First, a couple of education editorials:
WND: Sam Blumenfeld: Illiterate for life
Authors battling education elites dumbing-down Brits
QUOTE:
“In fact, a new book, “The Great Reading Disaster,” has just recently been published in England exposing the fact that young Brits are taught to read with the dyslexia-producing Whole Language method, which has also become the present ruin of American education.
The authors, Mona McNee and Alice Coleman, write: “Forcing children to read whole words by the look-say method is like telling young piano learners to play a piece in the correct tempo, without being taught the individual notes or the significance of their stave positions. … It is cruel to inflict such frustration on children, and the cruelty is not restricted to childhood. It is even more cruel and humiliating when it leaves people illiterate for life.”
Even Margaret Thatcher couldn’t get the educators to change their ways, though she appointed a Committee of Inquiry to investigate the teaching of reading in the schools. Apparently, the progressives were clever enough to pay lip service to phonics, ridiculing their advocates, but meanwhile continuing to support the whole-word method.
We’ve experienced the same situation here in the U.S. where No Child Left Behind was supposed to change the way reading is taught in American schools. In fact, a special billion-dollar reading initiative was passed by Congress to get phonics back into the schools. But the educators charged the government with a bias in reading instruction, which was discriminatory against whole-language educators. And from what I have been told by teachers in the field, whole language is still the dominant way reading is taught in American schools.
The two British authors write: “It took 40 years to produce the first 6 million adult illiterates but only another 10 to increase the total to 9 million. The annual rate has doubled.”
And the reason why nothing will change despite the alarm sounded by this new book is because of the tight control the progressives have over the entire British education system. According to the Sunday Telegraph of June 27, 1993, the controlling cabal is called the All Souls Group, which holds its “clandestine thrice-yearly meetings” in an oak-paneled room at Oxford University.
No minutes are kept of the meetings, and no papers or public statements ever emerge. The discussions over evening sherry or dinner are protected by Chatham House Rules, which dictate proceedings are off the record. Chatham House is the British equivalent of our Council on Foreign Relations. Membership is by invitation and the criteria are shrouded in mystery.
Does such a secret education establishment exist in the United States? It does. It is called the Cleveland Conference and was organized in 1915 by professor Charles Judd, head of the University of Chicago School of Education, where William Scott Gray concocted the Dick and Jane look-say, whole-word, reading program. In his book, “Managers of Virtue,” David Tyack writes:
[Judd] had a vision that both the structure of the schools and the curriculum needed radical revision but that change would take place “in the haphazard fashion that has characterized our school history unless some group gets together and undertakes, in a cooperative way, to coordinate reforms.”
It is easy enough to follow the machinations of the progressives by simply reading the annual reports of the National Society for the Study of Education, founded in 1901. This is the gathering place of the educational elite, and their annual reports can be found in any university library.
For American parents, the only way to free themselves from the stranglehold of the progressive elite is to remove their children from the government schools and either educate them at home or place them in a private school based on traditional principles and teaching methods. As for the Brits, we hope that the new book awakens enough of them to break the hold of the All Souls Group. But don’t hold your breath.”
Paul and I have really upped our reading instruction with Ben the past few weeks. He will start kindergarten in the fall and we plan to have him reading by then, so that if Whole Language is the curriculum of choice at our charter school, he will already be reading. He is right at the tipping point where all four of my older children were when he blasted off into reading for pleasure. I love Dr. Blumenfelds books, and would encourage all parents to read them and understand the whole language/phonics war that has been going on in our schools for the past century.
His Alpha Phonics is the best reading curriculum on the market.
Real Clear Politics: John Stossel: Threat to Homeschooling
“The cat is finally out of the bag. A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”
There you have it; a primary purpose of government schools is to train schoolchildren “in loyalty to the state.” Somehow that protects “the public welfare” more than allowing parents to homeschool their children, even though homeschooled kids routinely outperform government-schooled kids academically. In 2006, homeschooled students had an average ACT composite score of 22.4. The national average was 21.1.
…..I think the state court is looking at the state Constitution upside down. The court finds no constitutional right to homeschool one’s children. But in a free country, people are free to do anything not expressly prohibited by law. If the Constitution is silent about homeschooling, then the right is reserved to the people. That’s how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution said things are supposed to work.”
WND: Superintendent’s orders to worried dad: Butt out!
Elementary lessons on ‘gay’ issues now tied to reading, social studies
“The superintendent of a public school that sparked a federal lawsuit by teaching homosexuality to children as young as kindergarten has told another worried parent he can review course material, but he has no right to withdraw his child from class during lessons.
The lawsuit, on which WND has reported extensively, was filed by David Parker, whose child was in a class at Estabrook Elementary in Lexington, Mass.
Parker’s strenuous objection to not being notified when lessons concerning homosexuality were presented landed him in jail overnight. His subsequent lawsuit resulted in a court verdict that essentially concludes parents have no rights to control what their children are taught.”
Continue reading “My favorite editorials of the past week”
