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Post by millring on Feb 24, 2024 18:03:33 GMT -5
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Post by billhammond on Feb 24, 2024 18:38:36 GMT -5
Wow, sobering post, John. Thanks for sharing it with us. Scary indeed.
Looking forward to hearing Russ' reax, vis a vis his spouse.
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Post by theevan on Feb 24, 2024 18:52:09 GMT -5
I had trouble making it through the article because of, you know, my smartphone.
And now I can't remember what I read or what it's about.
Seriously, it's a simple thesis and it rings all too true.
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Post by james on Feb 24, 2024 21:19:55 GMT -5
TL;DR
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Post by theevan on Feb 24, 2024 21:26:06 GMT -5
TL;DR Right. Emblematic, right?
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 25, 2024 1:58:32 GMT -5
Kotsko writes, "We are complaining about what has been taken from them," and my immediate response was, "No, it's about what has never been given to them, which is adult-level reading skills." He does eventually get around to what I see as a crucial problem, but first he lists a bunch of secondary or tertiary issues.
Smartphone-driven short attention span? Maybe. But that doesn't account for simple inability to construe words on a page (or, yeah, screen)--or to sound out new words. Or to get through a sentence longer than, say, an 8-10-word simple declarative sentence.
Kotsko writes that he has been in college teaching for fifteen years. Cezarija has been at it for more than fifty (and I was at it right next to her for the first twenty, and observing over her shoulder for the next 30), and this was going on before Covid, before smartphones, before the internet. It was noticeable when I was still teaching, and it has gotten worse over the last couple decades. Its roots are in the failure to teach reading skills and associated study skills and to demand that students use those skills to complete tasks. These skills and habits are formed in the first six years of schooling and expanded in high school. By the time you get to college, you should be reading at grade 12 level, but many of C's students clearly cannot read comfortably beyond, say, middle-school level. And among C's semi-literate students are many headed for K-12 teaching careers. At least, that's what they think they're doing.
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Post by millring on Feb 25, 2024 6:32:08 GMT -5
"No, it's about what has never been given to them, which is adult-level reading skills." It seems like it's been a runaway train for my entire lifetime. My 62 year-old younger brother's elementary school experience was my first exposure to that train. It was all the way back in the 60s when I was first witness to the way changing education departments were affecting lower education. Specifically, it was decided/discovered back then that some people don't seem to be capable of decoding the written word in the way that written word was coded in the first place. That is: it was decided/discovered that some people couldn't learn to read phonetically. So, rather than adding to phonetically taught reading, it was decided that since some children couldn't seem to learn phonics, then all children would be taught to sight read. I was taught phonics, but 5 short years later my younger brother was being taught sight reading only ('til mom and dad realized what was happening and had him repeat first grade in a different/private school). And the compassion-based motive for teaching sight reading and not phonics seemed to be that if all children couldn't do it then no children would be doing it. It was a fairness issue, though it was never/rarely explicitly declared as the motive for the change. Further, it was justified (and continues to be justified) by the fact that English is a language derived from so many other languages that it is rife with exceptions to the phonetic rules. There are so many examples of this -- many of them quite humorous (The Foxen in the Henhice comes to mind) -- and they are still brought up today from people our age as examples of something wrong with the English language. As if English was poorly conceived and should have been corrected some time in history so that it was like all the other (perfect) languages on the planet. So, rather than teach the exceptions to the phonetic rules as most of us were (because most of us are my age or older), sight reading was seen as the solution to our exceptional language. As if every reader before the 60s had proven incapable of deciphering the exceptions -- even though we were all readers. It seems to be a compassion-borne flaw that if there is an exception we have to bring the whole down to the level of the exception or else the system is unfair. The phonics thing is just one example. Behavioral issues vs discipline is yet another. Mainstreaming, yet another. It's because we're generally good people who love the underdog ... and maybe suppose along with that compassion, that those who can excel will manage to do so in spite of our efforts to help those who probably will not.
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Post by PaulKay on Feb 25, 2024 10:13:20 GMT -5
"No, it's about what has never been given to them, which is adult-level reading skills." It seems like it's been a runaway train for my entire lifetime. My 62 year-old younger brother's elementary school experience was my first exposure to that train. It was all the way back in the 60s when I was first witness to the way changing education departments were affecting lower education. Specifically, it was decided/discovered back then that some people don't seem to be capable of decoding the written word in the way that written word was coded in the first place. That is: it was decided/discovered that some people couldn't learn to read phonetically. So, rather than adding to phonetically taught reading, it was decided that since some children couldn't seem to learn phonics, then all children would be taught to sight read. I was taught phonics, but 5 short years later my younger brother was being taught sight reading only ('til mom and dad realized what was happening and had him repeat first grade in a different/private school). And the compassion-based motive for teaching sight reading and not phonics seemed to be that if all children couldn't do it then no children would be doing it. It was a fairness issue, though it was never/rarely explicitly declared as the motive for the change. Further, it was justified (and continues to be justified) by the fact that English is a language derived from so many other languages that it is rife with exceptions to the phonetic rules. There are so many examples of this -- many of them quite humorous (The Foxen in the Henhice comes to mind) -- and they are still brought up today from people our age as examples of something wrong with the English language. As if English was poorly conceived and should have been corrected some time in history so that it was like all the other (perfect) languages on the planet. So, rather than teach the exceptions to the phonetic rules as most of us were (because most of us are my age or older), sight reading was seen as the solution to our exceptional language. As if every reader before the 60s had proven incapable of deciphering the exceptions -- even though we were all readers. It seems to be a compassion-borne flaw that if there is an exception we have to bring the whole down to the level of the exception or else the system is unfair. The phonics thing is just one example. Behavioral issues vs discipline is yet another. Mainstreaming, yet another. It's because we're generally good people who love the underdog ... and maybe suppose along with that compassion, that those who can excel will manage to do so in spite of our efforts to help those who probably will not. I suspect that the move away from phonics years ago could very well be a primary cause. If they struggle to read (comprehend what they read), it could well be because they struggle to learn new words. Mississippi changed to phonics based reading
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 25, 2024 11:54:58 GMT -5
This is not my central area of expertise, but my impression is that pedagogical fashions follow the usual rules of, well, fashion, and that versions of phonics and whole-word approaches have come into and out of favor over the last 70 or so years. And these fashions seem to originate in the ed schools, where this or that line of research is cited as the basis for a reading-skills curriculum. I do know that my sister and I got the phonics approach in the 1949-1955ish window when we got formal training. (Though I could already read by the time I hit first grade--presumably thanks to my mother's habit of sitting me on her lap with a book. At least, that's what I was told--I have no memory of it.)
Toward the end of grad school, C took a number of courses to shore up her basic-skills credentials, including some reading-skills courses. In fact, one of her early publications was in this area. I'll ask her what the reigning orthodoxy was back then (mid-1970s). I know that her own take on it is that phonics is the way to go, though I don't think she studied much about the various disability and learning-style issues that were getting a lot of traction back then.
It remains our strong belief that the reading problems of college-age students are rooted in the way they are taught to read--and in a general K-12 environment that does not encourage effortful or disciplined activity in general. C has many PSEO students (essentially high schoolers taking college courses for credit, for free) with non-existent work habits and classroom behavior that I can't believe would have been tolerated even a decade or so ago. Aside from the constant attention to cellphones and nodding off (current variations on perpetual attention problems*), kids come in late, leave early, get up in the middle of class to have a pee, eat lunch, and generally behave as though they were at home. One kid comes in late, walks to the front of the room while C is teaching, and wants to explain why he has to leave early or take a test at a different time. The kid seems unaware of how disruptive this is, and we assume that this kind of behavior is tolerated at his high school.
* When I started teaching in 1966, it was staring out the window, reading the campus newspaper, and the perpetual favorite of falling asleep. For that matter, one of my most vivid memories from my own freshman year was one of my classmates nodding off in an 8:00 a.m. logic class. He was in the front row, and the towering Irish Jesuit prof noticed, stood over him, and in a booming whisper said, "Shh--he's sleeping." Which, of course, woke him up.
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Post by theevan on Feb 25, 2024 13:50:30 GMT -5
One other thing, for whatever reason, fewer parents are reading to their kids like Russell's mom did. I suspect far fewer.
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Post by Cornflake on Feb 25, 2024 13:57:39 GMT -5
"One other thing, for whatever reason, fewer parents are reading to their kids like Russell's mom did. I suspect far fewer."
I suspect you're right, Evan, but I don't see that as a sign of decline. It's a sign of change. The written word is much less important today than it was when I was a child.
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Dub
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Post by Dub on Feb 25, 2024 14:04:48 GMT -5
This situation is tragic and probably unstoppable. One doesn’t have to be a professor to see the outcome every day. I think this is one of the trends contributing to the ultimate fall of the western hemisphere and, eventually, modern civilization.
My perspective is definitely warped. I came from a magic place and time. I was nearly a teenager before our family and friends had television sets. Reading was a major source of both entertainment and learning. Movies were only an occasional diversion. Both my parents were well educated and always talked to my brothers and me using all the words in their considerable vocabularies. They always spoke with clear diction. If they used a word we didn’t know, we’d be referred to the dictionary. This could happen in the middle of supper. One of us would get the dictionary and return to the table to share it with the family. It wasn’t a chore, we all enjoyed it. The same thing with unfamiliar subjects. Out would come an encyclopedia volume or its associated atlas to better understand the topic. We were taught to sound out words but I don’t remember phonics being mentioned as a technique or strategy, it was just something we did.
Education was valued in Iowa at the time. We were proudly told that Iowa had one of the highest literacy rates in the nation. Now our politicians are laboring to undo that and it seems to be working. Ninety-four percent of my high school graduating class went on to college. That wasn’t the case for all Des Moines high schools, ours was an exception. We were probably doing college level work in high school. AP programs hadn’t been invented yet or at least hadn’t come to Des Moines. When I got to college, I was surprised that I seemed better educated than my classmates from other states even though I was not an achiever in high school.
I loved reading as early as I can remember. I read a great many of my parents’ and my grandmother’s books and always had books checked out from the library. I read more fiction as a child than I do now. These days I can get completely engrossed in non-fiction of all kinds. I might read it on my Kobo e-reader instead of a book but it’s no less engrossing.
I’m not optimistic about our prospects for the future. Perhaps when the written word is no longer used, human beings will have developed other ways to communicate and share understanding. I hope so.
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Post by RickW on Feb 25, 2024 15:04:57 GMT -5
One other thing, for whatever reason, fewer parents are reading to their kids like Russell's mom did. I suspect far fewer. The one thing pretty much every elementary school teacher I’ve ever talked to has confirmed is that how much the parents read, and read to their kids, is the single largest indicator of reading skills in children.
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Post by TKennedy on Feb 25, 2024 15:14:24 GMT -5
I spent 18 years on our local United Way board. One of our priorities was literacy. A great program we funded was the Dolly Parton Imagination Library imaginationlibrary.com/Parents would enroll at the birth of a child and an age appropriate book was sent to them every month with the child’s name on the shipping label. It was found that the kid would find someone to read it to them. We also heavily supported early childhood education programs that emphasized literacy. There was an adult literacy program we helped fund and the stories were inspiring. One guy had gone through the Army as a mechanic and worked as a groundskeeper at a local golf club and could never read. He didn’t even tell his wife for a while. If he had to go to the grocery store he would memorize what the stuff he was to get looked like. When he described how he learned to read through the program we all teared up. There certainly is an epidemic of loss of the ability to comprehend the written word or to express oneself in writing. My own feeling is that reading to your kids when they are young is incredibly important in their development.
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Post by coachdoc on Feb 25, 2024 15:19:25 GMT -5
Kotsko writes, "We are complaining about what has been taken from them," and my immediate response was, "No, it's about what has never been given to them, which is adult-level reading skills." He does eventually get around to what I see as a crucial problem, but first he lists a bunch of secondary or tertiary issues. Smartphone-driven short attention span? Maybe. But that doesn't account for simple inability to construe words on a page (or, yeah, screen)--or to sound out new words. Or to get through a sentence longer than, say, an 8-10-word simple declarative sentence. Kotsko writes that he has been in college teaching for fifteen years. Cezarija has been at it for more than fifty (and I was at it right next to her for the first twenty, and observing over her shoulder for the next 30), and this was going on before Covid, before smartphones, before the internet. It was noticeable when I was still teaching, and it has gotten worse over the last couple decades. Its roots are in the failure to teach reading skills and associated study skills and to demand that students use those skills to complete tasks. These skills and habits are formed in the first six years of schooling and expanded in high school. By the time you get to college, you should be reading at grade 12 level, but many of C's students clearly cannot read comfortably beyond, say, middle-school level. And among C's semi-literate students are many headed for K-12 teaching careers. At least, that's what they think they're doing. You misspelled Costco. And I fail to see what Costco has to do with it.
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Post by millring on Feb 25, 2024 16:26:22 GMT -5
My history is a little like Dub's in that my father profoundly disliked television and for the most part refused to have one in the house. Some time around '65 he relented a little bit and we had a set that he removed a tube from when he was gone from the house so that he knew we would not be watching when he was gone from home.
Instead, our house was full of books. Thousands of them. Dad rarely went picking without bringing home more used books. And most of them, to be honest, didn't end up being read so much as leafed through from time to time. We had Nancy Drews but not the Hardy Boys. I read the Hardy Boys later with my library card. It bothered me that it took two boys to solve what Nancy did by herself. It was only small consolation that she had George and Bess along for the ride. We had biographies targeted for the kid's market: Hero's Name: Boy Something were the titles. I remember Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell and George Washington Carver. Scores of titles all in orange hard cover.
I went to Christian School. To my mom it was for the theological training. To my dad is was because the education was superior. And like Dub, when I got to college I was way ahead of my class -- especially where breadth of reading was concerned. My lit prof gave a pre-course exam. A fellow who ended up being my best friend through college and I scored highest by a large margin. Thanks, Dad.
As far as phonics training, it will forever be a mystery how it was ever removed from reading education.
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Post by theevan on Feb 25, 2024 16:27:25 GMT -5
Extends to basic math as well.
We went through through a fast food line a few weeks ago (yeah, not proud of it) and the bill came to $5.05. Had to give her a twenty, so I said, wait , I've got a nickel. She froze up. She had already entered 20 into the register and had no idea how to handle the extra nickel. Her co-workers tried to help to no avail. She had to call the manager who got me the correct change. I was embarrassed for the girl.
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Post by theevan on Feb 25, 2024 16:34:48 GMT -5
My personal story: My parents had their problems. I don't think either of them ever read to any of us as kids. We were "raised" by a succession of hired help. The first one spoke one the merest bit of English. When I was dropped off for kindergarten and they asked me my last name, I didn't know it. I felt so lost. I didn't know any numbers or letters and I struggled mightily grades 1-3. They wanted to hold me back each year but didn't. Then between 3rd and 4th grade I read my first book, Charlotte's Web. I cried at the end. I was amazed at the power of it. I didn't want it to end. After that I went on a reading tear. By mid 4th grade I had caught up, mostly. By 5th grade on I was a very good student...it was my identity.
But it was quite a struggle getting there.
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Dub
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Post by Dub on Feb 25, 2024 16:43:04 GMT -5
Extends to basic math as well. We went through through a fast food line a few weeks ago (yeah, not proud of it) and the bill came to $5.05. Had to give her a twenty, so I said, wait , I've got a nickel. She froze up. She had already entered 20 into the register and had no idea how to handle the extra nickel. Her co-workers tried to help to no avail. She had to call the manager who got me the correct change. I was embarrassed for the girl. Wow! The last time I worked in retail (1961), cash registers didn't calculate anything. One keyed in the sale amount and the cash drawer popped open. Change calculation was the operator's responsibility. And what did you buy at a fast food stand that resulted in a bill of $5.05? Around here that might buy you a soft drink. Fast food for two, pretty much anywhere is as least $20.
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Post by millring on Feb 25, 2024 16:51:21 GMT -5
My personal story: My parents had their problems. I don't think either of them ever read to any of us as kids. We were "raised" by a succession of hired help. The first one spoke one the merest bit of English. When I was dropped off for kindergarten and they asked me my last name, I didn't know it. I felt so lost. I didn't know any numbers or letters and I struggled mightily grades 1-3. They wanted to hold me back each year but didn't. Then between 3rd and 4th grade I read my first book, Charlotte's Web. I cried at the end. I was amazed at the power of it. I didn't want it to end. After that I went on a reading tear. By mid 4th grade I had caught up, mostly. By 5th grade on I was a very good student...it was my identity. But it was quite a struggle getting there. Such a brilliant and loving man from such a rough beginning.
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