From FreedomProject Media:
It may be a century late to the party, but the Grey Lady has finally gotten around to exposing the most destructive quackery in American history — the “whole language” method used to “teach reading” (or not) that is used in government schools all over America; a scam so destructive that it has some half of Americans almost functionally illiterate, according to the government’s own tests.
In a New York Times opinion column headlined “Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way?,” researcher Emily Hanford points out that “teacher preparation programs continue to ignore the sound science behind how people become readers.” “It’s a problem that has been hiding in plain sight for decades,” she added, without acknowledging that experts such as Rudolf Flesch of Why Johnny Can’t Read fame and Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld with The New Illiterates were blowing the whistle on this for many decades. In fact, Boston’s school masters rebelled against this quackery in the 1840s with a devastating critique.
And yet, it continues to wreak havoc today. The statistics are almost too outlandish to be believed, but they come from the very governments that have every incentive to try to cover up the problem. Citing the government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Times piece points out that less than four in 10 fourth graders are considered even “proficient” in reading. One third of children, she said, cannot read even at a “basic level” — said another way, they cannot read at all.
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