By the end of fourth grade, about 25% of middle class kids and 40-50% of disadvantaged kids can't read accurately, quickly, and with comprehension and enjoyment. These disabilities prevent achievement in other subjects and undertakings that require proficient reading, large vocabulary, and comprehension skills--math, science, literature, good jobs.
Most reading "disabilities" are LEARNED disabilities. After all, what IS reading? We're not talking about calculus here. It's six skills--hearing the sounds in words, connected letters and sounds, sounding out unfamiliar words using knowledge of what the letters say, reading quickly and with proper expression, learning what words mean, learning to ask questions of the text.
Each skill can be taught pretty easily. It does NOT take a highly trained person. Home schooling families do it every day. In fact, an ordinary five year old can learn the first four skills in a few months with materials at funnix.com, headsprout.com, or startreading.com.
How come so many kids can't read?
Most reading "disabilities" are LEARNED disabilities. After all, what IS reading? We're not talking about calculus here. It's six skills--hearing the sounds in words, connected letters and sounds, sounding out unfamiliar words using knowledge of what the letters say, reading quickly and with proper expression, learning what words mean, learning to ask questions of the text.
Each skill can be taught pretty easily. It does NOT take a highly trained person. Home schooling families do it every day. In fact, an ordinary five year old can learn the first four skills in a few months with materials at funnix.com, headsprout.com, or startreading.com.
How come so many kids can't read?
Stroll--or saunter as you prefer--into a nearby college of education. Locate offices where the "literacy professors" are stored. Knock in a significant way. When the inmate opens the door, you'll have your answer. A big (vacant) smile and a Howdy-do. But the eyes! Windows to nothingness. Portals to a empty room.
Your ordinary literacy perfesser can't name the six basic reading skills. He or she'll tell you that reading is a "whole" and can't be analyzed into separate skills. The literacy perfesser can't tell you exactly how to teach the skills, either. "Each child has to be taught her own way." [Well, THAT should make the teacher's job easier!]
If you ask for data that support these bizarre assertions, the perfesser will drop the fake smile, turn bright red, and transform into a Gorgon. An altogether loathesome sight. Leave before you turn to stone. [Funny 'till it happens to YOU.]
In other words, kids can't read because literacy hacks in ed schools make sure that new teachers are taught "whole language" and nothing BUT whole language--which turns a routine and simple process (teaching reading) into a combination esoteric religion and psycho-circus.
Here are papers that tell "the rest of the story."
Wither Whole Language.
Whole Language: A Necrotizing Infection.
Kenneth Goodman's Psychotic Guessing Game. html
.
A Whole Language Catalogue of the Grotesque. html
Reading Recovery. After whole language makes little kids "struggling readers," here comes Reading Recovery to (not) fix the kids with 20 weeks of unbelievably expensive bunk (2 to 8 thousand bucks per) based on the SAME flakey ideas as whole language. How do YOU spell "profitable collusion"?
Does this help to explain why the "literacy establishment" refuses to change its insane "philosophy" of reading and its absurd reading methods? Does it help to explain why the "literacy establishment" is doing everything it can to attack No Child Left Behind, Reading First, accountability legislation (and even the IDEA of accountability), standardized testing, and commercial reading materials that have been shown to be MORE effective than what the perfessers have to offer?
We think so...
Whole Language: A Necrotizing Infection.
Kenneth Goodman's Psychotic Guessing Game. html
.
A Whole Language Catalogue of the Grotesque. html
Reading Recovery. After whole language makes little kids "struggling readers," here comes Reading Recovery to (not) fix the kids with 20 weeks of unbelievably expensive bunk (2 to 8 thousand bucks per) based on the SAME flakey ideas as whole language. How do YOU spell "profitable collusion"?
Does this help to explain why the "literacy establishment" refuses to change its insane "philosophy" of reading and its absurd reading methods? Does it help to explain why the "literacy establishment" is doing everything it can to attack No Child Left Behind, Reading First, accountability legislation (and even the IDEA of accountability), standardized testing, and commercial reading materials that have been shown to be MORE effective than what the perfessers have to offer?
We think so...