"Teach kids who are not from 'book-lined homes' (i.e., culturally disadvantaged black kids) how to read via the phonics method rather than the newer 'whole word method', which teaches kids to approach words as chunks rather than sounding them out, since English spelling is considered too irregular for the phonics route."
This to me is crucial. I have never taught elementary school, but I know, from teaching new immigrants who were illiterate in their own languages, that when teaching people to read who have never read before, phonics is essential. Otherwise, teaching these people to read English is like teaching them to read hieroglyphics; unless you teach them the sound system of the target language, they are completely confused. There is a reason that the phonetic alphabet took off sometime around 800 BCE: it made reading easier. Before that, almost the only people who could read and write were professional scribes.
So why do we teach reading and writing as if we had a picture-based writing system?
I can tell you that the simple phonics books I used with those illiterate immigrants/ refugees absolutely worked.
I tried telling other ESL literacy teachers about them (this was the late '80s when "whole language" was still new and fanatically adhered to even in adult classes), one teacher said, "I would be afraid to use those phonics books." She was afraid of being ostracized/ excommunicated by the teaching community.
I laughed at her and continued using the teaching materials that worked with my students. Elementary teachers would not be allowed to take matters into their own hands like this today, I think. But they should be allowed to try it with struggling students. I bet it would make a difference.
I don't know why they ever adopted a dumb system like the newer one and didn't just stick with phonics. I learned via phonics and I can still remember what it was like to learn how to read that way (I was DYING to learn how to read and write and couldn't wait.) Now *there's* a *real* idea for helping a lot of black people (and everyone else) that I doubt the 'antiracism' movement will embrace any time soon. Thanks for your thoughtful reply!
It's just the most logical way to teach reading in any language that has a phonetic alphabet. Incidentally, it takes Chinese children many years to learn to read and write Chinese characters because they are not phonetic.
Yes, plus there are like 10,000 of them to learn! As I understand it from my time at a machine translation company, even older Chinese have a hard time sometimes reading the paper, they don't understand everything.
"Teach kids who are not from 'book-lined homes' (i.e., culturally disadvantaged black kids) how to read via the phonics method rather than the newer 'whole word method', which teaches kids to approach words as chunks rather than sounding them out, since English spelling is considered too irregular for the phonics route."
This to me is crucial. I have never taught elementary school, but I know, from teaching new immigrants who were illiterate in their own languages, that when teaching people to read who have never read before, phonics is essential. Otherwise, teaching these people to read English is like teaching them to read hieroglyphics; unless you teach them the sound system of the target language, they are completely confused. There is a reason that the phonetic alphabet took off sometime around 800 BCE: it made reading easier. Before that, almost the only people who could read and write were professional scribes.
So why do we teach reading and writing as if we had a picture-based writing system?
I can tell you that the simple phonics books I used with those illiterate immigrants/ refugees absolutely worked.
I tried telling other ESL literacy teachers about them (this was the late '80s when "whole language" was still new and fanatically adhered to even in adult classes), one teacher said, "I would be afraid to use those phonics books." She was afraid of being ostracized/ excommunicated by the teaching community.
I laughed at her and continued using the teaching materials that worked with my students. Elementary teachers would not be allowed to take matters into their own hands like this today, I think. But they should be allowed to try it with struggling students. I bet it would make a difference.
I don't know why they ever adopted a dumb system like the newer one and didn't just stick with phonics. I learned via phonics and I can still remember what it was like to learn how to read that way (I was DYING to learn how to read and write and couldn't wait.) Now *there's* a *real* idea for helping a lot of black people (and everyone else) that I doubt the 'antiracism' movement will embrace any time soon. Thanks for your thoughtful reply!
It's just the most logical way to teach reading in any language that has a phonetic alphabet. Incidentally, it takes Chinese children many years to learn to read and write Chinese characters because they are not phonetic.
Yes, plus there are like 10,000 of them to learn! As I understand it from my time at a machine translation company, even older Chinese have a hard time sometimes reading the paper, they don't understand everything.