SwiftVets.com

[GenrXr]

The racism of the entrenched social left has been on display this week. Whether its Jeff Danzinger http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1282295/posts, Pat Oliphant http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1282295/posts, or Doonsebury http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1282295/posts

They are using cartoonists to show their feeling towards the Black (politically incorrect to not say African American? the sad fact is it is democrats which have developed the label system in our country and quite frankly it is racist) community. The fact is blacks in this country are Americans the same as any other American.

Rush Limbaugh commenting on this,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1282604/posts

[shawa]

Education was the Socratic answer my father was looking for. This was 17 years ago and to this day I champion the idea of a country where we actually teach all.

Right on, GenrXr.

When my little granddaughter was in first grade (in public school),
I got a phone call from my daughter who had just come home from
a conference with Nicole's teacher, who recommended that Nicole
should have testing to determine if she had a learning disability.
She was having difficulty learning to read.

I just about went through the roof!
Learning-disabled, my A**! That little girl is sharp as a whip.
I informed my daughter that the public schools like to classify
kids as learning disabled because they get extra $$$$.
They were not going to do that to my granddaughter! She was
losing her self-esteem, saying "I'm just too dumb."

Since it was late in the school year, I told my daughter to refuse
the testing and check out a Christian school over the summer,
that teaches PHONICS (phonetic sounding of the letters and
combination of letters of the alphabet) as opposed to the
Dewey system (look-say) method taught in public schools.

She enrolled Nicole in the Christian school and within a very short
time, Nicole was reading like a pro, as well as excelling in all her
other subjects. She is in third grade now, and scores in the highest
percentile on the National CAT tests. A full two grade levels above
the norm!!

Cost, $2800 per year, as opposed to $6500 per student in the
public school system.

IMO, a good education is the key to success in life and the only real
answer to lifting people out of poverty. And the public schools are
not doing the job. Vouchers are the answer that most minority
parents want, but the NEA lobby along with the left in Congress
will never allow it, they just keep crying that education is
underfunded.

[GenrXr]

Shawa you are so right and I have heard many stories such as yours. As for Phonics my cousins school requires 1 parent to attend a class where they have to learn the 47 phonetic rules or else their children get kicked out. They place demands on parents as well as the kids which is smart and needed.

Shawa let me further remind you that our system as it is set up now is by racial guidelines. We have to get rid of race in education or we will become the european class of closeted racial prejudice.

We must lead the world in everything.

And we must include all people who are disenfranchised along the way.
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy

[shawa]

My question is why does the public school system reject the
phonics method in teaching kids to read.

My daughter enrolled my grandson, Ryan, in the same school
with his sister. He is only four years old and is in pre-kindergarten.
He is learning phonics, and is already reading simple books. He is so
proud of himself, and loves to have me sit down with him as he
sounds out the words in his book.

In the public schools they have set a GOAL to have every child
able to read by THIRD grade. THREE YEARS to teach children to
read!! When Phonics can do it in a matter of months, and the child will
never in their lifetime come across a word that they can't sound out.

IMO, their method of teaching (look-say) stinks.
Kids get frustrated guessing at a word because it kind of looks
like another word they know.
No, wrong, guess again!

Since phonics is such a superior, proven method, there has to be
some ulterior motive for the NEA rejecting it.I think I'm going to do
some research on this.

[shawa]

Doing some searching, came across this.

http://capmag.com/articlePrint.asp?ID=3337

"......The controversy over how to teach reading is not a narrow, technical dispute. It is a broad, philosophical disagreement, with crucial educational implications. The phonics proponents maintain that human knowledge is gained objectively, by perceiving the facts of reality and by abstracting from those facts. These proponents, therefore, teach the child the basic facts--the sounds that make up every word--from which the abstract knowledge of how to read can be learned.

The whole-language supporters, by contrast, believe that the acquisition of knowledge is a subjective process. Influenced by John Dewey and his philosophy of Progressive education, they believe that the child must be encouraged to follow his feelings irrespective of the facts, and to have his arbitrary "opinions" regarded as valid. On this premise, the child is told to treat the "whole word" as a primary, and to draw his conclusions without the necessity of learning the underlying facts. He is taught this-- in spite of the overwhelming evidence, in theory and in practice, that phonics works and whole-language does not.

In learning to speak, a child has already performed a tremendous cognitive feat. To read, he must now grasp the connection between the black marks he sees on paper--which to him are like hieroglyphs--and the spoken words he already understands. Phonics systematically teaches a child to break the code of written language.

Spoken language is made up of discrete units of sound, called phonemes, like the "b" sound in "bat" or "boy." Phonics teaches a child to break down spoken words into their phonemes and to symbolize them by written letters. The child learns how to sound out each word through its component letters. Reducing reading to a manageable set of rules quickly enables a child to read almost any word--and to experience reading as something easy and pleasurable and mind-opening.

This is what whole-language supporters condemn as "constraining" and "uncreative." Analyzing language by abstract rules that connect phonemes to letters, one of them says dismissively, imposes "an uptight, must-be-right model of literacy."

Instead, they argue that the child ought to focus on an entire written word, like "hospital" or "boomerang," and learn it as the teacher pronounces it. Having no method to reduce the tens of thousands of written words to a manageable set of rules, however, the child must treat each word as a unique symbol to be memorized--an impossible feat.

What is the child to do when he encounters a word he has not yet memorized? He must guess. Here is what some whole-language advocates suggest the child do: "Look at the pictures" (what if the book does not contain pictures?); "Ask a friend" (is reading not a solitary activity?); "Look for patterns" (why not systematically teach him "patterns," that is, phonics?); "Substitute another word" (is this teaching?). Conspicuously absent is: "Look in a dictionary"--because the child crippled by whole-language cannot read a dictionary.

Whatever twisted mental processes the child is supposed to go through, it is a linguistic corruption to call this a method of reading.

The use of whole-language results in nothing but illiteracy. (California, for example, which tried this approach in the late '80s, abandoned it after reading scores plummeted.) The seeming "successes" of whole-language occur only when phonics is smuggled in--that is, when the child (on his own or with the help of teachers or parents) secretly decodes written language by discovering that, say, the words "banana," "boat" and "box," which he has memorized, have a similar initial sound and begin with the same letter.

What our schools need is not "moderation," but pure phonics. We would not consider adding contaminated food to a child's diet for the sake of "balance." We should likewise avoid harming his mind by "balancing" phonics with whole-language."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting, but still doesn't tell me why NEA rejects phonics except that:

"Influenced by John Dewey and his philosophy of Progressive education, they believe that the child must be encouraged to follow his feelings irrespective of the facts, and to have his arbitrary "opinions" regarded as valid,"

Sounds like the kind of "progressive" psyco-babble that modern
educators love.

[srmorton]

Shawa, you have hit upon one of my "soap box" issues. I have twin
daughters that are now 24 years old. They are not brilliant, but are
certainly above average in intelligence. A product of the pubic school
system of NC, I trusted the public school to teach them to read.

When they entered kindergarten, the emphasis was on "readiness"
and they were not taught to read. By the time they entered first grade,
the state had switched to a new "improved" reading curriculum which
required the students to learn a certain group of words in kindergarten.
They both struggled with learning to read and I got them a wonderful
tutor, an experienced teacher who had decided to stay home after her
youngest child was born. They began to improve so I did not worry
about it for a while.

Eveything went along okay with their reading until third grade. Their
third grade teacher was a brand new teacher who by chance had been
the teacher's aide in their first grade class. She loved the girls, but
already had a pre-conceived notion that they might have trouble. They
still continued to see their tutor, who had taught third grade for years.

At that time, NC was still using the Calfornia Achievement Test (CAT)
as a means of assessing a student's yearly progress. Third grade was
the first grade that it was administered. One of my daughters passed
the test, but the other did not make the minimum score needed to go
on to the next grade. That immediately triggered a second test which
she did pass.

Simply on the basis of the test scores, the teacher wanted to retain the
one who had done poorly on the CAT test - although she had not had
a single failing grade on her report card all year. Since the girls were
twins, her proposal was to retain both girls, even though one
had passed the first test and the other had passed the retest. Her
reason was that she could not "bear to see them struggle" in fourth
grade. Her emotions were getting in the way of the facts that they
had both completed all of the requirements for promotion. Their tutor
was very much against it. After tutoring them for over two years,
she knew their abilities better than I did. She said that the only students
she had ever wanted to retain when she was teaching were students
who had already been retained once and could not be held back again.

At my own expense, I had my daughter tested by a wonderful child
psychologist. His conclusion was that she was of above-average
intelligence, but that she had a real problem with risk-taking. In other
words, she was so afraid of being wrong that she would not even try
unless she was absolutely sure of the answer. On a test like the CAT
test, there are questions that you have to guess at, even if you are
not sure of the answer. Her teacher had also mentioned that when
she was reading aloud, she would not try to "decode" a word she did
not know. She was afraid of making a mistake and having the other
students laugh at her. The psychologist explained that she had low
self-esteem (which she still suffers from today) and that she needed
to participate in activities at which she could experience success. He
felt that to retain her would be very harmful - like telling her, "Well,
you passed everything on your report card this year, but we are
going to make you do it all over again." He thought that to retain the
other twin was absolutely ridiculous.

Perhaps if we had been moving to another town, I might have given
it more consideration because they were born in August and were
six weeks pre-mature, making them chronologically a little behind
the other students in their class. Had they not been doing well in
pre-school, I might not have started them in school until the next
year, but IMO it was too late to rectify that. Absolutely everyone
in the school knew who they were and many of the students in the
other neighborhood school knew who they were also, so it was not
like we could hold them back without anybody really noticing. My
husband was adamantly against it. Although he actually passed
second grade, his mother decided to hold him back because he
had missed a lot of school that year due to the fact that both of his
parents were hospitalized that year - his mother due to a nearly
fatal car accident and his father due to major surgery. He never
quite forgave his mother for holding him back.

I will never forget that meeting my husband and I had with the
teacher and the principal (who is now one of my very good friends).
They were obviously not accustomed to their judgement being
questioned by parents. My husband and I are both college graduates.
In addition, I have a Masters degree and teach at the local community
college. That gave us a little more credibility than the average parent.
I also had the recommendation of the psychologist and the opinion of
the tutor (who had taught at the same school and knew both of them).
I also knew that the two of them really did not have a leg to stand on.
My child had completed all of the requirements to go on to fourth grade.
In the end, we compromised. We agreed to have our daughter go to
summer school and then to revisit the situation. That was a miserable
six weeks, but she did well and went on to make the honor roll in
fourth grade. It would have been an absolute tragedy for the two of
them to be held back.

This LONG story is background to what I was horrified to discover
that summer. Because they would bring home worksheets that
dealt with phonics, I just assumed that they were being taught to
read phonetically. I remembered that word "decoding" the teacher
had used which "did not compute" with what I remembered from
phonics. I also began to notice that the girls did not seem to know
the little rules that I had learned - that ph is an "f" sound and that
"vowel consonant vowel, the vowel says its name", etc. I began
to do some research on my own. I discovered Rudolf Flesch's book
Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do About It which
was published in 1955. I realized that the tried and true method
of teaching reading by phonics had been replaced by a "new" method
that was "less boring and more creative". This "look and say" or
"whole language" method did not require the students to simply
start at the beginning of a new word and sound out the letters until
you got to the end of the word. It required them to use whatever
means they could to "decode" (there's that word again) the word.
He wrote his book to try to stem the tide of the whole language
method and make parents aware of what was going on in the ivy
towers of the education departments at major universities. He also
provided a method in his book that parents could use to teach their
child to read in six weeks. He cited examples of five year old children
who could read the NYT and examples of older children who had been
reading well in one curriculum with a certain core set of words that
changed to a school that was using a curriculum with a different core
set of words who were having trouble reading. I began to use that
book to teach both my daughters the phonetic method I thought they
had been learning in school. I realized that the system had been
ready to retain both my daughters because of a reading program that
had been proven not to work. I am not a reading expert, but it is
simply illogical to think that most students can memorize every word
they come in contact with rather than simply learning the sounds the
letters make and putting them together. This information also
explained the blank stares I used to get from my students when they
would ask me how to spell a word and I would repeat it very slowly
and tell them to "sound it out". Obviously, they had never been
taught to do that. It also explained the greatly increased number of
"learning disabled" students and students with dyslexia in recent years.
Those students were very rare when I was in school. Dyslexia is a
real condition, but, if a student has been taught to "decode" a word
any way he wants to, it follows that he will not always try to read the
word from left to right and might exhibit some characteristics of this
disorder when he is perfectly normal. Shawa is right that the schools
get extra funding for "LD" students and it is to their advantage to
increase the numbers of students in this category. I also did not
remember students actually graduating from high school (and even
college, as in the case of former Washington Redskin Dexter Manly)
unable to read. That could also be explained by the use of this
failed method of teaching reading.

The really horrifying thing was to read Flesch's second book that
was printed about 25 years later, Why Johnny Still Can't Read.
He explained that the "powers that be" in education knew what a
colossal failure the "whole language" method had been, but they
kept re-packaging it under different names for completely selfish
reasons. He said that many education professors had staked their
careers on the efficacy of this method of reading and that the book
companies had millions and millions of dollars tied up in the various
curriculums that used this method of teaching reading. These people
were prepared to sacrifice an entire generation of young readers to
save their reputations and to save money! That was what really
outraged me about the whole thing. They were pushing a method
of reading that they knew did not work for the vast majority of
children. Children who were exceptionally bright or who could
memorize easily could do well, but many other children "fell through
the cracks" just as mine had done. From that time on, I told every
parent with whom I had the opportunity to discuss this topic to teach
their children to read BEFORE they went to school using Flesch's book.

As Shawa mentioned in her post, California finally "saw the light" and
has returned to a phonetics-based curriculum. As NC usually takes
their cue from California, they have also gone back to phonetics.
Up until recently, it was only the private and Christian schools that
used phonetics to teach reading. Poor children, black and white,
whose parents could not afford to send them to private school or
who were not able to teach them at home were the ones that
suffered the most from the fraud perpetrated upon soceity by the
liberal universities' Schools of Education. As is so often the case, the
liberals wind up hurting the ones they profess to care about the most.

As for my daughters, they both graduated from high school and went
to the community college where I teach. One has two Associate degrees
and is working on her BA degree in Elementary Education. She is a
Teacher's Assistant in two second grade classes at one of our local
elementary schools. The other has one Associate degree and is
working on her BA degree in Psychology at UNCW. She eventually
hopes to get her MA degree and become a school counselor. They
are both beautiful, but still are affected somewhat by what happened
to them in elementary school. Neither one is married yet so I have
no grandchildren so far (alas!).

If you read this far, thanks for "listening". This topic is just something
I feel very strongly about and I don't think many people are aware
of the wrong that was purposely allowed to be done to so many "young
skulls full of mush". More parents need to take an active role in their
children's education and find out what is going on in their classrooms.
If the situation warrants it, don't be afraid to challenge those who
might, even unintentionally, harm your children. You will not regret it.
_________________
Susan R. Morton

[Leeman]

How about adding the Hispanics to this Post. I think the way the dems are handling our attorney general to be is rather shabby.

They pride themsleves on being the party of the minority's but are voting against & saying some very unkind things about two good americans.

Will these Senators face a backlash when thier terms are up?

The swimmer voted NO to both & Chuckie Cheese who is very proud of Gonzales & considers him a good friend voted NO.

[carpro]

I have a grandson in Kindergarden and I don't know or really care what the teacher is teaching him at school, my son and I are teaching him with phonics and he is reading "Dick and Jane" at home. He loves it and is doing quite well.

It's fun to hear him sound out a word he is unfamiliar with. I don't believe they are reading in class at all yet.

I have always loved to read and hope he will, too. But I will still sound out complicated words, like medical terms or names of drugs. I would be lost without accent marks in the dictionary.
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[GenrXr]

Just talked to my cousin on the phone and asked if his daughter has taken any tests which show how she is doing compared to the public school system. He told me Northwoods administered the Iowa basic standards test for first graders when she was in kindergarden and the second grade test when she was in the first grade. He said that his daughter is only an average student at Northwoods, yet she placed in the top 1 percentile for the first grade test and the top 3 percentile on the second grade test. A damning indictment of our public school system.
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy

[GenrXr]

A very good analysis from a Black man voting republican for the first time this past election.

http://rightintention.blogspot.com/2005/01/liberals-are-racist-too.html

[shawa]

Thanks for that link, GenrXr.
Colbert King nails all the hypocrites!!

[MSeeger]

I can well appreciate the comments on education, and even though I am a teacher, I won't try to deny their validity, because, they are, for the most part, true.

I come from a generation where phonics was the norm and diagramming sentences in English was expected of us in junior high. Yes, school was boring, but we all knew we had to be there if we wanted to live when we got home. So there we were, working on worksheets and writing and deconstructing sentences and all that other dull work. Every once in awhile we were lucky enough to have a teacher who made learning fun.

I graduated in 2001, after 15 years of pursuing a degree in education, and I sometimes wonder why I even bothered. I love teaching, and I love working with kids. But it's very frustrating when you aren't allowed to teach.

The public school system needs a serious overhaul. If they wonder why they are losing teachers, and why most young people would choose another profession, they need only look to their policies. Like every profession, there are good teachers, middling teachers, and poor teachers.
In all fairness, don't assume that every teacher is a bad teacher just because your child isn't learning as quickly as you would like for him too.

Believe me when I tell you it's frustrating to realise that there are a small percentage of children in your classroom whom you know need one on one intervention, and you have twenty or so other students who need your attention, too. Also remember that private schools can afford to have smaller classes because not everyone can afford to go to a private school.

Maria
_________________
Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Gal. 6:7