Re: FoxTrot 8/10

On Aug 11, 8:41 am, "Pat O'Neill" <patdone...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 11, 7:38 am, Dann <detox...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On 10 Aug 2008, Sherwood Harrington said the following innews:g7o07n$gc2$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ted Goldblatt <ted.goldbl...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It could have been worse - under the intended calendar from 2 years
ago, teachers would have gone back this past week and students would
go back tomorrow.  All this of course in response to our high-stakes
testing (the FCAT) courtesy of W's bro Jeb...

Just what the word "heinous" was coined for.

I know I'm going to kick myself for this in the morning....but I think
that's the wrong word for the situation.

We've had close to 30 years [or more] of declining education performance
in the US.  Part of the reason for it is society in general and can't be
fixed by changing the schools.

Part of it is idiotic educational theories that are coming out of our
universities these days.  Things like putting calculators in the hands of
third graders.  Things like the "whole languange" method of teaching kids
to read.

And then there is the whole "social promotion" nonsense.

One obvious way to see if things are turning around is to test the little
urchins to figure out what they have learned.

At the very least, if schools are teaching to the test, and the test
accurately measures skills*, then the urchins ought to pick up something
along the way.

I'm not saying that the current setup is optimal.  Just better than
letting bad ideas run amok.

*skills!=knowledge --  I know, I know....



FTR, my elder son, who learned to read before he was four, undoubtedly
did it on his own, through "whole language" or some other similar
method. The story: We had read to Brian consistently as an infant and
a toddler (the usual Seuss and other similar stuff). One day, we
discovered him on the living room floor, "reading" aloud to himself
from one of them. "Oh, he's just memorized it..." we thought. A few
days later, we got him some new ones, ones he'd never seen before. He
immediately grabbed one (Hop on Pop, I think) and began to read it to
us.

A lot of the early Dr. Seuss books lean heavily on the phonics basis
for learning to read. Hence, "Hop on Pop".

When he entered school and wound up in a class for advanced students
(obviously)--some of whom were already reading and some who were not
(though they were advanced in other ways)--another parent asked what
reading method she was using. Her answer: "Some phonics, some whole
language, some of everything. We really don't KNOW how children learn
to read; it's best to try everything."

I've been fed that line a time or four. I don't buy it.

There are 40 some odd sounds in the English language. There are
several hundred thousand words. Logically and based on my
experiences, having a sound understanding for the 40 some odd sounds
makes learning the several hundred thousand words much easier.

If knowledge were all there were to education, then what used to be
called "idiot savants" who remember virtually everything and can
regurgitate it with ease would be the geniuses of our world. But
education is really about "learning how to learn"...skills like
information gathering, reasoning, rhetoric, etc.

Those things cannot be judged by having the student fill in little
bubbles on a *** of paper.

I agree. But until we start churning out creative and productive
geniuses that cannot be adequately evaluated by "fill in the bubble"
exercises, and while we continue to have a excess of illiterate and
innumerate "graduates", such exercises will continue to be moderately
productive.

IMO

--
Regards,
Dann

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