The UK faced the same challenge but has mostly ensured that now synthetic phonics is the standard method of instruction. The success of this programme has really been down to a single key politician in the Department for Education, Nick Gibb. He's never had a cabinet role so didn't get deeply caught up in reshuffles, and for most of the past 13 years he's been the Schools Minister.
The TES ran a profile of him and his phonics drive recently, a good followup to the Sold a Story series:
http://archive.today/ee9LA
Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
401–410 of 524 posts
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#402All the teachers I know are pretty irritated by Sold a Story, mostly their criticisms are: - if you just teach phonics you aren't actually helping kids to read (they've tried) because reading is more than just sounds - Sold a Story omits basically any nuance for shock facts I also think it's important to point out that APM Reports isn't an independent journalistic outfit. They accept grants for specific research. In…
For a long time I've held the unpopular opinion that most elementary teachers are utterly incompetent, and that as an academic field, Education is becoming more and more bullshit. I will be down-voted to hell because of this, and yet, the reality always seems to agree with my world-view.
I like my kids' elementary school teachers, they seem fine, and maybe it's mostly about teaching kids to behave in another social setting at that age - but I do have it in the back of my mind that zero of the best and brightest from my graduating high school class (judged by who was in the honors / AP classes) went into teaching elementary school.
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#403I'm a heavy advocate of homeschooling and did that with my kids for a while before personal circumstances made it impractical for me. I used the book "The Well trained mind" as a general curriculum guide and bought books which it recommended. The one it pushed for teaching reading was https://welltrainedmind.com/p/the-ordinary-parents-guide-to-...
I used this for my first two kids and am currently using it for my third. They pick up reading proficiency in a few months and you need to consistently spend about 20-30 minutes a day. The bonding that comes with your kids is an added bonus. After that, you establish a reading culture at home, blanket ban on electronic "entertainment" for the early years and they become good readers very quickly.
I lived in a bit of a bubble and when I met my kids' friends when they went to school, it was painful to see how crippled they were with basics skills and also tragic to see my own kids regress to the average in these skills.
The upshot of all this is that basic liberal education is not that hard to do for ones own kids and it gives them a lifelong advantage. I highly recommend it.
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#404Earlier 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…
> I got similar questions for the French, btw. "Oiseaux"? Really, French? “Oiseaux” is perfectly regular and involves no exceptions to the baseline rules of French pronunciation, though, AFAIK; if it were pronounced any way other than it is, it would warrant a question...
Of course but that's not GP's point I think. A kid shall wonder why it's not at the very least "oiso" (when there's one) or "oisos" (when there are several). Or even why not "waso" (with "wa" as in "wapiti").
And anyway we all know that there's only one way to write "Mister oiseau" in french and it's "Mr Oizo" (french electro btw):
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's interesting because in the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird (widely taught in the US and well-known in other countries), there's a scene where the character Scout is criticized in school by her teacher, when it's discovered that Scout learned to read ahead of the curriculum, from her father at home. The teacher expressed the concern that Scout might end up learning how to read incorrectly. If I remember correc…
Now that they are at school, there is always an emphasis on us as parents taking an active role in reading with them and encouraging them at home. I can see now how this was taken given the way I wrote it.. I believe the intention was more "Don't pressure your kids and stress yourself trying to get them to read before even starting school". An example of kids being confused was being taught the upper-case alphabet, w…
> I believe the intention was more "Don't pressure your kids and stress yourself trying to get them to read before even starting school".
Yeah, I think this is actually the right approach. A lot of children will learn reading without specific training if you read picture books with them in your lap and they're looking at the pictures and the letters. If they do, that's great; if they don't, that's fine too. Structured reading practice and development can happen later.
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
We taught our daughter to read at age 3 using the "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book mentioned elsewhere in this thread. I remember when we first brought her to kindergarten and mentioned that she was already a competent reader--her teacher seemed oddly insistent about downplaying her abilities, and kept correcting us to say that she was "decoding" the text, rather than reading it. OK, if you say so-…
We use the same book with our kids, and had a similar experience with educators. When she moved a to new school in first grade, they were extremely skeptical that she has able to read chapter books. But I don't think it was specific to reading — they pulled the same crap when it came to other subjects. My sense is they don't want to admit when a student comes in with lots of skills because then they can't take credit…
I suspect that many teachers also (1) don't want to feel like parents can just casually do their job pretty well, like their years of education and certification aren't necessary, and / or (2) deal with an above-average number of parents who think their kids are above-average, so develop some skepticism over time. We just sent our kids to school knowing how to read without telling anyone and let their teachers tell us how well they're doing.
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#407On the final episode, something that kind of bothers me here is the generally antagonistic attitude towards the "get kids excited about reading" approach. The whole series focuses on the struggling students who were wronged by misguided one-size-fits-all teaching, and then the narrator goes on to assert that students don't need to be sold the joys of reading because, "look at these sound bites of kids learning to read - they sure seem excited to me!" Kind of annoying to see someone so dismissive of the notion after spending four hours talking about how not all kids pick things up through osmosis.
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nit: > If medical doctors were routinely taught something wrong and contrary to the published research at medical schools, we'd probably be thinking about a similar suit But we don't see one with respect to popular nutritional advice, which is in a very dismal state with the old food pyramid being promoted as the way and no one can agree on anything because nothing is reproducible. So, maybe not the best analogy.
Well, the old food pyramid hasn't been used in almost 20 years now.
The food pyramid and its replacements come from the USDA. They're there to sell farm products. And maybe help with nutrition for farm workers.
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ma…
> 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 a…
> Compatibility between music notation across instruments is IMO a really cool feature.
… true… and then it’s messed with by, for example Bb trumpets - a concept I didn’t learn about until adulthood.
Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are saying "the evidence is bullshit", right?
No. I mean that it's not hard to gather evidence to back even very stupid teaching methods if you simply put enough effort and time to it.
Ok, so:
"cherry picked evidence means the conclusions are bullshit" ?