I found this podcast from this 
post:
I subbed today for a 7th and 8th grade teacher. I’m not exaggerating when I say at least 50% of the students were at a 2nd grade reading level. The students were to spend the class time filling out an “all about me” worksheet, what’s your name, favorite color, favorite food etc. I was asked 20 times today “what is this word?”. Movie. Excited. Trait. “How do I spell race car driver?”
I’ve only listened to one episode so far, but it’s really well produced, seems well-researched and very well put together.
From what I gather so far, the ways that the American public school system “teaches” kids how to read is not only completely wrong, but actually saddles them bad habits which fundamentally hinder their reading comprehension.
A huge swath of American adults are functionally illiterate, and I think I’m starting to understand why.
The “reading recovery/whole language” people are literally a cult. There are so many quotes that boil down to, “Teaching phonics and having kids actually figure out words just felt so traditional. Reading recovery was so refreshing and Lucy Calkins is my hero!”
There was an audio clip of a worm-brained lib going to a Lucy seminar and she could not stop gushing. “I get to see Lucy! This is the best day of my life!” and so on. These fuckers get the wall. This shit is still happening because of all the acolytes that refuse to accept the dogma of actually fucking reading to learn how to read. The Soviets, Cubans, and Chinese figured this out decades ago. America is going to become a client state of China in our lifetimes because no one knows how to do anything.
I’m all aboard as long as we get some belt and road over here.
Wait, what would the alternative to phonics be?
Either read through some of the linked thread or listen to the first episode of the podcast. It’s so dumb it’s unbelievable. There’s a “system” that is literally “just guess lol”.
Yeah I’m seeing it now, but I just couldn’t believe it - Thought I must’ve misunderstood something. They just make kids memorize whole words instead of learning how letters funtion? It’s wild. The us is apparently just full of illiterate youths now?
It does explain quite a few encounters I’ve had on here and twitter, where users misunderstood basic stuff. A lot of people just reiterating what I write as if it was an argument against me and the like. Seems like reading comprehension is non-existent.
no no, it’s even worse. read the whole word is an older idea. they’re teaching kids to guess the word without even looking at it. they’re taught to check if they have the word right by looking at the first couple of letters. like they’re teaching kids by literally covering up the word and only showing it after they guess.
But how can they check if they don’t know what the letters say? This seems like such an odd idea.
It’s always good with several different ways of learning something, but this doesn’t seem to be teaching the subject at all? Like it’s just guesswork, and it’s guesswork that still requires the ability to parse letters, which at that point just teach 'em to read.
context, syntax, and the first couple of letters. they teach them phonics but prevent them from using it to sound out words.
Cutting off kids fingers so they can get past the crutch of counting using their fingers
Cutting off their fingers so they can refine their motor skill by trying to write with their stubs.
Wild. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me
You are taught to use context clues or whatever word comes to your head at first thought.
You might even say it’s reactionary. Imagine trying to explain something to someone but they’re reading a totally different sentence, based on years of US education.
i can’t really believe what i’m reading. i’m a teacher in the global south. i don’t even teach formative years, but this feels like the Three Dimensional Chess fantasy applied to pedagogy.
yeah, it’s less teaching kids how to read and more purposefully sabotaging their ability to read, based on a fantasy of teaching them to love reading. it’s cult woo shit.
why would you teach guesswork as though language is something inherent to the soul and oh fuck thats it isn’t it
yep, it’s literally based on the idea that if you put enough books in front of kids, they’ll teach themselves how to read.
Thats actually how i used to read a while back. I was taugth the normal way letter by letter. But then somtime in middle school i realised i read way too slow so i started experimenting trying to get rid of vocalization wich was the biggest inefficiency. And the solution was to grasp the meaning of the word without reading it compleatly. If its some set of consonants i cant even pronounce i cant suvvocalize them can i? Until eventually i no longer needed to do that.
Granted i cant spell for shit. But its actually more efficient to read like that.
It took me over a decade of trying really hard to stop my subvocalizing. If i had been taugth like you descrive from the begining i would not have had to spend so much effort to get rid of bad reading habits.
I’ve never heard this term and I’m losing my mind because I’m a very slow reader and, based on what I’m seeing, more-literate people don’t hear the text in their head? I literally never considered that this would be absent from reading aside from recognizing a familiar term (like the name of a store, “ambulance,” whatever). God damn it . . .
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I don’t think so. I’m a very fast reader and I still kinda “hear” words in my head when I go at a relaxed pace. It’s just that at a certain level of literacy, your brain has the ability to visually recognize words faster than you can mentally enunciate them, and it can also recognize words faster than you can mentally process for comprehension. I realized this when of my relatives started to play a game with me where he would flash me a paragraph on his phone for just a second or two, and then I would somehow be able to recite it back. You can deliberately make yourself read at this speed but it’s not very fun, requires focus, and again, is often so fast that you start losing full comprehension of the content.
See the speed reading subsection here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization - in summary: everyone seems to subvocalize to varying extents, unless you deliberately train yourself not to, which you can, but you shouldn’t, because it sucks.
I mean I don’t think this method of education has ever been widespread enough to entirely explain low literacy rates in the US. There are other factors at play here.
Anecdotal story, and I mean no offence to Americans. I was once day-drinking on the rooftop of an airport hotel with a mate, and struck up a conversation with a chubby Danish fellow. He said he was a business owner. He noted that neither of us were Americans so he felt comfortable talking a bit of shit.
He said his company does business with quite a few European countries, but also Americans. He said he hates dealing with Americans because every single time he had a question for them they always had to put him on hold and ask their supervisor because nobody ever seemed to know how to make a decision.
“WHY? WHY do you have to ask your supervisor? This is a simple yes or no question!”
And then he sighed and said “I honestly have no idea how these people made it to the moon and back”.
There is a deep fear of responsibility and being wrong that is beaten into Americans from childhood. No one wants to be the one at fault, so they always defer to authority. It makes them into very compliant workers who also need constant supervision. People are so poorly educated they are often incapable of doing anything without direct instruction, including answering simple questions. It’s real fucked up here and this podcast made me shake with rage at how much more fucked up it is for kids now. I’m just thankful my mom took an active role in my education and taught me phonics, reading, and basic math before kindergarten.
In our defense, if we fuck up, we could lose our jobs, and then we’re really fucked.