Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Savvy, practical insights on where our Education Establishment went wrong and how most schools can be improved.LET'S FIX EDUCATION explains the many dysfunctional theories and methods operating within our schools. This podcast is intended for parents, teachers, and community leaders who want education reform.
Each week, LET'S FIX EDUCATION examines another problem in our public schools, such as: Constructivism. Learning styles. Sight-words. No memorization. Cooperative learning. Prior knowledge. Reform math. The dilution of knowledge. Common Core. Project-based learning. Student-centered, etc. In fact, there are DOZENS of counterproductive learning and teaching theories, all made worse by ideological motives.
Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, and education reformer. He has analyzed the problems in education for more than 30 years. Price is the author of "Saving K-12: What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?" (190 pages) His main education site is Improve-Education.org. For more information about book and author, visit Lit4u.com. Newest novels are "Frankie" (about a harmless robot) and "The Boy Who Saves The World" (about a boy who saves the world).
"Bruce Price’s SAVING K-12 is a MUST read! It is precise, concise and powerful. Action is required…for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and the future of the American Republic!” Robert W. Sweet, Jr., long-time President of The National Right to Read Foundation
Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 164: Back To School: Make Reading #1 Priority (Wed.,August 21, 2024)
Episode 164 Back To School: Make Reading #1 Priority (Wed.,August 21, 2024)
Super-condensed explanation of why the schools can’t teach reading. This is the single most important flaw in American culture. Don't take it anymore.
The podcast is interrupted in the middle so you can watch a video called READING IS EASY. Only three minutes. If you don't get everything then watch the podcast over and over and listen to the video over and over. You will get it all.
READING IS EASY (3-MINUTE VIDEO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JV0tPGn-Ws&t=168s
(It’s probably better to read the transcript.)
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Here are two ways to help my reform work…
Visit Education Reform
for a 2-page explanation
of what everyone can do.
When you need a smart gift,
give Saving K-12 .
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Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price
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Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet, and education reformer.
(For a list of literary titles, visit Lit4u.com.
Under construction but worth a look.)
COMING SOON: "THE BOY WHO SAVES THE WORLD"
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Let's Fix Education explains to Americans why their schools are so bad. The people in charge prefer mediocrity because they are socialists of one kind or another. If people work together to promote real education, we'll have it.
LET'S FIX EDUCATION by Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 164 Wed., August 21, 2024
MAKE SURE YOUR KIDS LEARN TO READ ASAP. HERE'S THE BIG OBSTACLE.
The Education Establishment has destroyed literacy for tens of millions of children. Traditionally, children learned to read in elementary grades. Bizarre new theories devastated this success.
I think we have a lot of incompetence and/or malfeasance here. Everyone in America should be shouting from a window, “We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.”
Main thing now is that everyone needs to understand what went wrong and how we fix it.
Is this possible, you're wondering? Our official experts casually claim that reading is very, very difficult, like climbing mountains. We heard this dogma for years. I was myself amazed when I read books by leading phonics experts and discovered that they often use the word easy. Easy?! How the heck can anything in education be “easy” when our public schools cannot even teach millions of children to read, even by middle school or later?
I read books by phonics advocates looking for insights into this mystery. Little by little, I realized there was tremendous optimism and confidence among these people. Oh yes, these experts actually insist that reading is no big deal! These people say they routinely teach children to read by Christmas of their first year!! These people say READING IS EASY!!!
Well, if you have ever been exposed to the gloom and doom churned out by our literacy professors, you know this is an OMG moment.
I want everyone to know about this optimism. I thought my best strategy was to create a very short video focused on only seven experts. You can read their exact words. You can see what they look like. I say these people are decent, earnest, smart. I bet you agree.
Please take THREE MINUTES now to look at my YouTube video. Everything you need to know is right there...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JV0tPGn-Ws&t=168s
READING IS EASY is super-condensed explanation of why the schools can’t teach reading. This is the single most important flaw in American culture. Don't take it anymore......
All you really have to know, as this video clarifies, is that children must memorize with instant recall the 26 letters of the alphabet, and then the sounds which the letters represent. That's it.
For example, t and T are called “tee” for short but the real sound they represent is “tuh.”
And then the children must learn, for example, that a tuh-sound with an ah-sound equals tah. This shows you the essence of English language phonetics. Every word is a blend of several separate sounds.
Note one obvious conclusion from all this. Once you learn to read, words become more and more automatic and you may think they are sight-words. But that's only at the end of the process. At the beginning, it's better to forget that terminology. Think phonetically: sounds, not sights.
If a teacher tells students to guess, skip ahead, or memorize sight-words, object strenuously. Real readers don't do those self-destructive things.
Now let's focus on what the children are actually learning. Look at this word: tap. Is that pretty art? Is that incidental graphic design? No! It's code that precisely tells you how to say it. Ta plus the p-sound give you "tap." You can't get anything else.
In the typical public school, children were damaged and indeed ruined by lots of nonsense. As they go into middle school, they can't read smoothly because they have been taught too many bad habits. It's grotesque, a lot like the binding of feet that was forced on Chinese women for many centuries. You don't ever recover.
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Historical perspective is provided by this video:
The Biggest Crime in American History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfzo02gWqF0&t=7s
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