Did you know that the educational community thinks it is exempt from the scientific method in educational research? Or so say the university PhDs and educational philosophers. Continuing from my last few blogs, much of Mr. House's and Mr. Glass's critiques (of Project Follow Through) were based on a rejection of the use of experimental science in education, saying that for education, “the rationality of science [is] largely irrelevant."
Since when? The science and engineering worlds laugh at such ludicrous arrogance, which ignores the true data and embraces the false dogma.
In the scientific world, one forms a hypothesis, sets up an experiment, analyses the results, and adjusts the hypothesis to fit the data.
In the educational world, one forms a hypothesis, experiments on children for almost 30 years at a cost of over a billion dollars to the government, then throws out all data which disproves the hypothesis, and continues down the wrong road. Absurd. The educational community threw out the baby with the bath water, causing our current educational decline.
Take it from a scientist and mother of 15 - me - phonics is the only scientifically-proven, healthy method of reading for children.
It is only phonics that can take a language that uses symbols, such as Chinese, and convert the words into the English alphabet. One has to know the sounds of each letter to convert the sounds of the words into English words. Sight-readers, or whole language advocates, cannot do this.
Someone with a knowledge of phonetics had to do the conversions so that we can read Chinese names and words in English. This is also true for translating the Polynesian and other languages into words written with the English alphabet. The world would be at a great disadvantage if everyone read the way the current proponents of sight-words are teaching.
I am ever grateful that some schools have refused to jump on the whole language bandwagon, although the majority have (causing a major upsurge in dyslexia). I am also thankful that most of the home-schooling world has stuck with phonics for their children, a very wise choice. Done properly, reading should be hearing with your eyes. And only phonics can cure dyslexia.
Parents who really care about the future of their children will make sure that they learn early reading the right way - The Godfrey Method - whether their children attend public, private, or home school. It's important to start at home long before school age, if possible, to ensure children can overcome the faulty teachings and educational decline in this nation.
We have to change what universities are teaching the teachers to teach, and what legislators are mandating that they teach. Regardless, with early phonics the right way, parents can place their children on the launch pad of life and watch them soar! You can reverse the educational decline for your child.
A final note: Stay away from sight-words, at all costs. If your baby can read by sight-words now, s/he may struggle with reading later. Adult sight-readers cannot decipher unfamiliar words, which is embarrassing.
Give your child the best chance to be ready for the jobs of the future.
http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/SeeingtheEmperorsNewClotheswhentheeducationalworldthrewoutthebabywiththebathwater
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
4 reasons for the dumbing-down of America
If your baby can read by sight-words now, he may struggle with reading later. He may even develop induced dyslexia. How did this horrid method of whole language or sight-reading get into our school system?
The truth of the results was squelched.
Why? We can only guess. It may be because university professors' careers are made on new, unproven philosophies. Or that curriculum planners and textbook publishers get rich off of printing and pushing every new idea that comes along. Or that lobbyist for them are buying legislators. If one can't read well, one can't study the issues and vote intelligently. And so on.
It's the purposeful dumbing-down of America. Alarming, isn't it?!
With the rise of sight-reading has come the rise of dyslexia. (Phonics readers do not develop dyslexia.)
This academic child-abuse is knowingly perpetrated by educational and government leaders. Insidious.
Phonics is the scientifically-proven way to help all children achieve, as discussed in Vol. 3 & 4 of "It's Not Rocket Surgery!"
The 4-decade study results never made it into the hands of those who count - school districts and legislators.
In the words of Bonnie Grossen, editor at the University of Oregon, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/grossen.htm:
“That the scientific knowledge we have about education needs to be better disseminated is clear. At the very least, the models that failed, even to the point of producing lower levels of performance, should not be the educational models being adopted in public policy. Yet they are. (See next article).
“…every educator in the country should know that, in the history of education, no educational model has ever been documented to achieve such positive results with such consistency across so many variable sites as Direct Instruction. It never happened before PFT, and it hasn't happened since. What Wes, Zig, and their associates accomplished in Project FT should be recognized as one of the most important educational accomplishments in history. Not enough people know this.” (See previous articles.)
Don’t let your baby read by sight words! Reading - the right way - is hearing with your eyes - phonics, phonics, phonics!
The truth of the results was squelched.
Why? We can only guess. It may be because university professors' careers are made on new, unproven philosophies. Or that curriculum planners and textbook publishers get rich off of printing and pushing every new idea that comes along. Or that lobbyist for them are buying legislators. If one can't read well, one can't study the issues and vote intelligently. And so on.
It's the purposeful dumbing-down of America. Alarming, isn't it?!
With the rise of sight-reading has come the rise of dyslexia. (Phonics readers do not develop dyslexia.)
This academic child-abuse is knowingly perpetrated by educational and government leaders. Insidious.
Phonics is the scientifically-proven way to help all children achieve, as discussed in Vol. 3 & 4 of "It's Not Rocket Surgery!"
The 4-decade study results never made it into the hands of those who count - school districts and legislators.
In the words of Bonnie Grossen, editor at the University of Oregon, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/grossen.htm:
“That the scientific knowledge we have about education needs to be better disseminated is clear. At the very least, the models that failed, even to the point of producing lower levels of performance, should not be the educational models being adopted in public policy. Yet they are. (See next article).
“…every educator in the country should know that, in the history of education, no educational model has ever been documented to achieve such positive results with such consistency across so many variable sites as Direct Instruction. It never happened before PFT, and it hasn't happened since. What Wes, Zig, and their associates accomplished in Project FT should be recognized as one of the most important educational accomplishments in history. Not enough people know this.” (See previous articles.)
Don’t let your baby read by sight words! Reading - the right way - is hearing with your eyes - phonics, phonics, phonics!
Saturday, June 7, 2014
3 important reasons to stick with phonics
Change is not always better. If it isn't broken, don’t fix it. Stick with phonics!
Most Americans are very concerned about our educational decline. Reader’s Digest® took a poll about what issues are most important to our country. The vote was overwhelmingly for better education and literacy. In fact, RD sponsored a “Make It Matter Day” on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2010, as a national volunteer day of reading, writing, and learning. Liz Kennedy wrote a wonderful RD article called, 5 Ways You Can Promote Reading, (Find out how you can foster a love of reading at home, in school and in your own community), which begins,
“We asked you to choose the cause that matters most to you. Your votes are in and the winner is literacy and education. On October 3rd, 2010, Reader’s Digest will rally behind this cause on Make It Matter Day. In the meantime, here are 5 simple ways you can promote reading and literacy.” See back issues on www.rd.com
RD supported events across the country on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2010, participating in educational and literacy activities at libraries, schools, YMCAs, and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. They gave several ideas for people to get involved.
So, what’s the point, here? All change is not an improvement, as our educational decline shows. PFT was supposed to create a Great Society with educational excellence in the 1960s-70s, yet in 2010 we were more backwards than ever! Still are. The changes made were NOT an improvement, as time has shown, yet as a country we persist with faulty reading methods.
Even those with good intentions, such as RD and its readers, know there’s a huge problem, but don’t know what’s wrong with the current system or where to look for help. Too often we follow the propaganda for “change” without understanding the cost of bad change. All change that glitters is not golden. Truth is eternal and unchanging.
As discussed in Vol. 3 of "It's Not Rocket Surgery!", did you know that there is a world-wide gender gap in reading, especially with whole language or sight-reading methods? Science has shown that boys are very different from girls in fetal development, emotional response, brain differentiation, and such. The multi-focus teaching methods above favor girls in academic achievement. However, when the single-focus approach of systematic phonics is used, the sex differences are eliminated, with the boys even outperforming the girls sometimes.
One of my Examiner.com articles discussed the Visual Attention Span (VAS) Theory, which explains why sight-reading doesn't work well. VAS is the number of letters (not sounds) that can be held in short-term [visual] memory and, as children mature, their VAS increases. The more letters a student can hold in his or her short term memory, the better he or she will fare with whole language/[sight-word] methods (which involve a lot of memorization).
Out of the VAS clinical practice has come the results that since boys mature more slowly than girls, boys tend to have lower VAS scores and do worse at reading in whole language/balanced literacy classrooms. But in systematic phonics classrooms, where children are required to process sounds as opposed to memorizing letters, VAS is not a factor and there is no gender gap. The creators of VAS Theory use systematic phonics, succeeding in teaching 100% of their students to read, with data based on their study of more than 3000 children. http://www.vasresearch.com/index.html
Did you know that many speed-readers are usually sight-readers? Speed-reading is easier when you have a limited vocabulary because you only have to pick up a small percentage of the words on a page and contextually fill in the blanks in your mind. Speed-reading is a terrible way to read (unless you’re scanning a large legal document).
My father, a very gifted genius who taught me to read phonetically when I was 3, hated speed-reading because a person misses the flavor of the language, the nuances and style of the writer that way. In fact, when I didn't get an “A” in a high school speed-reading class, my father praised me for NOT excelling at speed-reading!
And consider that when Japanese is translated into its phonetic sounds and written with the alphabet, it’s easier and faster to read than the traditional pictograms. It becomes more universally understood as well. One example is when Japanese names are translated phonetically and written on a TV screen during the Olympics. Everyone can sound them out reasonably.
Again, knowing that boys fall behind with whole language or sight-reading methods, a wise parent will make sure that her son or daughter has systematic, synthetic phonics taught as his/her method of reading! Since reading is the foundation of everything else, s/he will have a much better chance to be his/her brightest self.
(Note: I can’t stand it when people mix singular nouns with plural pronouns, such as, ‘your child will be their best self’. “Their” (more than one) does not describe “child” (only one). Hence, my use of the "his/her".)
http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/SeeingtheEmperorsNewClothes3importantreasonstostickwithphonics
Most Americans are very concerned about our educational decline. Reader’s Digest® took a poll about what issues are most important to our country. The vote was overwhelmingly for better education and literacy. In fact, RD sponsored a “Make It Matter Day” on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2010, as a national volunteer day of reading, writing, and learning. Liz Kennedy wrote a wonderful RD article called, 5 Ways You Can Promote Reading, (Find out how you can foster a love of reading at home, in school and in your own community), which begins,
“We asked you to choose the cause that matters most to you. Your votes are in and the winner is literacy and education. On October 3rd, 2010, Reader’s Digest will rally behind this cause on Make It Matter Day. In the meantime, here are 5 simple ways you can promote reading and literacy.” See back issues on www.rd.com
RD supported events across the country on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2010, participating in educational and literacy activities at libraries, schools, YMCAs, and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. They gave several ideas for people to get involved.
So, what’s the point, here? All change is not an improvement, as our educational decline shows. PFT was supposed to create a Great Society with educational excellence in the 1960s-70s, yet in 2010 we were more backwards than ever! Still are. The changes made were NOT an improvement, as time has shown, yet as a country we persist with faulty reading methods.
Even those with good intentions, such as RD and its readers, know there’s a huge problem, but don’t know what’s wrong with the current system or where to look for help. Too often we follow the propaganda for “change” without understanding the cost of bad change. All change that glitters is not golden. Truth is eternal and unchanging.
As discussed in Vol. 3 of "It's Not Rocket Surgery!", did you know that there is a world-wide gender gap in reading, especially with whole language or sight-reading methods? Science has shown that boys are very different from girls in fetal development, emotional response, brain differentiation, and such. The multi-focus teaching methods above favor girls in academic achievement. However, when the single-focus approach of systematic phonics is used, the sex differences are eliminated, with the boys even outperforming the girls sometimes.
One of my Examiner.com articles discussed the Visual Attention Span (VAS) Theory, which explains why sight-reading doesn't work well. VAS is the number of letters (not sounds) that can be held in short-term [visual] memory and, as children mature, their VAS increases. The more letters a student can hold in his or her short term memory, the better he or she will fare with whole language/[sight-word] methods (which involve a lot of memorization).
Out of the VAS clinical practice has come the results that since boys mature more slowly than girls, boys tend to have lower VAS scores and do worse at reading in whole language/balanced literacy classrooms. But in systematic phonics classrooms, where children are required to process sounds as opposed to memorizing letters, VAS is not a factor and there is no gender gap. The creators of VAS Theory use systematic phonics, succeeding in teaching 100% of their students to read, with data based on their study of more than 3000 children. http://www.vasresearch.com/index.html
Did you know that many speed-readers are usually sight-readers? Speed-reading is easier when you have a limited vocabulary because you only have to pick up a small percentage of the words on a page and contextually fill in the blanks in your mind. Speed-reading is a terrible way to read (unless you’re scanning a large legal document).
My father, a very gifted genius who taught me to read phonetically when I was 3, hated speed-reading because a person misses the flavor of the language, the nuances and style of the writer that way. In fact, when I didn't get an “A” in a high school speed-reading class, my father praised me for NOT excelling at speed-reading!
And consider that when Japanese is translated into its phonetic sounds and written with the alphabet, it’s easier and faster to read than the traditional pictograms. It becomes more universally understood as well. One example is when Japanese names are translated phonetically and written on a TV screen during the Olympics. Everyone can sound them out reasonably.
Again, knowing that boys fall behind with whole language or sight-reading methods, a wise parent will make sure that her son or daughter has systematic, synthetic phonics taught as his/her method of reading! Since reading is the foundation of everything else, s/he will have a much better chance to be his/her brightest self.
(Note: I can’t stand it when people mix singular nouns with plural pronouns, such as, ‘your child will be their best self’. “Their” (more than one) does not describe “child” (only one). Hence, my use of the "his/her".)
http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/SeeingtheEmperorsNewClothes3importantreasonstostickwithphonics
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