Typically, we hear about "a right to read." In this political paradigm, there is a free press; and people can read what they want.
Implicitly, people are able to read. The problem is that sometimes people are prohibited from reading what they want to read. Censorship is the big concern. In short, books are hidden from the public.
In the USA, however, censorship is not the prime problem. Consequently, the phrase "a right to read" does not help us understand the mediocrity in American public schools, nor the weakening and demoralization in our society. Here is the real crisis. The USA has 50 million functional illiterates, that is, people who were never taught to read in any real sense. Billions of books are in plain sight; but can't be used. Books are not hidden. Brains are hidden.
How was this wasteful state of affairs produced? The Education Establishment promoted (and still promotes) an instructional method that does not work. This method has many names--Whole Word, sight-words, Balanced Literacy, and high-frequency words, all much the same thing. This method requires that children memorize words as graphic designs. Seventy years of statistics prove that the method doesn't work.
Presumably children have the right to learn to read but, in our country, that right has been withheld in 50 million separate cases. This would seem to be a massive violation of civil rights. Why is the Department of Justice not bringing suits against the public schools with the worst reading scores, and against the people responsible for this failure?Here's an interesting legal perspective. If your house is on fire, you call the fire department, they never appear, and your house burns down, do you have any recourse? Not much. Okay, suppose the firemen are drunk and incompetent. Any recourse? Not much. Suppose the firemen know you personally and don't like you; suppose they pretend to be disorganized and lost. In short, they conspire to let your house burn down. Here, you surely have criminal activity. The FBI should investigate.
I recently created "A Bill of Rights for Students 2012." Appropriately, the first right deals with reading as that is among the country's biggest problems. And it's the problem where we can most quickly make a difference. Here's how:
"1) THE RIGHT TO LEARN TO READ. All progress in education depends on literacy. It is imperative that children learn the alphabet and the sounds early, and that they are reading in the first grade. Children have a right to be reading age-appropriate books by the second or third grade."What can people do, in addition to hoping that law-enforcement officials will look into legal options? The main solution is greater early literacy. Think of the ages from 2-5, before the public schools can have any effect. Think of literacy in the broadest sense: nursery rhymes, songs, the alphabet, reading together, memorizing poems, telling knock-knock jokes, talking about puns. ANYTHING that will make children more sensitive to how phonetic language works -- that's the answer.
I've always been fascinated by what might be called the engineering aspects of education. How do we teach more in less time? In reading, this question looms especially large. If parents could give their children even elementary literacy by the age of five, then Whole Word can't do much damage.
For a short article on the steps that children have to go through to learn to read, see "54: Preemptive Reading." Also relevant: "61: Early Literacy Pack." Both on
Improve-Education.org . If you have friends with young children, please tell them about these issues.
("A Bill of Rights for Students 2012" can be found here:
http://www.improve-education.org/id90.ht... )
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