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 196: Education reformers agree: Sight-words are a con (Wed, April 2, 2025)
Episode 196: Education reformers agree: Sight-words are a con (Wed, April 2, 2025)
Please note, this short piece runs a few seconds over 5 minutes, that's all. And then you will understand the Reading Wars, and all the nonsense of the last 100 years.
(Urgent note: you might be better off reading this as TRANSCRIPT because I'm explaining the problems of sight-words by illustrating how similar most English words are to many other English words. For example, a sight-word reader would see these words as hugely similar: light, tight, flight, height, mighty, sights, blight, bright, fight, nightly ...
2nd urgent note: the Reading Wars started exactly 100 years ago and the Comintern has been winning ever since. Please pass this episode to parents of young children.)
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Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT.
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Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price
******** LITERARY NEWS ********
"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 196 April 2, 2025
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Education reformers agree: Sight-words are a con
Linda Goudsmit writes scholarly articles about aspects of contemporary life. She is an indefatigable researcher, and has naturally encountered all the strange theories of reading. She wrote me years ago that there was a single page in one of my books that stated the issues quickly and decisively, and said I should forget about everything else, just focus on this one explanation, which every parent would easily understand.
In ‘The Collapsing American family," Linda Goudsmit explained her insistence:
“Educators have known for over six decades that English is a phonetic language and sight words are a failed strategy, yet they continue to use it. In 2017, Bruce Deitrick Price published an extraordinary book titled Saving K-12: What Happened to Our Public Schools? How Do We Fix Them?
On pages 22–23 he presents an incontestable argument for anyone who does not understand why teaching sight-words is so devastating. Price guides the adult reader through the experience of a child trying to learn to read with sight-words. It is the most compelling argument against sight-words imaginable. It dramatizes how insidious the deliberate, politically driven insistence on teaching reading with sight-words really is. Price begins:
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“Just for a moment, consider the silly theory that our top educators put forward. There should be no sounding out of letters and syllables; children should memorize words as graphic designs or diagrams. Put yourself in the head of a kid showing up for first grade. The teacher points to a design like “xhyld” and instructs, “This means house. When you see this, say house.” So, can you memorize “xhyld”?
Probably. But will you be able to pick it out from similar designs, of which there are dozens, such as: xhydd, xyhld, xhydl, xyyld, xhdyl, xyjkl, xkyht, xygld, etc. Of course, you’ll need to be ready for variations such as XHYDD, XYHLD, XHYDL, XYYLD, XHDYL, XYJKL, XKYHH, XYGLD. Okay, maybe you have a photographic memory, so you might have a chance. But no ordinary person has even a tiny chance of being literate. You can probably feel the dyslexia creeping into your brain.
And you’ve just started on your first list of words. You’ll need 5,000 words to be barely literate. But guess what the guru of this madcap theory said? “Children can acquire sight vocabularies of 50,000 words.” Not without a chip implant. But it’s even worse. College students probably need 100,000 words. (Total English vocabulary is over 1,000,000 words.)
The idea that reading has something to do with memorizing word-shapes is nuts. There’s no polite way to say it. English is a phonetic language, and you first need to learn the alphabet and the sounds they represent.”
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Linda Goudsmit told me several times that this version was a home run. The others I should forget.
Finally, one must confront the steady drum beat of Progressive con artists pushing garbage. Anything that's working or healthy or traditional or proven over the years, they attack it and try to substitute something inferior. There's never any yielding at any point.
Seriously, folks, reading is everything; and phonics is the essence of reading. Conversely, pushing sight-words is like pushing fentanyl. Now with the Department of Education being dismantled, the way is open for smart people in every area to promote what most reading experts agree is the proper choice. Dr. Samuel Orton, who conducted a field study circa 1926 concluded to his own surprise that sight-words do not work and, even worse, will ruin children for life. That's what you see now. We have 50,000,000 functional illiterates. These are the victims of sight-words.
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VIDEO
THE BIGGEST CRIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY
<<<<<<<<<<<<< less than 3 minutes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfzo02gWqF0————————————————---------------------------------------------------------