Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

features.apmreports.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 524 posts

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#241

Post by AlwaysRock »

nateburke wrote: post #130

No one is talking about the impact of kids seeing parents read on phones instead kids seeing parents read on books. When kids see a parent reading a book there's no doubt as to what they're doing. They are reading. OTOH, even if a parent is reading the most wholesome text on the most wholesome app, the fact that they are doing it on a phone admits some possibility of confusion in the eyes of the child observing. Ther…

Yup. Kids think my phone === games/videos. They know it can do other stuff but why would anyone use all those boring apps when games or videos are available?

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#242

Post by [deleted] »

naasking wrote: post #107
Ajedi32 wrote: post #80

I just listened to this podcast a few weeks ago. What really struck me was just how obviously wrong the Guided Reading curriculum and three cueing theory was even just on its face, and how many people went along with replacing phonics with Guided Reading despite that. For example, the podcast recounts a Guided Reading lesson where the teacher covers up the words the kids are supposed to be reading with a piece of tap…

I think they've extended the meaning of "reading" to include a certain level of "understanding what you just read". Your nonsense sentence can't pass the latter test because there is no understanding to be gleaned, but it's not at all obvious that that should how we view reading exactly for that reason.

[deleted]

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#243

Post by javajosh »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #206
analog31 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of my parents learned to read at home, in poverty. Both had educated parents, who had been displaced by the events of the era. I learned to read at home. Both of my kids, likewise. It didn't even remotely occur to anybody in the family that learning to read was special, or that there might even be any way to teach it other than phonics. English has a phonetic alphabet after all, right? Moreover, learning to read…

I'm Greek. When teaching a kid to read English using phonics, how do you explain that "tough" and "rough" are written the same, but sound different than "though" and "borough", and that "doe" and "low" rhyme with each other and both the latter, but neither of the former? And how do you explain "Loughborough"? Why not "Lowborrow", as in "low" and "borrow"? Don't kids ask those things when you teach them to read with p…

So many examples of bad definitions: German[1] electron charge[2] music notation[3]! But in the end, I think we have to largely give up the struggle against bad notation, of which spelling is just a part. If it really bothers us we can create our own notations and methods to translate between the old and new, but then you get splitting and fracturing. You can't play together. But if you invent such a notation, and make something beautiful with it, well, then you have a chance at fixing something.

1 - Don't get me started with German grammar, especially the way prepositions conjugate with the (arbitrary) gender of the noun, and the various types of prepositions reuse the same conjugations. It's clearly a language designed to detect foreign speakers and berate them.

2 - Why is electron charge negative? How many unnecessary minus signs has this poor choice caused?

3 - Or music notation vs piano keys - mapping keys to notes is needlessly complex, requiring both a flip and a rotation. (By far the best notation would be vertical, with frequency still increasing to the right in both forms - which takes into account right-hand dominance prevalence and musical taste that wants repetitive bass.) How many kids were and are turned off by this notational horror, and don't get into music at all simply because their (quite correct) aesthetics are immediately violated by arcane music notation?

Definitions don't require explanations because they already have the immense power of consensus. Consensus is rare and precious and if you try to optimize the object, you must fight the entire consensus battle again, and for only marginal gains. Some weirdos (I use this term warmly) get pretty far though, like with tau and 2*pi.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#244

Post by AlwaysRock »

legacynl wrote: post #240
passion__desire wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another thing I think help was that we put him to sleep with a radio station playing classical music since he was born, maybe even before that. Trevor Noah talking about how he learnt German. https://youtu.be/2PWSJH02krs?t=56 So I started learning. I learned in different ways, you know - to watch German movies, play German speeches on my iPod when I sleep. Your brain remembers things you don't even know. It's beaut…

Learning by listening to something during your sleep doesn't work. Brains go into a sort of maintenance mode during sleep, and it's not possible for your brain to sleep and interpret & comprehend sensory input at the same time. Most likely the noise will have a negative effect on the length and quality of your sleep, which does have a proven negative effect on memory. So it's probably better for you to learn while yo…

It doesnt work but placebo is strong. If someone thinks it is working, while also learning in other ways, then its likely working.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#246

Post by zackmorris »

josho wrote: post #126
stuaxo wrote: post #61

I guess you guys in the US could try curriculums from other English speaking countries ?

American exceptionalism leaves some Americans with the mis-guided belief that there is nothing to learn from other countries. I couldn't help but laugh seeing your comment was downvoted at the time I read this. What Americans should consider is removing charter/private schools so that rich kids have to have the same experience as middle class and lower income. In my experience wealthy families have time and resources…

Ya the main problem with US education is lack of funding due to segregation. This should be the headline, not microanalysis of one specific symptom like reading comprehension.

I'm growing more concerned with each passing year that we're so distracted playing whack-a-mole with each of the thousand crises facing us that we've become blind to systems-level thinking.

When I was growing up in the 80s, we were taught that we lived in a meritocracy where anyone could be president someday, for example. Today I see that everyone has equal dignity, meaning that the sum of each individual's talents is the same. But some talents are rewarded more than others. Mainly the ability to generate profit, which has roots in othering, prejudice, maintaining the status quo, tax evasion, lobbying, corruption, but especially cheating.

That's what wokeism is about. Once one sees that it's not about individual talent, but the rigging of the system to prevent any disruption of the power of the status quo, it's impossible to unsee. So a phrase like "tax the rich" (to put an end to generational wealth inequality and heal the division) means to pull the plug on that power structure. But people misinterpret it through their own trauma, get triggered, and project against it as a perceived threat, because even the smallest benefit like one's gender or the color of their skin is conflated with their earning potential, because the system truly rewards injustice.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#247

Post by housecarpenter »

Taywee wrote: post #212
michael_j_ward wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an alphabetic writing system where the letters largely correspond to sounds, in contrast to logographic writing system where the symbol corresponds to the entire word (like Chinese or Japan). Yes, there are special rules and outliers that you need to learn in English, but it seems absurd to not classify it as phonetic because it's not purely phonetic. This is doubly so when discussing phonetic vs whole-word lear…

English is highly non-phonemic. It's not absurd. If you considered English phonetic, you'd have to consider almost every modern language writing system phonetic. The distinction wouldn't mean much.

It's entirely possible for a distinction that contrasts a large majority with a small minority, or even an actually-existing totality with a hypothetical set of counterexamples, to be meaningful.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#248

Post by kweinber »

oxfordmale wrote: post #192
nkrisc wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English does use a phonetic script. The letters represent phonemes and carry no semantic meaning on their own, as opposed to an ideographic or logographic script. That fact that one symbol can possibly represent multiple phonemes doesn't make it not a phonetic script. There's no debate about it, unless you want to debate what makes a script "phonetic" in the first place.

English is not phonetic. We do not always say a word the same way we spell it, unlike for example Spanish. According to your definition all spoken languages are phonetic.

If there are rules and they sometimes have exceptions or inconsistencies, that doesn't mean that there aren't any rules.

English is phonetic in that way. Sometimes the phonetics are applied with exception-cases and alternatives.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#249

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

oxfordmale wrote: post #192
nkrisc wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English does use a phonetic script. The letters represent phonemes and carry no semantic meaning on their own, as opposed to an ideographic or logographic script. That fact that one symbol can possibly represent multiple phonemes doesn't make it not a phonetic script. There's no debate about it, unless you want to debate what makes a script "phonetic" in the first place.

English is not phonetic. We do not always say a word the same way we spell it, unlike for example Spanish. According to your definition all spoken languages are phonetic.

People confidently stating as fact stuff they know little or nothing about. Ask any competent linguist: English has a phonetic script. (Not a very good one, perhaps, but phonetic nonetheless.)

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#250

Post by phoe-krk »

nkrisc wrote: post #215
phoe-krk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it uses Latin letters doesn't make it phonetic if the same letter consistently resolves to different phonemes or lack thereof, depending on its context.

It's phonetic because the graphemes (whatever they look like) represent phonemes. If English doesn't use a phonetic writing system, then what kind does it use? Ideographic? Syllabic?

I don't know what kind it uses, but it's not phonetic, because the graphemes do not represent phonemes, despite your claims.

If English was truly phonetic, to name a few examples again: the pronunciation of "are" would most likely be a prefix of "area", since the graphemes for "are" are present in "area"; "read" and "read" would be read the same, since the graphemes for "read" and "read" are identical; the words "freak", "steak", and "break" would end with the same phonemes, since the graphemes for "eak" suffix are identical... and so on.

Post reply on HN