The Godfrey Method- Children's Books

A research team headed by scientists from the esteemed Yale School of Medicine announced in 2004 a particularly significant finding for children who have trouble learning to read. It was reported by Gilbert Zarate in the Brownsville Herald: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/opinions_more.php?id=61072_0_11_0_C

 

The focus of this study, as much of the writing on this topic, is on how to assist struggling readers. While struggling readers show us what the critical issues are, children who are not struggling will be able to learn much more, much quicker, if they are also given exposure to the best teaching practices. Unfortunately, as is commonly the case, teachers leave good students to fend for themselves on the mistaken assumption that they don’t need help. Mom and Dad can and should do things at home to enhance their child’s learning and intelligence.

 

In the words of the reporter:

“The study reported that the brain function of poor readers actually changes to resemble the brain function of “good” readers when they have been taught to read through instruction that is direct, systematic, and focuses on the sounds and letters that make up words, the meanings of words, and helping children read accurately and quickly.

 

Using functional MRI scanners, researchers were able to document that effective reading instruction not only improves reading ability but actually changes the brain’s functioning so children can read more efficiently. These struggling readers were taught to read using a comprehensive reading program that focused on systematically teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and spelling and, as a result, formed new and lasting neurological connections and pathways in parts of their brain that regulate reading ability.

 

We know that almost every child in America — whatever race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic level — can become a strong and confident reader when taught through a comprehensive approach grounded in systematic, research-based instruction. And we know that scientifically based reading instruction can be successfully implemented in all schools — whether urban, suburban, or rural.

 

Unfortunately, the reality today is that nearly 40 percent of fourth-grade students are unable to read at grade level. While many policymakers, educators and parents are enthusiastic about teaching children to read, not all schools and school districts are implementing instruction grounded in scientific approaches that have been proven to increase reading skills. Despite what we know works, not all schools have put in place carefully developed, comprehensive reading programs that include research-proven instructional practices. This is a travesty.

 

We know that reading instruction for struggling readers must be explicit, systematic, and allow sufficient time for student learning. We also know that the reading curriculum should include the five critical components that are fundamental to learning to read — phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension.”

 

So if the scientific evidence strongly proves that phonics instruction re-maps the brain for the better, why does the educational establishment, for the most part, continue to ignore the data and teach ineffective reading (and math) methods? Part of the answer may be found in the lobbying and monetary influence of textbook publishers, who follow fads for personal gain rather than true research results. Part of the answer may be found in the egos of some educational people pushing their own theories and agendas. Part of the answer can be found in the inertia and ennui of large government entities, schools, to resist change.

 

Whatever the factors, it is clear that parents must not let their gifted children be left to fend for themselves in school. Parents can follow the best practices of phonics reading instruction (and math instruction) with their children at home to ensure a great foundation for success.

1. Why should parents teach their children to read before kindergarten?

There are many good reasons, such as:

To increase their child’s IQ, by catching the child’s optimum developmental window for reading, as proven by Dr. Glenn Doman and Dr. Michael Merzenich.
This will increase their capacity for learning for the rest of their lives.

To prevent dyslexia and other learning problems, because prevention is much better than remediation.
Yes, gifted children can have hidden learning disabilities.

To reverse the downward educational trend, because parents are their child’s best teacher, as proven by Dr. Glenn Doman and Ms. Glynne Sutcliffe, M.A. Dip. Ed. Only parents doing something at home can reverse the whole language fiasco of public education.

To feel confident and have a good self-esteem at school, by staying ahead of the class.

To create a joyful bedtime routine, giving children the 2 most crucial things they need – parent time and reading skills.

To help children excel in the technology workforce of the future, because reading is the foundation of everything else.

2. Why should parents teach phonics instead of sight-reading?

Phonics wires a child’s brain properly for reading. Phonics is the only proven cure for dyslexia.

Sight-reading limits a child’s vocabulary and can cause reading problems later in life. Sight-reading requires memorizing the shape of about 4,000 words, while phonics only requires memorizing 42 sounds.

Phonics allows a child to decode an unfamiliar word, avoiding embarrassment as an adult.

3. How is the Godfrey Method different?

The Godfrey Method, as found in A Pretty Girl Was Alpha Bette, helps all children learn easier and faster.

And it helps those who are struggling to come up to speed.

TGM connects the letters to their sounds in a child’s mind in a way that makes sense to her.

TGM has two important components: picture-letter phonics cards and the way to teach them properly.

TGM allows children to learn phonics at younger ages.

TGM easily fits into any busy family schedule, and makes a great bedtime routine.

TGM is affordable, and costs less than you’ll spend at the convenience store next week.

TGM purposely does not use electronics or video to teach- since television, video, and radio noise can be precursors to autism and dyslexia in young children. Its book and cards help parents give their children the one-on-one attention they need.

TGM, as found in APGWAB, provides both the phonics tools and the method to teach them properly.

TGM guidelines are easy to understand and fit on only one page.

Anyone can do this. You don’t need a teaching certificate to teach your child to read.

Did you know that according to Dr. Glenn Doman of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, brain-damaged children can be healed? What does this have to do with gifted children? Dr. Doman has shown that the same methods that heal brain damage can also increase IQ in normal children. His methods include using flashcards with young children to teach ‘bits of intelligence®.’ The author strongly suggests, however, that parents not use whole-word flashcards until AFTER phonics is mastered (Godfrey Method picture-letter phonics cards) and the words have been sounded-out a few times first!

The Teaching Philosophy of The Institutes:

"Learning is a joyous process.

Children love to learn. They can learn absolutely anything that can be taught to them in an honest, factual, and joyous way.

In order for teaching to be effective, it must always be a joyous process.

Parents know and love their children more than anyone else does. They are the best teachers for their own children.

Parents are the answer, not the problem."

I am so excited to hear another expert put the parent back into the early learning! Universal preschool is a HUGE mistake. Parents as Teachers (PAT) is a much better solution. The Godfrey Method is something that mom and dad can (and should) do at home, long before their child's school age.

 

My friend Glynne reminded me that the goal is prevention, not remediation. Phonics should be taught early and right. This is a hilarious satire! Enjoy

 

 

http://www.nrrf.org/satire_WL_at_Fork.html

 

Whole Language at the Fork in the Road

by Cathy Froggatt

Former NRRF North Carolina Director

Right to Read Report, February 1998

 

The purpose of this satire is to paint a clear picture of the anguish experienced by hundreds of thousands of young Americans as they advance through and leave school ill-equipped to handle the very real demands and requirements of school and life beyond. Cathy has heard many of these experiences first hand.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

One day Dr. Goodguess died. The Gatekeeper to the afterlife told him that before entering the afterlife, he, like everyone, would be granted one wish to change one thing about his previous life on earth.

 

"What a wonderful surprise!" Dr. Goodguess exclaimed. "My greatest regret in life was that I didn’t learn to read with Whole Language. As you undoubtedly know," he said, "I ‘mainstreamed’ that philosophy of reading into nearly every classroom in the English-speaking world."

 

"Your wish is granted," responded the Gatekeeper. "From this moment on, you will find that your brain has been altered. Now you will read the Whole Language way. You must now travel down the path you see before you for a short distance. There you will find a fork in the road. One path leads to Perdition, the other to Paradise. Signs are posted which clearly mark the paths. Choose carefully, because once you have chosen a path to travel, you can never turn back."

 

Dr. Goodguess marched off confidently until he reached the fork in the road. The left fork was marked with a sign that said: "Perdition." The road to the right said: "Paradise."

 

As he stood there, a look of puzzlement, and then worry spread over his face. He scratched his head and thought, "They both start with ‘P’; now what do I do? I’ve always been a risk-taker, but this is a frightfully important decision. I cannot make a mistake."

 

Just then, another founder of Whole Language, Dr. Sampler, died and stood before the Gatekeeper. "The hallmark of my life," he told the Gatekeeper with pride, "was the widespread influence my theories have had on reading instruction. I only wish that I had actually learned to read in a manner consistent with my theories: you know…naturally…without having to be forced to learn those low-level phonics sub-skills."

 

His wish was immediately granted, and in a moment he joined Dr. Goodguess at the fork in the road. "Thank goodness you’re here, Dr. Sampler," exclaimed Dr. Goodguess. "I am in dire need of some cooperative learning."

 

"Why, Dr. Goodguess, what is the matter? You look very distraught! What has happened to your self-esteem?"

 

"Well, Dr. Sampler, it’s these darn words-in-isolation. You’d think there would be at least one picture clue somewhere?!"

 

"Hmmm, I see what you mean, Dr. Goodguess. Oh, no! Both signs have words that start with the same letter, and the words are about the same length."

 

As they stood pondering their dilemma, the earthly life of a College Professor of Education came to an end. As Professor Indoctrinate stood before the Gatekeeper, she stated with a rather high degree of confidence: "I have been completely happy with my earthly life. The life of a tenured professor, with the academic freedom it brings, was near perfect bliss. I wouldn’t have changed a thing."

 

"So be it," said the Gatekeeper, "but I’m afraid the fork in the road up ahead is becoming choked with people. Perhaps you can assist them by bringing this "context clue" to help them decide which path to take." With that, the Gatekeeper gave her a sign that said: "Pandemonium."* "Take this sign with you and place it at the left fork in the path. Do you understand?"

 

"Certainly," said Dr. Indoctrinate, and she did as she was asked.

 

Needless to say, Drs. Goodguess and Sampler were delighted to see help coming, but they were immediately confounded when they found themselves with yet another "P" word.

 

Professor Indoctrinate, unwilling to provide any phonics information due to her thorough disdain for such "lower order subskills," encouraged Drs. Goodguess and Sampler to use the Whole Language cueing system they knew so well. In an attempt to reassure them, she said, "Don’t be upset if you can’t read the signs just yet. After all, reading is developmental. In time it will all begin to click, maybe next year or the year after."

 

Now they knew they were in need of a ‘real’ reading expert, particularly one who had been intensely trained, preferably at Ohio State. So without hesitation, even though their self-esteem was becoming badly damaged, Drs. Goodguess and Sampler fell to their knees and began praying loudly. As if on cue, a Reading Recovery teacher appeared on the pathway. At first she was a bit intimidated to be in the presence of the founders of Whole Language. After all, she knew quite well that Reading Recovery owed its very existence (in more ways than one) to the theories and strategies taught by these very experts.

 

Fortunately, her extensive training allowed her to quickly regain her composure and to focus on the reading problems the gentlemen were experiencing. "I am sure I need not remind you, gentlemen," she began, "that comprehension and meaning-making are of primary importance when reading a word you have not seen before. You must just answer the question: ‘What would make sense here?’"

 

With the path behind them filling up with people impatiently awaiting their turn to pass through the fork, Drs. Goodguess and Sampler cried out in despair, "What we desperately need is more context!"

 

Just then they heard the soft spoken voice of a child. A little six-year-old boy walked up to them, looked at the sign on the right and said with great pride, "I was taught to read with explicit, systematic phonics. I can sound out any word. The sign on the right says ‘Paradise’ and that’s the way I’m going." And off he went.

 

Drs. Goodguess and Sampler looked at each other with knowing smirks. Their need for context had surely been met. Dr. Goodguess whispered excitedly, "Did you hear him say ‘explicit, systematic phonics’? The path he took must be the road to Perdition! Quickly now, let’s take the other path!"

 

* Pandemonium is the capital of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my daughter's learned to read at home when she was three years old. In high school, she got a score of 31 on the ACT without even studying. One issue about having gifted kids in public schools is that they get bored and cause problems for the teachers. Well, the school district in Davis County, UT, had a wonderful solution. They gave parents the choice to put their gifted children in a satellite program with other gifted kids. The teachers were specifically trained to challenge and teach gifted students. The only drawback was that parents had to drive their kids to the satellite school each day.

 

This was a small price to pay to have my daughter in a class with other kids who thought just like her! No more being held back. No more being dumbed down. No more being bored all day in class. It was a wonderful experience. She attended the satellite school at Cook Elementary in Syracuse, UT, from 3rd through 6th grades. She was stretched and enhanced and taught such marvelous things! The teacher had the kids writing college-level papers in 3rd grade. Really. My daughter not only did a science fair, but also a history fair about a famous person. There were so many fun projects and kids could work ahead if they wanted. She loved it!

 

Other schools would do well to follow the model of gifted satellite schools in their districts. Then they wouldn't be so inclined to preach against early reading. The main thrust for that false dogma is the stress most teachers feel when there is a bright kid who is bored. Bright kids and early readers should be given the same special treatment and consideration as the slow kids. How sad it is to hold children back for the convenience of the teacher and school. What a travesty! As Davis County proved, there are much better solutions.

I recently received the most insightful comment on one of my e-columns. I write about gifted children in general and activities in the Kansas City area at http://www.examiner.com/x-13955-Kansas-City-Gifted-Children-Examiner. For my article titled, Phonics changes the structure of the brain - enhances intelligence, a reader wisely commented, "The voice of reason - how refreshing. I too support data over dogma."

 

That's the issue exactly - data over dogma! Why- when there is so much scientific evidence supporting phonics and early reading- do most schools still push the wrong methods? They are following the dogma instead of the data. I am very grateful to that reader for her comment. Her words will become part of my mantra.

 

The only way we can reverse the trend of our USA kids falling further and further behind is for parents to step up and start teaching their children before school age. No more parent-ectomy. Children need more time with parents, not less. Universal preschool is one of the worst ideas out there. Parent-led preschool is the only way to ensure our children's educational success! Check out http://godfreymethod.com/default.aspx for the best way to create quality family time. 

I was thumbing through the new August Readers Digest when I noticed their large, red ad page for their "Make-It-Matter" campaign. Inside the huge checkmark were the words: Education and Literacy. The ad went on to say that the readers' poll put those two issues at the top of all concerns. Woo hoo! This is good news! The page also stated that October is going to be Readers Digest's month for the education and literacy focus.

 

It's time that parents took teaching into their own hands for the sake of the future of education and literacy. We need to reverse the trend of putting toddlers into pre-school earlier and earlier - it's not working. Johnny still can't read. What small children need is more, not less, parent time. Mom and Dad need to spend time teaching children reading-readiness and reading before school age. It is something they MUST do at home.

 

The Godfrey Method- as found in A Pretty Girl Was Alpha Bette- is the antidote to the problems of delayed reading and separation of child and parent by the government. One writer fittingly calls it "parent-ectomy." Even us working moms can make time to read to our children and expose them to picture-letter phonics early. It fits right in to a good bedtime routine to give kids the two things they need most: parent time and reading skills.

 

The unique picture-letters are part of the key. The other part is HOW to teach them properly. The Godfrey Method combines these two key aspects to teach reading early and teach it right. Phonics, phonics, phonics all the way!

 

I am so excited that Readers Digest and its readers have realized the importance of education and literacy to the success of our nation. Will our kids be ready for the technology workforce of the future?

 

Guess what - the Australian public school system seems to run on many of the same faulty social pretexts as the Americal public schools. Here is a great commentary about why early childhood education, done the right way, is so vitally important to our children's success. Glynne Sutcliffe is the proprietor of the Early Reading Play School in Australia, and advocates parents being a young child's primary teacher. Well written!

 

“100 CHILDREN TURN 10”
- A CRITIQUE

Glynne Sutcliffe
Adelaide, October 2002

We have just been blessed with a two volume report on the acquisition of literacy in Australia – entitled “100 children turn 10”, it has a number of authors, but one of the key authorial voices is that of Associate Professor Barbara Comber, of the University of South Australia.

Barbara Comber discussed the Report with Jill Kitson on Radio National’s Lingua Franca program in late September this year.

This interview is useful as a primary source of information on how Barbara Comber herself sees the key issues of the Report. I have also looked through the Report in order to get a feel for the scope of the project.

My interest in it was initially provoked by a brief notice on the Schools page in The Australian of Sept 5th 2002 that indicated that one of the Report’s findings was that ‘Pre-school bright sparks can become primary school stragglers.’

Since I know that the great majority of the hundreds of students who have attended Early Reading Play School classes have almost all gone on to do exceedingly well in school, and since I have spent a great deal of my professional life in encouraging and working for children to become early learners and ‘bright sparks’, it is not surprising that this statement struck me as extremely problematic. THE REFUSAL OF THE EARLY CHILDHOOD ESTABLISHMENT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE INTELLECTUAL NEEDS OF YOUNG CHILDREN IS ONE OF THE MOST STULTIFYING FACTORS OPERATING IN THE CURRENT AUSTRALIAN EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT.

I confess also to finding this highly negative attitude expressed in Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper very strange, given Murdoch’s call, a year ago, for the improvement of educational outcomes in Australia. Absolutely the quickest way to improve educational outcomes in all areas in Australia is to get the right early learning programs in place.

In checking with the Report, however, one discovers that the statement in The Australian, was based on the observation that some bright girls have proven vulnerable to being ignored on the grounds that they were bright and were coping and did not need teaching because they were learning so well. Ignored, they fell behind. No doubt. No contest. And it’s probably true of a few boys also.

In checking this point, one finds out that the original one hundred students selected for the study actually dropped to seventy odd over the course of the five years of the study, and that in any case the original number of twenty students at each of the five selected sites was far too small for this study to be anything other a meditation on possibilities – even with back-up numbers of students checked for selected variables rather than intensive observation, the sample is too small to make any kind of statement, statistical or otherwise, about the advantages of an early start in learning or , indeed, about anything else.

It is not at all clear to me what use this Report is. Most notably it contains no information at all about how to go about improving educational outcomes in this country, about how to improve literacy skills in any way.

This is probably due to the position of passive observer taken up by the researchers – they want to tell us how things are – and incidentally, what a good job the public school system is doing, in difficult circumstances.

There is a clearly detectable PR element present.

In other words it is not a text in search of answers to real educational problems, because (it is implied) there aren’t any real problems. Everybody is doing the best they can, in a world which, even if it is not the best of all possible worlds, nevertheless is outside the reach of education professionals to improve.

Excuses are made. If some of the children haven’t learnt to read properly, it is said to be because they weren’t attending school – either being sick, or with sick parents, or unemployed parents, or low SES (Socio-Economic Status) parents, or playing truant, etc.

This ignores the huge problems encountered by children who attend every day at schools that fail to teach them adequately.

It also totally denies the existence of what I would argue is the primary fault of public education in Australia, namely the refusal to address the needs both of average, and especially of talented, students to be challenged and stretched.

In noting the strong self-congratulatory element in the Report, we should ask whether we should really accept the status quo, and give a pat on the back to everyone involved in teaching our children how to read, write and count.

We should also ask whether those responsible for setting up or sustaining a particular system are likely to be the best people to investigate how it is working.

Five years in the writing means the project was conceived as a response to the nineties attack on the failure of our schools to deliver acceptable educational outcomes – specifically, with regard to the teaching of reading. The opening sally was fired in 1993, but public arousal was greatest after the Channel Nine expose of ‘whole language’ in its Sunday morning program in October 1996. But in the Report in front of us there is no attempt to actually understand the problems that were flagged at the time. The study never really engages with the key issues. There is an anthropological dimension – it is a write-up of observations made over the five years since 1997. To re-iterate, then – the Report is best understood as an exercise in damage control, with an intention (perhaps unconcious) to minimize any need to make changes to the status quo. We are asked to recognise that all has been, and continues to be, basically OK. What can be done is being done. What can’t be done, however desirable, can’t be done.

This may be an appropriate place to alert you to the inadequacy of Jill Kitson’s final thoughts at the end of her interview with Barbara Comber. She suggested, as you see in the transcript published on this site, that the government ought to provide more money, and that the profile and status of primary school teachers should be raised. I assume she means some kind of cranking up process akin to cranking up an ancient motor-car. But whatever ideas we may have about what ought to be done, we should be aware that neither increasing the money flow, nor “raising the status of primary school teachers” will achieve anything, unless there are simultaneous moves to change the parameters within which the tasks of teaching are conceptualized.

What else can be said?

First, the Report does, as we have already noted, underwrite the judgment (albeit as something that cannot be solved by the schools), that perhaps the gravest fault of public education in Australia is that there is a considerable and growing gap in educational outcomes between children who present with age-appropriate basic skills for their Reception year, and children who don’t. Parents should note this agreement across the ideological divide.

In her interview with Jill Kitson Barbara Comber tells us about a little girl (‘Tessa'), bi-lingual in English and Greek, who is able, at six, to run a data base of her friendship group. She is described as active in her church-based community, and as having parents who delight in her, who are (with her grandmother) there for her in everyday life, and who encourage her to develop her skills and knowledge to the maximum possible. She is said to be “assembling a whole range of different literacies.”

We also hear about a little boy (‘Mark’) who studies the Korean school curriculum with his mother after the normal school day is over, and who is a whiz-kid at math games on the computer.

We are then told, presumably by way of contrast, of the children, ethnicity not indicated, who go home after school and spend their spare time connecting the dots in the little dot books.

THERE IS NOT A WHISPER OF AN INDICATION IN THIS DEAD-PAN NARRATIVE THAT EDUCATIONAL PROFESSIONALS SHOULD BE ON THE LOOK-OUT FOR WAYS TO ENSURE THAT ALL CHILDREN GET THE BENEFIT OF AN EARLY START WITH PARENT-NURTURED INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. There is no suggestion that we should find out why European and Asian families have children who do (very) well in school.

There is not a hint of recognition that mainstream Australian ways of parenting got off to a bad start (read all about it in Miriam Dixson’s chapter on modes of birthing in early Sydney’s Paramatta gaol, in her book THE REAL MATILDA), or that they continue to exhibit massive deficiencies.

[Political correctness in Australia is a pseudo-polite expression of ‘racism’, because it is predicated on the assumption of the natural superiority of the Anglo-Celtic, and the need to make a moral effort to ‘include’ our post-WW2 immigrant population in the mainstream. What Australian professionals should be doing is asking for help to see how we can improve mainstream parenting and educational practices to achieve the same intellectual (and social and emotional) richness that so-called ‘ethnic’ communities regard as normal.]

What we get instead is the assurance that being good at math games, and connecting the dots in the little dot books, are just variations, differences, of activity. Neither should be labeled as good or bad, or compared one with the other. Each is just an example of ‘a different kind of literacy’. This approach leads to the inflated language of the assertion that connecting the dots can be referred to as one of number of ‘complex and different practices’.

And it is seen as just ‘luck’ that one set of activities allows the child to ‘take advantage’ of the school curriculum, and connecting dots doesn’t. From this insanely non-judgmental and entirely non-discriminatory position it follows with a kind of implacable logic that the proper course of action for schools and teachers is to re-ground (that is, dumb down) the school curriculum, so that expertise in connecting dots can earn a child some ‘positive re-inforcement’ (like an A grade for instance?) [Gutting the curriculum is in fact an ongoing process in Australian educational practice. It desperately needs to be terminated and reversed.]

So let us go back to the original observation that set me off on this train of thought, namely that the Report accepts what we can discover elsewhere, that educational outcomes are widening between children (e.g. with European or Asian backgrounds) who present with some intellectual sophistication in Reception, and those (e.g. those with Anglo-Celtic or low SES families) who don’t.

This last group of children have had a lot of interactions with adults that began and ended with injunctions such as to ‘go and play’, or to ‘get out of my way’, or ‘I’m busy – ask your father/mother’, they will have had a statistically greater number of hours in child care, and they will have had less compensatory ‘quality time’ with either Mum or Dad or anyone else – unless they were lucky enough to have an available grandmother.

MY FIRST RECOMMENDATION, THEN, IS THAT EDUCATIONAL PROFESSIONALS SHOULD GET INVOLVED IN SUPPORTING ANY AND ALL CAMPAIGNS FOR IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF PRE-SCHOOL PARENTING FOR THESE CHILDREN. (And here I do mean parenting. There is a foolish notion around that the situation of lost children can be improved by by-passing parents and improving child-care facilities.)

My second suggestion is based on the recognition that however successful or otherwise any such campaigns proved to be, there will always be some children who present at Reception with some equivalent to connecting the dots (or worse) as their essential preparation for life.

What should Reception teachers do? Well it might help if they realized that the window of opportunity for acquisition of language based skills closes around six years of age (give or take six months or so). In other words, they have a year to eighteen months to get those children up to speed. If they don’t achieve this outcome, those children will be condemned to twelve (or thirteen?) years of schooling in which they become the foil for children who are becoming sharper-witted all the time.

What actually happens? Well, I haven’t personally visited Reception classrooms. But I do read press articles describing the Reception year as one in which not only is ‘nothing’ accomplished, but in which ‘nothing’ is attempted. Why doesn’t this Report (on the acquisition of literacy in Australia) address this problem.

This brings us to the long shadow of John Dewey, the father of ‘progressive’, ‘child-centred’ schooling. These children, especially, need active teaching. They will never cope with the laissez-faire model class-room, where children ‘are treated like plants’, and ‘provided with resources’ that will ‘allow them to bloom’ like flowers in the field, while the teacher smiles benignly, answers questions when asked, and sees her role as supportive (or, to use the jargon, ‘facilitative’) rather than as offering intellectual challenge and substance.

THE ONLY CHILDREN WHO CAN COPE WITH THIS KIND OF CLASS-ROOM ARE THOSE WHO ARE SELF-MOTIVATED, WELL-ORGANISED, AND FAMILY-SUPPORTED – AND WHO HAVE HAD A GOOD START WITH PARENTS WHOSE INCLINATIONS HAVE LED THEM NATURALLY TO THE ENCOURAGEMENTS AND ACTIVITIES AND CONVERSATIONAL INPUTS THAT MAXIMISED THE CHILD’S RESPONSES TO THOSE EARLY DEVELOPMENTAL ‘WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY’ FOR LEARNING. (THESE CHILDREN WILL PROBABLY GET STRAIGHT A’S – BUT NEVERTHELESS WILL STILL NOT HAVE BEEN REALLY CHALLENGED OR STRETCHED TO THEIR MAXIMUM PERSONAL BEST. IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND THE ONE-EYED MAN IS KING!)

We end up with the irony that a system which purports to care most deeply about the under-achieving child has set itself up in such a way that the initially under-achieving child is automatically channeled into an intellectual under-class.

We should remember at this point that the initial purpose of a public education system was to achieve equality of opportunity not by dumbing bright kids down, but by offering intellectual excellence as an achievable goal for all.

The role of public education as a means of upward mobility used to be deemed honourable and valuable.

What we have in this Report is well-placed education faculty academics, fully paid up members of the mainstream early childhood establishment, conceding that the public schools are most useful to those family-supported children who begin school already accustomed to ways of thinking and behaving that result in high achievement. This concession is not made with a full heart. Under the banner of the need for social justice, we hear the voice of envy. The children who do well are those who are ‘privileged’ to ‘have more of those social goods that our society makes available’, and this enables them to better ‘take advantage’ of what the school has to offer. In other words, these bright, happy little children are already being classified as in some way predatory. (Does the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ begin here?)

There is no answer to this problem - of how to cope with children who present at Reception with a developmental deficit – that can be found without discussing and modifying the role of the teacher.

MY SECOND SUGGESTION, THEN, IS THAT WE SHOULD INSIST THAT TEACHERS ACTUALLY TEACH, AND DO NOT TAKE THE EASY OPTION OF THE FACILITATIVE PHILOSOPHY.

We do need to concede on this one that there used to be a mode of teaching that was punitive, and had many negative consequences. On the other hand, the pendulum has swung way too far. Teachers have now effectively abdicated the role of teacher, even though it is still assumed by the general public that they are actually teaching. I recommend as a quick fix that “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and “Good morning, Miss Dove” be placed on the reading lists of Education faculty curricula. Discussion of these books in the context provided by a child-centred, facilitative, non-directive faculty may inspire questions. These questions could then be followed up with readings comparing what is now, amongst other things, called Direct Instruction with currently favored pedagogic styles. Out of the conversation, or debate, solutions may be found.

As an added bonus from adopting this approach, we will find that ALL children benefit from it, and those ‘privileged’ children who know how to ‘take advantage’ will more likely reach their personal best in intellectual achievement, including doing even better in Year 12.

MY THIRD SUGGESTION IS THAT WE SHOULD CONSIDER CHANGING THE RECRUITMENT DEMOGRAPHIC FOR TEACHERS OF YOUNG CHILDREN

Teachers are important – we should be looking for older teachers who have broad life experience, intellectual confidence and a fund of knowledge not exhausted by the next chapter of the manual they are using as a guide to what to teach next. Some clues about the natural demographic base for this kind of teacher might get some useful clues from Gail Sheehy’s brilliant profiling of the human life trajectory in her book, Passages. Many of the specifically intellectual deficits found in early childhood institutions may arise from recruiting for them a high proportion of staff who value ‘social skills’ and ‘relationships’ over intellectual understandings, and who are likely themselves to have qualified on the basis of acceptable (minimal) credentials rather than of their own love of learning. Ronald Ryde, of the Ryde College in London, has gone on record as saying that only retired professors should be allowed to teach our youngest children. This is an excellent approach. We just need to make sure that there are enough retired professors, or their equivalents, who are around and available.

So what else can I say?

The language currently used to discuss schooling issues is not very helpful. The term ‘literacy’ itself is a case in point. Achieving literacy (i.e. the ability to understand and use letters) is not a recognized goal – indeed has been redefined so that teachers could be forgiven for not knowing what it was they were supposed to be doing. Barbara Comber has said categorically that there is no such thing as literacy. “Literacy is a dynamic (process) covering a range of practices which vary throughout life”. Elsewhere she refers to a variety of literacies! This looks like the post-modern inability to link sub-categories to the over-arching embracing category. It is the mental aberration which leads to referring to multiplicities of feminisms or masculinities. Confronted with the denial of any over-arching, central substantive meaning to the word ‘literacy’, what on earth should teachers do to fulfill the obligations of their appointments. How much more effective would their teaching be, if they were thinking in terms of making sure that children developed the capacity to hear the sounds of their language, and recognize the symbols and spelling conventions used to designate those sounds on paper, either in hand-writing or in printed text, along with the ability to recapture the sounds of the language from the written/printed text. Instead they are lost in a maze of confusion over the relative desirability of family literacy, new (i.e. computer) literacy, community literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, etc.

MY FOURTH SUGGESTION, THEN IS THAT THE TERM ‘LITERACY’ BE SINGULARISED AND RETURNED TO ITS ORIGINAL MEANING – AS DESIGNATING FAMILIARITY AND ABILITY TO USE THE ALPHABET FOR PURPOSES OF COMMUNICATING VIA READING AND WRITING.

Some final random thoughts:

There is some fudging of statistics and figures to be wondered about. We are told that 15-20% of children in the study were ‘not doing well’. This was provided with a loose definition – these children could not read an age-appropriate text without assistance, and could not generate a simple text that would be comprehensible/acceptable without modification to the teacher. On the other hand we are told that even the lowest achieving 15% had ‘made significant progress’ (?) by ten years of age. And to confuse things a bit more, we are told that 30% of the children could be classified as low achievers.

Barbara Comber is clearly aware of the Stanovich paper on ‘the Matthew effect” because she refers to ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’ – his key to understanding the widening gap between achievers and non-achievers. However, she completely ignores the moral of the tale, namely that all children should be enabled to present at Reception richly prepared.

The stress on the need for social justice is essentially hand-wringing. What I have said above about this should be re-inforced – children whose families move around, don’t know where their next meal is coming from, where no adult family member has employment income, etc. need real help. Yet there is absolutely no effort being made to work out how to teach these children effectively and in a way that will prevent their social conditions from consigning them to a lifetime in the underclass.

The idea that there should be a focus on making disadvantaged children and their families ‘feel welcome’ in the school, that this would constitute a significant variable in improving educational outcomes for these children, this is diversionary. It is not that either the children or their families should not feel welcome - it is just that this is not the main game in town. If the school is delivering the goods, parents and children will be there. The focus needs to be substance, and supportive etiquettes can follow.

We have lip service paid to the value of independent, well-organised and well-prepared individual teachers as vital (not only to the good teaching of the majority, but also) to rescuing children who are failing out. The key to understanding that it is only lip-service being paid here is the correlated set of statements about the need for ‘consistency with colleagues’ who have ‘an agreed (uniform) approach’ with these creative top teachers (about how to teach those children – maybe, e.g. using whole language methods?) and the need for community support for their innovations. If the dominant paradigm is inadequate, then placing primacy on consistency, an agreed approach, etc. can trap potentially good teachers into a corner from which there is no escape. You can admit that good and dedicated individual teachers are necessary, wonderful, and those without whom nothing ever happens, and then demand that they function as part of a team, and you totally eliminate the source of their strength, which is independent judgment. Barbara Comber deprecates ‘the one lone heroic teacher who succeeds against the odds’, presumably on the grounds that this is not a realistic expectation. My bet is, given the current set-up, that it is only a maverick, only a ‘lone, heroic teacher’, prepared to make a stand, who can provide a genuinely good education for the children he or she encounters.


Compulsory schooling takes up a huge block out of the lifetime of a human being – and it is the formative block, which creates the adult as a member of society. Parents have an obligation to make sure that the many, many hours that their children spend in school are hours well spent, and that the lives of their children are not filled up with busy make-work that is intellectually useless.


SUMMARY

THINGS TO NOTICE :

Contrary to what you might think from the ‘review’ in The Australian, the Report essentially accepts that children who start well in school are better able to take advantage of what schools have to offer.

The authors note an increasing gap between those who do well and those who badly at school.

(This gap is the one that can be detected at point of entry to the school. Its increase is partly due to the children who start badly becoming disheartened and ‘giving up’. And partly because children who start well have the intellectual and emotional resources to move ahead in leaps and bounds.)

The research project was conceived in response to public unrest in the nineties about poor educational outcomes from tax-payer funded schools.

It doesn’t address the main problems flagged in the nineties.

It is a longitudinal study, with an anthropological emphasis on observing rather than finding or proposing solutions.

It has a strong PR flavour – we are asked to applaud the schools for doing well in difficult circumstances. If some children do poorly it is not the schools fault. The schools cannot fix problems arising from endemic problems in society at large.

In taking this attitude, the schools have abandoned the older focus on making sure children from disadvantaged circumstances had a way out of poverty available to them through intellectual achievement. Schools no longer provide upward mobility for bright kids, whatever their background. Instead they ‘lock the child into the world that the child brings with them’. So all caring parents must these days must make sure that their children bring basic literacy and numeracy skills with them to Reception.

The actual entrenching of the ‘differences’ observed in entry-point children makes a nonsense of the hand-wringing concern for social justice that pervades the politically correct literature coming out of the teaching profession and teacher-educator originated research such as this.

Trying to make education ‘relevant’ to the out-of-school life of the child can only be useful if it serves to allow a child with a deficit background to escape and transcend that background. All too often a striving for ‘relevance’, and tailoring the curriculum content to what is already familiar, means leaving the child stuck in the same place, provides no vision splendid, and fosters resentment in the child, who sees no way out anywhere.

ISSUES TO DISCUSS :

Could we solve a number of educational problems in the schools if we insisted on policy changes that stripped remedial education of its funding, and put money instead into teaching to the top. Rather than creating further educational disadvantage for those on the bottom, this might re-establish social justice by giving all children access to intellectual excellence. Children who couldn’t cope with what was on offer could be assisted to ‘get through the gate’ by being offered extra help – perhaps primarily at home but also at school, so that the actual performance and achievement levels of all would be raised. If this happened we would be spared having some children defined as cases for remediation, and subjected to a different regime of (inferior) instruction. If teachers held in-service evenings for parents which laid out curriculum goals I am sure they would get the co-operation that is not forth-coming when the goals are ill-defined, and the pleas for ‘help’ are too amorphous.

Teachers need to be fully-fledged professionals, independent in their capacity to make judgments about how they teach and run their classrooms. Whatever pre-conditions are necessary to make this possible – e.g. assessing teachers on the basis of achieved outcomes, rather than on the basis of methodologies, or demanding better entry level intellectual attainments – should be identified and put in place.

The Reception year in particular needs to be upgraded, needs to tackle substantive learning.

Schools and teachers should be required to focus on what they are supposed to do, namely teach children things of intellectual substance (both skills and content), and refrain from social engineering, which they are not very good at anyway, and where the hidden agenda of many social engineering strategies is to save the teaching profession from the need to deal with intellectually challenging curriculum content. A warm glow should not be allowed to substitute for brain food. Given brain food has primacy, a warm glow can be recommended as a nice accompaniment.

 

Friday, July 3, 2009

Why administrators don't listen

 

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

-- Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace”

 

A common complaint among math advocates is that the education establishment continually rejects pertinent data and valid research on how reform mathematics curricula are deeply, fatally flawed.

 

“It’s like watching a completely preventable traffic accident,” I’ve said. “How do they not see it? Why won't they listen to reason?”

 

No advocate has the answer, although there are suspicions. Some of the possibilities I’ve heard include these:

 

Kickbacks from publishers

Overly friendly relationships with publishers

Ignorance

Stupidity

Herd mentality

Indoctrination

Ego

Habit

Personal comfort

Political philosophy

Ennui

 

Spokane Public Schools persists with its reform math curricula despite all contrary evidence from the district, state and nation – and despite distressing results (a scary, black hole of dropouts, remediation and failed tests). The district must have some very compelling research on its side - research that math advocates haven’t seen.

 

In April and May, I asked district administrators for the research and data that support their continued use of reform curricula. Despite several formal requests for public information and a friendly phone call, I’ve received no data and no research. I was told that supporting research was tossed with yesterday’s meatloaf. No, I was actually told it wasn’t kept on hand. (The meatloaf is still there.) I don’t know why the research wouldn’t be kept because administrators keep referring to it (as in “research shows” and “according to the research”). Instead, I was given the names of three organizations and two types of tests, and I was invited to the central office to look over their “great number of materials on the subject of effective instruction in mathematics.” Technically, this is not “data” or “research.” Technically, I think this is called “skating.”

 

You’d think they’d at least try to have a good excuse. I would give points for creativity, like: “It’s lost in the Bermuda Triangle.” “It was destroyed by a magic bullet from a grassy knoll.” “Jimmy Hoffa had it with him when he disappeared.” “We were hoping Geraldo Rivera would find it in Al Capone’s vault.”

 

If the data and research don’t support these curricula, and the entire nation has found that a steady diet of reform leads to math incompetence and cataracts in laboratory rats … what is the real reason for their continued use? Could it be aliens? Think about it. If aliens came to Earth and wanted to take down America without firing a shot, this would be the ticket: Infiltrate public education, teach the children to think conceptually about nothing, and then pretend to fret as the country falls to its knees. It’s the perfect crime.

 

Look, I’m just saying it’s a possibility. Otherwise … well, choose your preferred explanation.

 

Leo Tolstoy reportedly said this about people who refuse to listen:

 

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

(Well, OK, but I still think some of them might be aliens.)

 

Meanwhile, we math advocates manage to keep each other going. We disagree about many things, but our dissent is generally friendly and respectful. It helps to keep us honest and thoughtful. We agree on one major point: American public-school math instruction is a blight upon the land. It’s a crater, a crime, a sin against the children.

 

It takes a strong stomach to know the truth of how bad it is, and still speak politely with administrators who keep saying the most ridiculous things. It’s tough to keep pushing, to keep trying, and to somehow avoid sinking into despair. When we talk with district decision-makers, we often find their eyes are glassy. They’ve breathed in the smoke and mirrors and can’t seem to hear anything but the twaddle from curriculum coordinators.

 

Tolstoy also reportedly said this:

 

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”

 

Education’s decision-makers appear to be “firmly persuaded” – many will do whatever curriculum coordinators tell them to do. So we troop over to the curriculum coordinators, and we find they’re certain, too. They don’t care what we bring to the table, even if it’s the best information, the most pertinent research and the most brilliant arguments. It’s their table – not ours – and they’ll decide (thank you very much), what happens with it. Our evidence is swept off the table onto the floor. They walk over it on their way out. Later, it’s disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

 

Sitting through certain interviews and meetings, listening to the idiocy that passes for argument (for example, “How do we know a 45% pass rate isn’t good? It all depends on where that group began”), I develop headaches, jaw aches and an upset stomach. I’ve had dark moments where I felt that nothing would ever improve, administrators would never listen, and parents should just grab their babies and run for the hills, as far away from the aliens as possible.

 

The obliviousness of the education establishment is impressive. The deceit and the covering up of the children’s reality are immoral, if not technically criminal. I’ve sat at my computer and blanched at the cheerful destruction of so many children’s futures.

 

Meanwhile, since 1989, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) happily became “relevant” as they pushed their national standards. Across the country, school districts happily spent truckloads of taxpayer dollars chasing after every mangy, stray-dog program, and Texas Instruments (TI) and textbook publishers happily made enough money to wallpaper the moon at least twice in pretty thousand-dollar bills.

 

It’s all happening again. The National Governors’ Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) are the “new black,” pushing for new national standards (because it worked so well the last time). TI continues to deliver fancy calculators to wee tots, and textbook publishers and the College Board pant and salivate at being in on the ground floor of new national curricula and assessments.

 

Math advocates weren’t invited to this table, either, but who cares? I could sit at that table, lie down on that table, take off my clothes and dance the fandango on that table, and all of the deals would still be made – right next to my sweaty feet.

 

Math advocate Mike Miller said: “A culture that embraces purposeful perversion will be more resistant to both exposure and change.”

 

What if the purposeful perversion affects children’s futures and the stability of the country? At what point does it become evil?

 

Maybe the public-education establishment is already there. Maybe if we look up from our work long enough, we’ll see this for what it really is: An ongoing bloodless takeover by aliens.

 

Mark my words.

 

Please note: The information in this post is copyrighted. The proper citation is:

Rogers, Laurie. (July, 2009). "Why administrators don't listen."

Retrieved (8 Jul 2009) from the Betrayed Web site: http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/

 

This article also was published July 5, 2009, on Education News at http://ednews.org/articles/why-administrators-dont-listen-.html.

 

You know I am very unhappy that Your Baby Can Read is sight-reading. But I just found out that Leap Frog Tag reading system and many of their other toys are based on sight-reading. It makes me cringe. No, no, no, no, no! If your child can sight-read now, s/he will struggle with decoding new words as an adult. We have got to stop this backwardness!

 

Sure, if you put a lot of electronic bells and whistles on the words, kids will memorize them. But, oh, what a disservice to those children's futures! No wonder that 68% of 5th-graders can't read proficiently at grade level. What a travesty for our nation.

 

Okay, I'm getting old. When I was a kid in 1970, I remember my neighbor's home being covered with words inside. Every piece of furniture, appliance, gizmo, and knick-knack had its name taped to it. There was a big push to teach children to read by posting the words of familiar objects all over the house. So the lamp had the word lamp taped to it, as did the wall, couch, stove, bed, picture, mirror, etc. Will we never learn? This is mere sight-reading again, and it keeps circling around.

 

Thank goodness my dad taught me to read by phonics when I was four! I could sound-out and decode each of those words, not just memorize them by shape and association with objects. Sight-reading really limits a person's vocabulary. As a child, you cannot memorize enough words to carry you through adult literature when you are older. And then your window of learning closes too soon to memorize enough of them. Your language growth gets stunted.

 

If parents want to post words on objects around the house, they should only do so AFTER teaching phonics. Then they should help their children sound-out the word for each object rather than just learning it by sight. It is so important to lay the foundation of phonics first. After a child sounds out a word a few times, he recognizes it by sight. That is the order that the learning should take.

 

Teaching sight-words first, the way schools and Your Baby Can Read do, is backwards and detrimental to the future adult capabilities of our children. Even good systems like Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and Hooked on Phonics, are missing the key element of picture-letters that toddlers and preschoolers need, to make the right neuron connections in their brains, for which squiggly lines (letters) make which sounds. A Pretty Girl Was Alpha Bette has those important picture-letters and the method to teach them properly.

Here's even more proof why parents should NOT wait to start teaching reading readiness to their toddlers and preschoolers. Again quoting from Dr. Michael Merzenich in the book, The Brain that Changes Itself, by Dr. Norman Doidge, it is obvious that we must not delay teaching our children to read until school age. We should not leave it up to the teachers. Purposeful parenting requires us to get involved much earlier. Here's why:

 

"They discovered that there was a "critical period"... when the brain had to receive visual stimulation in order to develop [vision] normally. The discovery of the critical period became one of the most famous in biology in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Scientist soon showed that other brain systems required environmental stimuli to develop.

 

It also seemed that each neural system had a different critical period, or window of time, during which it was especially plastic and sensitive to the environment, and during which it had rapid, formative growth. After this critical period closes, a person's ability to learn... is limited. In fact, second languages learned after the critical period (for language- birth to 8 years) are not processed in the same part of the brain as is the native tongue."

 

And as I discussed in a previous blog, the brain's real estate for mapping neurons is under constant competition. The old adage, "Use it or lose it," is especially true for brain development and critical periods for learning specific things. Other systems will take over the brain space that isn't stimulated properly during its formative window of time.

 

So, a child's best window of time to learn reading readiness and reading is between infancy and 5 years old. If early readers give teachers a problem because they're bored, good! The teachers need to adjust their methods to accomodate bright children better. Do NOT hold your child back to convenience the school system.

 

I am still absolutely mortified that the parenting magazines have jumped on the "delay-reading" band wagon with the public educational system. And remember to expose your toddlers and preschoolers to phonics, not sight-reading. The Godfrey Method is the best out there. It's simple and very effective.

As I said, the schools and parent mags are wrong to delay reading. And here's the proof! I found this wonderful book called "The Brain that Changes Itself," by Dr. Norman Doidge, M.D. He covers the work of Dr. Michael Merzenich in the plasticity of the brain and how it makes learning connections. Chapter 3 is especially intriguing, and I am going to quote part of it, here:

 

"The competitive nature of plasticity affects us all. There is an endless war of nerves going on inside each of our brains. If we stop exercising our mental skills, we do not just forget them: the brain map space for those skills is turned over to skills that we use instead. If you ever ask yourself, "How often must I practice French, or guitar, or math to keep on top of it?" you are asking a question about competitive plasticity. You are asking how frequently you must practice one activity to make sure its brain map space is not lost to another.

 

Competitive plasticity also explains why our bad habits are so difficult to break or "unlearn." Most of us think of the brain as a container and learning as putting something in it. When we try to break a bad habit, we think the solution is to put something new into the container. But when we learn a bad habit, it takes over our brain map, and each time we repeat it, it claims more control of that map and prevents the use of that space for "good" habits. That is why unlearning is often a lot harder than learning, and why early childhood learning is so important - it's best to get it right early, before the "bad habit" gets a competitive advantage."

 

Did you see that last sentence? The educational system is dead wrong to delay reading so that kids won't be "bored" in class.

 

The best way for moms and dads to start reading readiness is with my unique picture-letters and method in "A Pretty Girl Was Alpha Bette." Parents are going to begin to see the vision of how this will map their children's mind properly for confidence in school and life. Reading is the foundation for everything else, and is so important to getting the jobs of the future.

 

If children struggle with language and speech beyond age 5, they are not hearing and processing the verbal sounds properly in their brains. In that case, parents need to get "Fast ForWord" software to help their child's brain re-map sound processing properly. Seriously. Using Fast ForWard or its sister program "Brain Spark Learning" from the Scientific Learning company is the best thing you can do for your child. It literally fixes the brain neuron paths in a fun way so that children can hear, process, read, speak, and understand properly. They take leaps forward. I am going to get it for my grandson, who really struggles with speech and sounds.

 

Fast ForWord and Brain Spark have even been helping autistic children to rewire their neurons, read, speak, and become more social. It's amazing software!

 

Anyway, teach your kids to read early and read right. Most of them will excel with my simple book. Those that struggle a little need to get the software programs I mentioned. It's REALLY important to map their brains properly, early!