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 180: The Unrelenting Attack On Reading (Wed., Dec. 11, 2024)
Episode 180: The Unrelenting Attack On Reading (Wed., Dec. 11, 2024)
Starting in kindergarten, children need to read, and they need to learn basic information. Our public schools are designed to stymie BOTH goals.
People with children in school have got to pay more attention. The child’s cognitive and intellectual life might be stunted.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT.
-----------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
For a 2-page explanation
of how everyone can help,
visit Education Reform
When you need a smart gift,
give Saving K-12 .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet,
and education reformer.
>>>Don't hesitate to read episodes at random.
Everything on this podcast is up to date
because educrats cleverly stifle improvement.
That's the tragedy we need to fix.
Subscribe / Support the show
Lowest sub is $3/mo, set by Buzzsprout,
I don't know why.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 180 (Wed., Dec. 11, 2024)
------------------------------------------------------
The Unrelenting Attack On Reading
Any parents in the room? Your children are under constant attack!
They aren't learning to read and virtually every aspect of their education is declining. Are you OK with this?
The bottom line. Millions of American children learn to read only in a halting, inadequate way. Teenagers often claim they hate books so naturally they never read.
Truth is, they can't read. They were never taught to read.
The main cause of the illiteracy crisis is making children memorize sight-words as opposed to reading phonics.
Sight-words, a hoax, were first introduced in the early 1930s and have been causing the decline of American education for almost 100 years.
Perhaps even more surprising is that the Education Establishment is not satisfied with one major attack on reading. The professors pile on.
Here are five more major assaults on the most important component of anyone's education, i.e. literacy.
First is the elimination of the alphabet. Teachers don't teach it; activities in the classroom don't call attention to it; and in a sight-word environment, children might never learn that there is an alphabet. Imagine that.
But 100 years ago, children had alphabet blocks to play with. Parents explained that A is for Apple, B is for ball….When was the last time you heard that? That's how you know that our Education Establishment has pushed the alphabet quietly overboard.
The second tactic is the elimination of cursive writing, which forces children to know letters and their sounds.
Letters can be combined to form words. Children are intimately involved with each letter, and all of its many typographic possibilities, sizes and colors. All of this activity forces the brain to become more efficiently wired. Phonics experts state that children learn everything more quickly.
Three is the elimination of hearing, reciting, and/or memorizing of poetry and prose. All schools used to emphasize nursery rhymes, riddles, jokes, wordplay, and songs. Children should learn the distinctive traits of their language. Nothing is taught for the joy of literature. How many children today can tell you a single bit of poetry? The only thing I remember from elementary school was learned on the playground. And I remember it with pleasure:
Don't ever laugh when you here the hearse go by,
remember you may be the next to die.
They wrap you up in a big white sheet
from your head down to your feet….
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
The worms play pinochle on your snout.
The fourth sabotage is a sweeping neglect of grammar, spelling. sentence structure, vocabulary, and related. Little of this is taught now. The official dogma for more than a half-century was that you let children hear how it's supposed to be done, they will pick it up. No, they won’t. All this anti-grammar nonsense is vicious, it’s proof that the people in charge don't want children to be very literate.
Number five is wicked jargon. Such as content literacy. Meaning that children who know a little about geography will more easily learn more about geography. Duh!
K-12, starting in K, should be focused on basic content, that is, geography, history, and general science. Show kids a picture of the Amazon, lightning strikes, or the Great Wall of China. Anything visually interesting. Explain what is going on in the pictures. Truth is, “progressive educators” avoid knowledge and content. So everyone has to push harder on these subjects. Don't let children be empty-headed.
The Marxist Masters of education use jargon such as age appropriate to cancel out everything they don't want to bother with. They just say “that's not age appropriate.”
Life at every age should be a continuous stream of knowledge. Children won’t resist it. Roughly speaking, the attack on reading has left many children cognitively damaged in the same way that, if children wear poorly fitting shoes, they end up physically and athletically shortchanged.
Finally, just as MSNBC became a network largely devoted to propaganda and lies, our public schools are almost exclusively preoccupied with teaching socialist and DEI perspectives.
——-
(CODA: it would be a big help if all parents with young children knew that sight-words cause lots of problems.)