Bruce Deitrick Price
Phonics starter kit –- for parents, teachers, and national leaders
FacebookTwitter
By Bruce Deitrick Price
May 18, 2020

Sad to say, the Reading Wars continue in the USA.

Millions of children are made to memorize sight-words, a proven road to illiteracy. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of websites, continue to assert things that are the opposite of truth. For example, we are told that English isn’t a phonetic language and students have no choice but to memorize the vast English language one sight-word at a time. Nonsense, as Rudolf Flesch famously explained in his 1955 bestseller "Why Johnny Can't Read.”

Why does this destructive charade go on? The official experts continue to disorient the public with incorrect theories, fake research, bogus claims, and airy jargon. Parents tend to be overwhelmed. Even teachers don't usually understand the wastefulness of what they're told to do in the classroom.

Realistically speaking, only a tiny percentage of human beings could memorize hundreds of phone numbers, license plates, chemical formulas, or birthdays. The same is true of English words treated as graphic design, i.e. sight-words. They are a dead end. And "hundreds," if you want to read English, are just the beginning. You must memorize many thousands, with instant recall. You have a better chance of winning a million from the lottery.

The following six items quickly explain why children need phonics. (All six can be easily read in less than an hour.) Then you will know more about reading than the people in charge of reading in this country.

1) Reading Is Easy. Four-minute video presents quotations from seven famous experts all saying that reading is easy if you teach it in the correct way.

2) 54: Preemptive Reading. Short article describes the basic steps for teaching a child to read English.

3) 40: Sight-Words—The Big Stupid. Article explains what it's like for children in elementary school when they are told to do the impossible.

4) Whatever Happened To Phonics? Short article provides more historical and cultural context for what is effectively a war against reading, and thus a war against thinking and academic achievement.

5) Phonics vs. Whole Word —Take 2. Sub-four-minute video illustrates the differences between phonics and sight-words.

6) An Educator Admits Her Mistakes. Only 3 minutes. In this graphic video Edwina Educator lays it all out for you: why our public schools went to hell.

What finally is so threatening about literacy that our education system is set up to prevent it. Traditionally, children learn to read; then they read to learn. If there's no reading, there's little learning and little reason for kids to be in school. Current practice can well be defined as the Biggest Crime in American History.

"Saving K-12” (book by this writer) has an 18-page section devoted to explaining our reading crisis. In general, this book provides an excellent short survey of what happened to our public schools and how we can fix them. More information about book and author here.

© Bruce Deitrick Price

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)

Click to enlarge

Bruce Deitrick Price

Bruce Deitrick Price's new novel is Frankie. Inspired by advances in AI and robots. A Unique Mystery. For info, visit frankie. zone.

Price is the author of six books, an artist, a poet, and an education reformer. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia, earned Honors in English Literature from Princeton, served two years in the Army, and then lived many years in Manhattan.

Price explains educational theories and methods on his ed site Improve-Education.org (founded in 2005; now being rebuilt). He has 400 education articles and videos on the Internet. More forcefully than most, Price argues that the public schools are mediocre because our Education Establishment wants them that way. His relevant book is Saving K-12

Price's literary site is
Lit4u.com .

Subscribe

Receive future articles by Bruce Deitrick Price: Click here

More by this author

 

Stephen Stone
The most egregious lies Evan McMullin and the media have told about Sen. Mike Lee

Siena Hoefling
Protect the Children: Update with VIDEO

Stephen Stone
Flashback: Dems' fake claim that Trump and Utah congressional hopeful Burgess Owens want 'renewed nuclear testing' blows up when examined

Jerry Newcombe
Church should be about worship, not entertainment

Laurie Roth
Trump, the truth, and America will prevail in spite of leftist evil plans

Cliff Kincaid
Terrorist attack in Baltimore

Tom DeWeese
DOJ ignores 2nd Amendment

Linda Goudsmit
CHAPTER 11: Critical Race Theory: A species of the ideological thought genus Marxism

Pete Riehm
They have tried everything to destroy Trump, but assassination

Tom DeWeese
When your red state governor dresses in blue

Rev. Mark H. Creech
Revelation Chapter 22: Eternal recompense

Tom DeWeese
YIMBYs, workforce housing, and community land trusts: All means to an end to private property

Jerry Newcombe
The vice president visits an abortion clinic—and the people yawn?

Pete Riehm
Like our Commander-in-Chief, America is clueless, feckless, and powerless

Selwyn Duke
Did anti-white, DEI bias steal a state final spot from a white basketball team?
  More columns

Cartoons


Click for full cartoon
More cartoons

Columnists

Matt C. Abbott
Chris Adamo
Russ J. Alan
Bonnie Alba
Chuck Baldwin
Kevin J. Banet
J. Matt Barber
Fr. Tom Bartolomeo
. . .
[See more]

Sister sites