The devastation that the "whole word" movement has wreaked on generations of schoolchildren who never learned how to read properly is having other deleterious effects. Joanne Jacobs has an article that describes how lack of phonics knowledge makes it difficult to learn foreign languages as well.

The people who have foisted this nonsense on our children shouldn't just be fired--they should be punished. What they've done to blight the future of millions of children is criminal, with the only plausible excuse being their mental incapacity. It makes you want to bring back the stocks, at least.

How did we allow the mindless educational establishment to get so much control over what's arguably one of the most important tasks of society--teaching our children, and impose such non-scientific and idiotic policies on the entire system, based only on academic theories, from academic departments that are the repository for rejects from serious fields? As the report of two decades ago put it, something like, "If a foreign nation imposed on us the educational system that we've imposed upon ourselves, we would rightfully consider it an act of war."

It reminds me of the old joke about the Soviet Union.

A boy asks his teacher in class, "Teacher, was Marx truly the greatest social scientist in history?"

And the teacher replies, yes, of course he was.

"Well, then, if he was such a great scientist, why didn't he try this crap on rats first?"

1. It's the fault of teacher's unions for putting in place requirements that ensure that teachers have all been indoctrinated to the same b.s. educational ideas they have been, in 'education schools' that attract the lowest performing students in our colleges.
2. It's the fault of the U.S. government for allowing the teacher's unions a free pass to do whatever the hell they want to with our kids; for allowing a culture that will refuse to fire a teacher for anything less than gross sexual assault - incompetence is never grounds for dismissal; for continuing to throw money at a system that is spending more money then we ever have before, to make our children DUMB.
3. It's the fault of every parent who did not scream, loudly, every time they knew their kids were being educationally gypped, either by being held back or peer promoted.

I think we should:
1. Abolish the department of education
2. Abolish all teachers unions, or at least change the law so that paying dues into them (EVEN for collective bargaining purposes) is voluntary, not compulsory
3. Fire every teacher who cannot qualify as proficient in the subject matter they teach
4. End all education school requirements, and instead require actual work experience in your subject matter area (to include apprenticeships if you're going to teach elementary education)
5. End tenure!

That'd work for a start, at least. Until then, if and when I have kids, they'll be privately or home-schooled.

I have a simpler solution: abolish government-owned schools entirely, along with the taxes and bureaucracies that support them. Government-owned schools are the biggest single tax item burdening Americans today, and in some cases the combined school-district budgets are greater than the budgets of the counties the districts are in.

And we spend all this for what?

Yes, the federalization of education has not helped at all. By which I mean it has hurt a lot. Where I lean towards libertarianism, it's in a stern belief that any government task needs to moved down to the level having the greatest stake in proper performance of the task. Municipal authorities aren't demanding that Congress federalize garbage collection, why do they permit education, which is much more important, to be taken from their hands?

The whole word method is based on a non-sequitur. Yes, proficient readers read whole words, rather than sounding out each word. However, what logic indicates that this should be taught to 5 year olds?

I had imagined that the prevalence of the whole word method had effectively made almost everyone under 30 illiterate. This assumption caused me to be surprised when Asparagirl announced in one of her posts that she had just turned 23. Since her site is especially literate, apparently the public schools are not succeeding in completely snuffing out literacy.

Note that Dr. Weevil and I are much older (I have two sons older than Asparagirl) and attended Catholic elementary schools.

Steve

Actually, proficient readers do sound out words -- very, very quickly.

However, I don't think it's fair to blame "whole language' on the teachers' unions. It was an academic fad that spread because it fit with progressive ideas about children learning "naturally."

The American Federation of Teachers has been fighting for phonics instruction for many years now; the NEA doesn't care since it's not a jobs or money issue. (They say they care about education, but I see little evidence of it.)