Episode 155: Sight-Words Are Killing Us. --- Wed., June 19, 2024

Reality One, we have to get rid of sight-words, so that literacy will have a chance. Reality Two requires explaining the subject to lots of people. That's done most easily, according to author Linda Goudsmit, with the following one-page method.

This explanation requires navigating the chaos of print, like what a child has to deal with. It's better to go directly to  TRANSCRIPT.

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Linda Goudsmit’s current book is Humanitarian Hoaxes. She writes insightfully about the entire range of liberal panaceas that are doing so much to harm us. https://www.amazon.com/Book-Humanitarian-Hoaxes-Killing-Kindness/dp/098354252X

Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is (forthcoming release July, 2024)

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Reading Is Easy, a four-minute video, tells you why the experts think phonics is the only way to go. 

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Here are two ways to help my work…

Visit  Education Reform 
for a 2-page explanation
of what everyone can do.

When you need a smart gift,
give Saving K-12 .

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Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price

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Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet, and education reformer.

(For a description of 9 literary titles, visit Lit4u.com. 
Under construction but worth a look.)

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LET'S FIX EDUCATION:  OVERVIEW

 Recurring themes. Big ideas. Unifying concepts.

Transcript

LET'S FIX EDUCATION     by     Bruce  Deitrick Price

Episode  155      --      June 19, 2024


Episode 155:  Sight-words damage American students. Here’s why…

In his famous 1955 best seller, Rudolf Flesch explained that sight-words don't work, therefore children must learn to read with phonics. Flesch thought this truth was self-evident. Surely he didn't need to keep explaining the obvious... Flesch was wrong.

Arguably, the professors of education were thrilled by how completely sight-words destroyed literacy and dumbed down students. These professors, intoxicated by Marxist theorizing, would not let go of this hateful theory. This ingenious fake is still enforced throughout much of K-12.

I've written a dozen articles on these reading theories, explaining them again and again and again. But guess what? The professors of education at Harvard and similar have the country in a choke hold. They release a continuous "fire hose" of anti-phonics propaganda. There's hardly a teacher or professor or parent who hasn't been disoriented by this juggernaut of mumbo-jumbo.

Please, read this simple one-page explanation of which policies you should rely on. According to author Linda Goudsmit, my explanations was the best thing she has seen on the subject. She is known for her lucid prose and indefatigable research in every direction. She sent a letter to a publisher she knows, asserting, hey, you should do more about reading. Bruce Deitrick Price explains the whole thing so cleverly and you should cover it. Here is Linda Goudsmit’s letter to a publisher:

“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 puts it::

Just for a moment, consider the silly theory that our top educators put forward. There should be no sounding out of letters and syllables; instead, 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, XKYHT, 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 500,000 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 then the sounds they represent.’

I will never forget the first time I read pp 22-23, I was overwhelmed by the simplicity, accuracy,  and power of the example. I still am––BRAVO, Bruce!”

Hopefully, readers appreciate just how difficult it is to recognize all these different words that look almost alike.

We are not going to save the schools until we get rid of the official stupidity known as sight-words. Tell everyone about this column.

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