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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35547 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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I'm not convinced the evidence for superiority of phonics over all other methods is as strong as you suggest it is. Even if that was the case, however, that fact by itself would not necessarily imply anything about how schools should operate.

Here's where I'm coming from. When I was young I transferred from a nontraditional school with relaxed reading expectations to a more normal one, so I ended up going to a remedial reading program for a few months. I don't recall anything phonics based, though this was a while ago. Either way, as far as I recall, I was reasonably literate within a year. As in I was rapidly able to read anything I wanted, though of course subtle literary senses took longer. What I do remember quite vividly is hating English class for the next two years, because as often as not it was just hours of identifying sounds in words I could already read just fine, followed by homework of more of the same, all while I would rather just be reading a book.

I should have added more meat to my post, my bad.

I collected some snippets straight from wikipedia on the subject in this comment: https://www.themotte.org/post/75/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/9901?context=8#context

So it appears that whole-word has no effect whereas phonics has a positive effect. Neither probably affect all kids, but given that phonics has a positive effect on at least some kids whereas whole-word has none, it seems like phonics should be used--at least until we find something more effective.

This forum may be one of the absolute worst places on the entire internet for the members to apply their individual experiences to this particular topic. If you are here, your language skills are extremely good. Everyone here is an outlier in the same direction on this topic.

Gifted and talented students are a special problem in education, much like the learning-disabled, but for the opposite reason. For those with disabilities, it's difficult to find the right strategies to achieve education. For the gifted, nearly every strategy works, and it's difficult to find the best strategy.

Though as you note, "failing to move on when education has been achieved" is by far the most common way for the system to fail gifted students.

What I do remember quite vividly is hating English class for the next two years, because as often as not it was just hours of identifying sounds in words I could already read just fine, followed by homework of more of the same, all while I would rather just be reading a book.

That just sounds like an argument in favor of better tracking. Students who have already mastered a topic, in any subject, should be allowed to test out of it and move on.

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