Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by euroderf » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

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…

My 3yo gets about 10m a day of Khan Academy on my phone. That and video calls to mom are ALL he gets on my phone. Hopefully this is setting expectations for this particular technology/medium.

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

#282

Post by DonsDiscountGas » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

riwsky wrote: post #164

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…

It worked well enough for BERT: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BERT_(language_model)

It's true, masked-language-modelling has been hugely successful in natural language processing. So a priori I wouldn't have guessed it would work so poorly for humans and that phonics-based teaching is so much better. But the evidence is clear.

Just because MLM can work doesn't mean it does work in all contexts. We get to change the software (and hardware although that has been less relevant IMHO) behind ML models as much as we want, for humans we need to adapt the training methods.

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

#283

Post by mcv » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

hydrok9 wrote: post #275

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

History! Britain got conquered a bunch of times and some of the old words have just stuck around.

My son, not a native English speaker, even taught himself the Chaos poem. It's a good way to learn to appreciate the horrors of the English language.

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

#284

Post by rcoveson » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

phoe-krk wrote: post #210

michael_j_ward wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out a few outliers in such a large system like the English Language and using them to justify reclassifying the entire thing is braindead.

If that is the case, how would you describe the act of comparing English to languages which actually have consistent letter-phoneme pronunciation throughout the language (starting with e.g. the same number of available letters and phonemes and a 1:1 mapping between them)?

Spanish is "strictly phonetic"

English is "[very] loosely phonetic"

Hieroglyphic systems are "non-phonetic"

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

#285

Post by taeric » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

oxfordmale wrote: post #229

nkrisc wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

English is an alphabetic language not a phonetic one. In a phonetic language, you can pronounce a word just based on its written representation. Just compare current and paste tense of read. It is spelled the same but pronounced differently. You can argue it is an phonetically inconsistent language. However, you will find most of inconsistencies occur in the most frequently used words, making it hard for a beginner.

You are not wrong in idea, but you are wrong in specifics. Does English use a 1:1 phonetic language? No. Of course not. Just like most "functional programming" languages have a lot of differences between them. The colloquial use of the term is not nearly as precise as many think it is.

Even looking up the definition of "alphabetic" shows that that is often for phonetic languages. :D

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

#286

Post by arthurjj » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #2

As someone who's both worked as a teacher and as a software engineer, my feeling is that what happened in reading education is roughly what engineers' jobs would be forced by their CTOs to use software methodologies and languages that came from their university professors who've never really spend much time (at least not in well over a decade if at all) doing actual salaried software development where code had to be…

+1 to "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". It's step by step and doesn't require a large amount of planning or thinking from the parent. Which means it's easy, which means you'll do it. Even when busy

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

#287

Post by vehemenz » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

anon291 wrote: post #186

vehemenz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, English pronunciation is not as regular as Spanish. Spanish is a purely phonetic language, while English is phonetic but irregular.

People keep saying this, and I agree english is more complicated, but it is otherwise regular. The vast majority of English words are regular, and for those that are not regular, sounding them out incorrectly in context with the other words quickly disabuses you of any incorrect reading. My mom was a public school teacher in a poor district, and the main problem with her kids learning to read is that they did not act…

You're probably right that for pedagogical purposes, English reading can be taught the same way as Spanish because they are both based on phonetic alphabets. I don't disagree that knowing English (and knowing things in general, along with vocabulary) are essential to learning to read.

Big picture, irregular pronunciation in English might encourage educators to use different strategies for learning the outlier words or for reinforcement. It could still be optimal to learn with this additional instruction, even if it's a secondary concern for rudimentary learners.

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

#288

Post by bcrosby95 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

gavinmckenzie wrote: post #37

My daughter went through a Montessori education from 18 months old through grade 8. As part of her Montessori experience, starting at age three, she began to learn to write. They trace "sandpaper" letters with their fingers; moving their fingers along the strokes of letters pre-printed on cardboard in a rough texture. From there they learn to write the letters and words, speaking the words aloud. Thus the focus is on…

I know it's not your point, but learning to write by tracing at age 3 doesn't sound anything like the actual teachings of Maria Montessori. The whole point is child directed learning, and having kids at 3 trace things sounds pretty anti-ethical towards that.

Most of this stuff is parent directed because they want little Johnny to be brilliant, but afaik goes against pretty much all early childhood development research.

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

#289

Post by obscurette » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

Teacher, educator and father of three kids here. I strongly disagree that "there is not enough evidence based science in teaching" etc. If there is something really to highlight what's wrong with education systems all over the world, it's too much "evidence based science". Every educational psychologist and his dog has a novel theory how learning works, how something should be taught and have a ton of evidence why. And of course all generations of educators so far have been idiots. It's THE reason nobody wants to teach any more.

"Teachers are not only burnt out and undercompensated, they are also demoralized. They are being asked to do things in the name of teaching that they believe are mis-educational and harmful to students and the profession." (https://archive.ph/MEqrK)

The truth every teacher faces is that there is no single silver bullet. There is no any "method" in education that can replace simple things – time, effort, motivation, affiliation etc.

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

#290

Post by dmm » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

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…

> Don't kids ask those things when you teach them to read with phonics?

Pronunciation rules are taught along with the words that follow them and then you learn the many exceptions. Just in Chemistry class you learn the ideal gas law and then you learn the deviations.

Phonics is a strategy to deal with unfamiliar words and it works pretty well as a starting point.

English spelling and pronunciation has to be memorized, fortunately young kids have an enormous capacity for memorization so it works ok.

Many school programs use the opposite strategy now. They don't teach phonics and they don't teach spelling. "Inventive spelling" where kids just make up spelling and they aren't corrected is used for the first two years. At the start of the third year they are suddenly judged on spelling. But they just spent two years practicing incorrect spelling!