, not even her native language, because the French colonialists never taught her
Fuck any liberal who stands in the way of global revolution
79% of American adults are literate. When I learned that recently I thought that had to be some kind of mistake. It can't be that fucking low, right? But it is.
Honestly, with my personal experience I am surprised it is even that high. I would personally guess more around 70% - 75%, with some rural areas dipping as low as 65% - 70%.
(Not so) fun fact: The FBI specifically made 'creative writing' workshops back in the 1950s and 60s to kneecap media literacy and implant anti-communist propaganda into graduate programs so that those who went on to teaching would instill that same ideology into their students.
Aw yeah, the only reason we would ever fund the arts is either for para-military parades or anti-communusm.
I'm not a teacher, but I had a job where I had to manage younger adults and a significant portion of communication was done in text. When I started the job I wondered why so many used weird short hand and what I thought was purposeful misspelling. I later learned that it wasn't shorthand, but that many were just barely literate.
This is from the
thread. So, essentially, we have a whole generation of Charlies from Always Sunny. America is fucked.I am legitimately sick to my stomach from anger after learning about this. A bunch of snake oil peddling cultists have scammed the American and other Anglo school systems, from the sound of it, for decades. And tens of millions, if not a hundred million kids have suffered for it.
Thanks for the recommendation--will definitely be checking this out.
edit: I just listened to the first episode and WTF, the people responsible for getting this new curriculum into schools should be in prison. It's a crime of unfathomable proportions against children who have no way to defend themselves.
The "reading recovery/whole language" people are literally a cult. There are so many quotes that boil down to, "Teaching phonics and having kids actually figure out words just felt so traditional. Reading recovery was so refreshing and Lucy Calkins is my hero!"
There was an audio clip of a worm-brained lib going to a Lucy seminar and she could not stop gushing. "I get to see Lucy! This is the best day of my life!" and so on. These fuckers get the wall. This shit is still happening because of all the acolytes that refuse to accept the dogma of actually fucking reading to learn how to read. The Soviets, Cubans, and Chinese figured this out decades ago. America is going to become a client state of China in our lifetimes because no one knows how to do anything.
Either read through some of the linked thread or listen to the first episode of the podcast. It's so dumb it's unbelievable. There's a "system" that is literally "just guess lol".
no no, it's even worse. read the whole word is an older idea. they're teaching kids to guess the word without even looking at it. they're taught to check if they have the word right by looking at the first couple of letters. like they're teaching kids by literally covering up the word and only showing it after they guess.
context, syntax, and the first couple of letters. they teach them phonics but prevent them from using it to sound out words.
Cutting off kids fingers so they can get past the crutch of counting using their fingers
Cutting off their fingers so they can refine their motor skill by trying to write with their stubs.
You are taught to use context clues or whatever word comes to your head at first thought.
You might even say it's reactionary. Imagine trying to explain something to someone but they're reading a totally different sentence, based on years of US education.
i can't really believe what i'm reading. i'm a teacher in the global south. i don't even teach formative years, but this feels like the Three Dimensional Chess fantasy applied to pedagogy.
yeah, it's less teaching kids how to read and more purposefully sabotaging their ability to read, based on a fantasy of teaching them to love reading. it's cult woo shit.
why would you teach guesswork as though language is something inherent to the soul and oh fuck thats it isn't it
yep, it's literally based on the idea that if you put enough books in front of kids, they'll teach themselves how to read.
if there is one thing that is universal about teachers is that we aren't well paid. at least in some places we are actually respected and such, but still not well paid. the one thing that keeps teachers going is that its a social profession with lots of meaning behind it. what sort of teacher looks at reading and thinks its not glamorous enough to teach it step by step as a learned skill.
teachers being sold a system that comes with preplanned material, school supplies, and lots and lots of books, that promises to teach kids to love reading. it's idealism with kickbacks.
Thats actually how i used to read a while back. I was taugth the normal way letter by letter. But then somtime in middle school i realised i read way too slow so i started experimenting trying to get rid of vocalization wich was the biggest inefficiency. And the solution was to grasp the meaning of the word without reading it compleatly. If its some set of consonants i cant even pronounce i cant suvvocalize them can i? Until eventually i no longer needed to do that.
Granted i cant spell for shit. But its actually more efficient to read like that.
It took me over a decade of trying really hard to stop my subvocalizing. If i had been taugth like you descrive from the begining i would not have had to spend so much effort to get rid of bad reading habits.
It took me over a decade of trying really hard to stop my subvocalizing.
I've never heard this term and I'm losing my mind because I'm a very slow reader and, based on what I'm seeing, more-literate people don't hear the text in their head? I literally never considered that this would be absent from reading aside from recognizing a familiar term (like the name of a store, "ambulance," whatever). God damn it . . .
I don't think so. I'm a very fast reader and I still kinda "hear" words in my head when I go at a relaxed pace. It's just that at a certain level of literacy, your brain has the ability to visually recognize words faster than you can mentally enunciate them, and it can also recognize words faster than you can mentally process for comprehension. I realized this when of my relatives started to play a game with me where he would flash me a paragraph on his phone for just a second or two, and then I would somehow be able to recite it back. You can deliberately make yourself read at this speed but it's not very fun, requires focus, and again, is often so fast that you start losing full comprehension of the content.
See the speed reading subsection here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization - in summary: everyone seems to subvocalize to varying extents, unless you deliberately train yourself not to, which you can, but you shouldn't, because it sucks.
One thing I've noticed is that I think I read slower and subvocalise more since I started reading theory. Like obviously when trying to fully understand a text it makes sense to take your time, but it feels like it's involuntary extended itself to other reading as well
I mean I don't think this method of education has ever been widespread enough to entirely explain low literacy rates in the US. There are other factors at play here.
America is going to become a client state of China in our lifetimes because no one knows how to do anything.
Anecdotal story, and I mean no offence to Americans. I was once day-drinking on the rooftop of an airport hotel with a mate, and struck up a conversation with a chubby Danish fellow. He said he was a business owner. He noted that neither of us were Americans so he felt comfortable talking a bit of shit.
He said his company does business with quite a few European countries, but also Americans. He said he hates dealing with Americans because every single time he had a question for them they always had to put him on hold and ask their supervisor because nobody ever seemed to know how to make a decision.
"WHY? WHY do you have to ask your supervisor? This is a simple yes or no question!"
And then he sighed and said "I honestly have no idea how these people made it to the moon and back".
There is a deep fear of responsibility and being wrong that is beaten into Americans from childhood. No one wants to be the one at fault, so they always defer to authority. It makes them into very compliant workers who also need constant supervision. People are so poorly educated they are often incapable of doing anything without direct instruction, including answering simple questions. It's real fucked up here and this podcast made me shake with rage at how much more fucked up it is for kids now. I'm just thankful my mom took an active role in my education and taught me phonics, reading, and basic math before kindergarten.
In our defense, if we fuck up, we could lose our jobs, and then we're really fucked.
I was admitted to college as a secondary Ed major, and switched to CS and became a STEM lord because of what I saw when I did my first observation in a classroom. I realized that America does not give a fuck about the next generation, and that I would have to do education as a second career after I was financially established, because it's incredibly difficult to be a good teacher and be there for all your students when you're financially struggling yourself.
The school administrators don't care, the textbook industry does not care, and sometimes the parents don't care. It's very difficult
its almost like there is some underlying socioeconomic factor... some sort of material condition...
I think part of the problem is that being read to by your parents at a young age and having books in the home that you are encouraged to read does so much for literacy l, as much if not more than what kids are taught in school. And most parents don't have the time or the inclination, or they themselves are barely literate and have no basis for teaching their kids to be literate. And the cycle continues
I think part of the problem is that being read to by your parents at a young age and having books in the home that you are encouraged to read does so much for literacy
That probably helps on some level, but from listening to the first two episodes of the podcast, the problem seems to be that a lot of kids are being taught a fundamentally incorrect method of how to decode written language that's making it much harder for them to read that it otherwise should be, and often leaves them completely unable to parse new words. Like, if you gave them a word they'd never seen written down before (especially if the word is by itself, devoid of any context), they wouldn't know how to pronounce it, even if they've heard the word spoken before.
So simply having books available won't actually help (most of) them, because they just don't have the skills necessary to figure out how to decode written language, or how to connect written language to spoken language. They need to be taught the correct way of reading first.
(Of course, once kids finally have an understanding of the fundamentals of how to decode written language, having tons of books available to read so that they can further practice those skills would definitely be a massive help for improving literacy.)
I haven't listened to the podcast but English as the language theyre learning has gotta add a whole other level of difficulty. Like Spanish you know the vowel sounds are all the same, Norwegian updates their spelling so that it always matches the actual pronunciation, Korean literally puts how to say the word symbolically in each part of a character, Japanese hiragana and katakana is always the same, Cree syllabics are one-to-one (although it was designed that way intentionally), the only other ones that'd be hard is like Chinese or Japanese Kanji and stuff like that but those usually have a pronounciation hint character/radicle in their as well.
English is like that but with wildly different rules on top of bad pedagogy, yikes.
Despite English's weird spellings and exceptions, there aren't that many different sounds and there is a very effective way to teach how those sounds correlate to written words. It's just that no one used that method for like 30 years because it was "too old fashioned".
English is definitely a bear of a written language, but it's so much worse than you think
the problem seems to be that a lot of kids are being taught a fundamentally incorrect method of how to decode written language that's making it much harder for them to read that it otherwise should be
While I accept that it could be the case here - and having read up a bit on it rings true - there is a real danger of "educated" people often liberal with a slight to conservative or neoliberal, to tell people how education really works and that alternatives are wrong or false, often on grounds that are very flimsy or completely propagandistic.
The classism aspect in such things is something I look for first (with keeping other -isms in mind). Then of course there is the aspect of culture and financing. But before I look into that I try to look at how the things we talk about are used as a filter and their surrounding structures are. Only then at earliest I tend to look into effects claimed to be there (and think about how they could be disproved and what influences were missed).
For example institutions for
CW
"children with learning disabilities", which were a catch all phrase for plenty of humans to not have them interact with the white "norm" population in other schools are not that good for kids in them, especially since they hinder inclusion. That regular schools suck doesn't mean that it would be a correct way to keep kids away from their peers.
Historically a lot of classism, homophobia, racism, moralism etc. were ingredients to that, too.
The point is inclusion is important and the more common system has to adapt. Financing schools in the USA is faulty in any case and how they are and how political they are lead is another big problem, besides them functioning as child care and education for factory workers, instead of what they could be.
When I was in middle school I was put in an inclusion social studies class, despite that being my best topic by far. At the time I was a little shit who was frustrated by it. Not by the students, but by the patronizing way they spoke to us. I got to know the kids with more special needs and they weren't dumb.
I hated being in the inclusion class because I loved history and wanted to go faster and the simplified topics and repetition frustrated me to no end. But looking back I can see it built up some empathy in me that I was frustrated for these kids and the state of their education that they dealt with daily.
I can't imagine going through their entire general education being spoken down to in a baby voice every single day.
While I accept that it could be the case here - and having read up a bit on it rings true - there is a real danger of "educated" people often liberal with a slight to conservative or neoliberal, to tell people how education really works and that alternatives are wrong or false, often on grounds that are very flimsy or completely propagandistic.
True, but at least in this case it seems pretty clear cut that phonics is definitely superior to Reading Recovery & it's derivatives, as well as that Reading Recovery was pushed in large part due to a similar kind of "market disruption" mentality that guides a lot of modern Tech corporations (even down to forming cults of personality around their equivalent of "innovators").
Basically, Dr. Marie Clay came up with the Reading Recovery theory back in the 70s out of a genuine desire to help kids who were struggling to read, but her methodology was flawed, and she did so in an era where there really hadn't been much research into how people learned to read, so no one could really dispute whether her theory was correct or not at that point. Despite this, her theory became heavily pushed due to it being the shiny new thing that promises to revolutionize teaching, and of course, a large part of this push was definitely coming from companies that produce educational material looking to make money off of selling this program to teachers & schools. It wasn't until the 90s that research was finally done that disproved Dr. Clay's theory, and by that point, there was enough people & money invested in Reading Recovery that it became a classic case of science having to fight an uphill battle against entrenched capitalist interests.
Also, the class aspect of this push is kinda interesting, as this new method of teaching reading seems to have been largely pushed onto kids from wealthier background first. However, the negative effects of Reading Recovery style programs were often masked by the fact that wealthier families could afford to pay for private tutoring when they noticed their kids were struggling. I.e., while these kids from wealthier background were being taught how to read via Reading Recovery methods in the classroom, their private tutors were teaching them to read via phonics. But from the outside view of teachers, school officials, policy makers, and proponents of Reading Recovery programs, it seemed like everything was fine and the Reading Recovery was working well, leading them to start pushing these programs more into schools with kids from background that aren't nearly as wealthy. And naturally, it was only once the Reading Recovery programs started leaving the protective shield provided by the wealth of the labor aristocracy & petite bourgeoisie that its damage started becoming more apparent.
(Ironically, this also seems to have resulted in many wealthier school districts actually being more inclined to stick with Reading Recovery than poorer school districts, as their wealth continues to leave many parents, teachers and school officials oblivious to the damage that these programs would be doing to their kids without the counterbalancing force offered by private tutoring.)
Of course with all this said, it's still worth acknowledging that Reading Recovery isn't solely responsible for the increase in illiteracy seen in modern US society. People from poor and/or minority communities were already experiencing lower literacy rates compared to communities of wealthy white people long before Reading Recovery was a thing, so having the resources necessary to successfully implement educational programs definitely matters just as much as implementing "correct" educational programs.
tl:dr: Absolutely be skeptical of libs trying to push "correct" or "innovative" educational programs (because they're often blind as to how class differences can effect such programs), but at least in this case it seems pretty clear cut that Reading Recovery is bullshit that was being pushed under the guise of innovation.
It's hard if they don't realise storytelling is a performing art and you're communicating the book to the child, not to yourself, so you have to send the images in your head to the child.
Are there any serious, reputable papers which support the, actually American kids are stupid because of this one, simple pedagogical mistake, thesis?
Frankly this is the kind of pat explanation that should be easy to test for, and, if true, should be easy to fix. But my sense is that American education doesn't have an easy fix, and it's not because Big School Curriculum won't let your kids have access to the phonics books.
I don't know but reading is the most foundational skill of all for learning. Most education is completely inaccessible if you are illiterate.
I work in education and I can tell you Reading Recovery is not universally widespread.
I mean even "educated" PhDs who "read a lot" are still stupid as fuck and cannot for the life of them realize that they are being swayed by propaganda so I think the problem goes way deeper than just basic reading comprehension
Actually now that I think about it, solving reading comprehension is a lot easier of a task than trying to un-brainwash these dumb "well-read Politics and Prose" liberals who drive around with NPR stickers on the back of their cars and laptops...
stupid as fuck and cannot for the life of them realize that they are being swayed by propaganda
These doesn't have anything to do with being 'stupid'. It's a matter of choosing theoretical frameworks for navigating the word. I don't see any non-arbitrary reason for choosing a framework that writes-off most of common discourse as propaganda, even if that's the path I chose based on the contingencies of my own life.
They're not swayed by propaganda, they benefit greatly and in return also uphold the domestic capitalist system and international imperialism
While they do benefit they are stll employes most of the time. And not actual capitalists.
I general i think Highly credentialed people are people that rank very high in the "agreablness" part of the horoscope. In fact the eductation system signals 3 things a floor of intelligence, a floor of "concientiousnes" and high "agreablness" They are most likley to follow on rules and authority. This makes them easiert to be brainwashed. Thats why pmcs tend to be spinless.
That makes a lot of sense, yea definitely not all PhDs are servants of capital
I was thinking specifically more about the intelligentsia subset of PhDs
Well you are rigth, that phds generally live cushy lives. And those material conditions certainly play a role in them liking watever system they are in. Thats of course the main factor. Even if they are not capitalists. But i think some people are just more likley to follow authority. And i think having a phd hihghly correlates with that so i wanted to compliment your comment.
For example even the nyt opeds were selected to tat job because they were already brainwashed. Rather than the opossite.
I've heard this podcast and it is utterly horrifying, however reading recovery and the scam has mostly been tossed out. Phonics has been brought back and a lot of the outrage in this podcast is more from the last couple decades.
I meant to look in to it more once my kid was ready for school, so I have no insight on how kids are currently being taught. Just wanted to share my experience listening to the podcast that it comes across like this is happening now when it's what has occured recently.
I hope you're right, but there were multiple interviews that I heard in the pod of parents who only realised their kid wasn't being taught how to read because of covid-19 lockdown remote school. They sat in on the lessons with them are were like "What the actual fuck? That's not how you learn how to read!!! My kid is illiterate!" So it clearly is still being practiced in some schools.
Yeah there's no way the scammers are letting go of their profit machine that easily. The whole "balanced literacy" half-measure allows teachers to keep using the guessing bullshit while doing phonics for like one day.
I remember there was a opinion piece saying that Education in the Eastern Bloc and China is a tool for the government to control people.
I guess not able to read is a way to not turn red
It's almost ironic because literacy is what created a caste of liberals within the USSR and China that turns up to be more pro-western post 80s.
Don't you love how '''totalitarian''' regimes just like to sabotage themselves
British & Polish citizen, perm. resident of Japan. Reaganite, Thatcherite, Zionist, anti-“Green Utopia”
1989 incarnate. The blackest reaction personified. A cautionary tale for any left leaning person. Fucking dumbass.
You got any more ways to describe him?
it's even more nonsensical than that. governments have been trying and failing to stamp this out for 20 years. the people behind it built a cult following in elementary education circles and rebranded their curriculum so they could keep peddling their nonsense, changing the description to avoid falling afoul of the law but without changing the content. it's literally that the publishing company had a much larger marketing budget than any of the researchers saying "no, stop". so until public media started running the story, there was no meaningful education for teachers telling them " this theory of reading education is wrong".
it's capitalism eating itself.
You'll think that people look at public services like education as a product are stupid but we all know deep inside that the commodification of education has the end goal of making more divisive with premium private education for the elite and the bare minimal for the ''public'' education (which can be run by religious institution just like the good olde days).
Ultimately this is just a way to stratify society with more defined castes
I’m flashing back to my middle school days when most of the kids in “accelerated programs” came from wealthy families
That rhetoric perfectly tracks with the charter school push to turn education into job training programs for K-8 students
History will be provided by a for-profit coloration, so no need to worry about that bit. If you go into school knowing how to read, then great. We’ll group you in with the kids who will be of use to any of the Fortune 500 companies. Otherwise, we’ll group you with the “other” low-skilled kids. The only critical thinking skills that will be used will be the ones that teach you how to solve business problems
Charter schools are stupid because it's never about education. We all know what they do with ''problematic'' students.
This is just a last filter before dumping the leftover into military school in this shitty Folgers coffee called the privatized education system
