Why are US schools so bad at facts?

[agamemnus]

Double post!

The really cool thing is that phonics can be adapted to fit a variety of different situations.

I do concede that it is theoretically possible that a small amount of children will not automatically pick up word-sound combinations when reading with parents/teachers/classmates/by themselves. However, I speculate it is in the minority, in disagreement with Aimless. I believe that nowadays a lot of children are not being allowed to reach their full potential: In my high school, 10 years ago, there was special ed. (dunno exactly what it was called), CP2, CP1, Honors, and (for 11th and 12th grade, sometimes) AP. Honors courses took up maybe 10% of the student body, and that is sad because I did not consider most Honors courses to be particularly rigorous; we didn't really have a huge number of what I would consider "smart" people in Honors courses either.

I will paraphrase some author or another and say "the human brain is a terrible thing to waste"... there is an incredible amount of learning that 99% of all people can do, simply if you don't restrict them.

I suppose that not all phonics learning is bad, as I have later clarified, but I still believe it is being taught in excess and without any sort of planning or research in the school system.

[agamemnus]

Is it harmful to take a systematic active approach to that "natural learning"?

You killed my double post.

I believe it is harmful, because it confuses the natural learning process. These gimmick based systems that eschew a child's natural learning abilities are everywhere in the US school system. Thankfully, I forgot both their details and their overall names and mechanisms. Unfortunately, it isn't so great for the purposes of this discussion... let me try to remember...


Ok, one example is in mathematics. In elementary school, I used to try to remember carries in my head. Everyone has the ability to do this, but it comes with a lot of practice. When I made a mistake, the teacher scolded me and said I should write the carries to make myself more accurate. I also remember some sort of elaborate system of writing that stuff out that made it even more easier.. and then I remember seeing my classmates count with their hands while I was counting in my head.

I still can't count as well as I'd like to in my head because my teachers developmentally disabled me. I should sue! I keep trying to multiply powers of two but I keep messing up in the 100,000s.

One Physics example. I'm not exactly sure but I think it was a system of multiplying measures... IE: multiply disparate measures (both system type and powers (m, mm, cm, km) of speed by force, and then break it up into the metric system in meters and seconds and such. What we did was to put it into this huge box-type format and constantly repeat it. This was actually hard for me to remember for some reason. :\

Bad example (IIRC):

Divide 5.0km*1.0m by 12s*1.0minutes*2.0m.

Normally I would do:
5km*m / (12s*minutes*2m)
5000m*m / (12s*60s*2m)
5000/(24*60) m / s^2
5000/(24*60) m / s^2
3.5 m / s^2


The "system":

5.0 km | 1.0 m
--------------
12 s | 1.0 minutes | 2.0 m

5.0 | km | m
--------------
24 | s | minutes | m

5000 | m | m
--------------
24 | s | 60 s | m

5000 | m | m
--------------
1440 | s | s | m


5000 | m |
-----------
1440 | s^2 |

3.5 m/s^2

[GGT]

Wait, so is this thread about phonics, or learning systems, or text books?

Aggie, I have no idea what your concept of phonics is, but it seems bassackward. It's useful for teaching certain groups, at certain times, with other visual methods (Like Chinese who learned to read characters, figuring that our S has a ssssound, like a ssssnake that hissssessss, sssee the ssssnake in the shape of an Esss.....).

I can't really remember how I learned to read, but some phonics was in there. And reading aloud. As a little kid pre-K I could stumble on a new word and "sound it out" myself most times.

[agamemnus]

Small point. There wasn't really ever a concept of phonics in Russia (USSR) when I lived there (up to 6 years old; kindergarten), but how many Russia (USSR) were illiterate? Drunk, starving, poor, and prone to not questioning authority, yes, but everyone was incredibly literate. More than the US at the time, by a mile.

Edit: but then again, Russian mostly is spelled how it sounds. It took me a few years to pick up perfect spelling in Russian (which is now sadly no longer perfect), but it took me many more years to pick up perfect spelling in English. I could still understand new words, though (if not pronounce them correctly all the time) because I understood what the roots of the words were, and they were always in a context.

[littlelolligagged]

Small point. There wasn't really ever a concept of phonics in Russia when I lived there (up to 6 years old; kindergarten), but how many Russia were illiterate? Drunk, starving, poor, and prone to not questioning authority, yes, but everyone was incredibly literate.

The Soviet education system is absolutely something the Americans should emulate. I'm not entirely sure of your age so I'm not sure if you were post-Communist or not.

Part of the problem with English is that there are multiple pronunciations based on how a letter is used in a word. Most other languages aren't like that. It can be confusing to many kids.

[agamemnus]

Yup, I edited the post above a bit... left right before the fun began.

Still, non-perfect spelling shouldn't be interfering with comprehension, right?...

[agamemnus]

Ok, here we go:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2510667/posts

Next, the phonics vs. whole word really only matters for beginners learning to say words. Phonics won't help you learning that a bat, cat and rat are different and what they mean, even though you can pronounce them.

Says it better than I did. So here I go again with my mean style: sounding out parts of words is fine in kindergarten, but there shouldn't be a one-year mega-course on phonics, let alone more than a year.

EDIT:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/20342563

[littlelolligagged]

It does. Words don't look the way people think they should sound, so it interferes with understanding.

[GGT]

From your link aggie:

PS: I just put a review on Amazon of Samuel Blumenfeld’s wonderful book of essays, “Victims of Dick and Jane.” This book contains a comment that sums up everything:

“We’ve known now since 1955 that whole-word methodology is the problem. Flesch naively assumed back then that after the educators read his book they would recognize the error of their ways and return to the sane phonetic method of teaching. What he didn’t understand, however, was the political agenda behind what those progressive professors were doing. Their goal was to use education as a means for changing America from an individualist, capitalist, religious society into a socialist, collectivist, humanist society.”

[For more on topic, follow link to “37: Whole Word versus Phonics" on Improve-Education.org.]

Huh? Education can be politicized, but that's a bit conspiratorial.

Also, we don't interchange phonics with phonetics (no matter what your links say....) No kindergartener would be learning maelstrom or eustachian, so who's that Helen Bowyer talking about?




edit--her article is from 1961! The footnote says Russian kids are in kindergarten at age seven, and once they learn the alphabet can read in 2-3 months because the Russian language is so nearly phonemic.

and ps, Whole Word and Whole Language are different methods.

[LittleFuzzy]

From your link aggie:



Huh? Education can be politicized, but that's a bit conspiratorial.

It's the Free Republic, they're all still paranoid about the Communists.

[GGT]

It's the Free Republic, they're all still paranoid about the Communists.

It doesn't make sense, though. The 'progressives' were trying anything new and individualized to teach kids to read. After all, it took a long time to recognize and diagnose dyslexia, let alone finding ways to accommodate all the different learning styles kids have.

Continuing on the current tangent of teaching reading.....that old article from JSTOR had some World English examples that looked like Ebonics. Is that how the Russians (and aggie) learn to read? If so, it's no wonder he doesn't think proper spellings matter so much.

It's almost like little kids learning how to 'read' from texting on cell phones or chatting online. Hi U R L8. That's fine for a certain medium, but it won't help a child learn to read literature or write a book report.

[agamemnus]

If so, it's no wonder he doesn't think proper spellings matter so much.

I never said that. I merely meant to point out that I don't see what all the fuss is about if you can't spell a word correctly... a few times. People should get to remembering stuff. It's not like Russians don't have to remember anything. Sure, we don't have to remember so many spelling rules as American kids, but just purely because we aren't (weren't) treated like we all had a severe form of A.D.D., we did well.

I memorized several children's books for no good reason. I can't do it now, but I used to be able to recite them.

And another thing. In Russia, children's books are different from children's books in America. The kind of books that toddlers read (or used to read) in Russia are the same books that 5th graders were reading in America. Children's books differed from adult books in that:

* they always had some sort of fantasy, cartoon-like setting.
* that their letters were about twice as big as that you'd find in a cheap paperback here in America.
* the books themselves were about 4 times bigger than the cheap paperback and 1.5 to 2.5 times bigger than children's books in America.
* a lot of the books had full-page, beautiful illustrations.

The actual content was not one or five words per page, but maybe several paragraphs per page. It was a lot of content. I guess my point is that kids read a lot, in terms of volume.

The image that is always stuck in my head during this discussion is that of my fellow 3rd grade class (USA) taking several minutes to recite a sentence using the weird phonics system we were using, while this normally would have taken me about 10-15 seconds to read (in my head, not aloud) if it was in Russian.

[Ominous Gamer]

wait, ag's entire hang up was because he thought phonics and phonetics was the same thing?

[agamemnus]

wait, ag's entire hang up was because he thought phonics and phonetics was the same thing?

Phonetics is fine, while phonics is not. There are different phonics systems, and some are more "advanced"/complicated than others. A system system is much more advanced/complicated than a system, and I disagree with using a phonics system system to teach reading and writing.