to object to this reading book

[Itscurtainsforyou]

My 5 year old brought home a reading book about "man on the moon". It talked about the 12 MEN (not people, men) who have walked on the moon. I could let that one go as it was talking about past events and they were all men.

However at the end of the book it says something along the lines of "maybe men will walk on the moon again" - IABU to think that they should have used non-gender words (such as "people") or worded it differently? I felt the need to explain to my 5 year old that in the 1960-70s most astronauts were men and of course these days women were equally likely to walk on the moon/go into space.

Maybe I'm just easily wound up but this just seems like subtle sexism and there should be no place for it in schools.

No. 1 vagina, two boobs, no willies.

Is that because I don't blindly agree with my 'sisters'?

Surely even my last post implicitly gave my sex?

Mansplaining is a jocular reference to the oft-noted (by women, including non-feminists) tendency of men to believe they know more than women about everything, and to insist on expounding such knowledge.

There is an added piquancy to the phenomenon of mansplaining when the mansplainer decides to tell female feminists how much more he knows about feminism.

Mansplainers can be female, but rarely turn out to be.

But you already knew this; your slight misapprehension of the term was disingenuous, I believe, but I've risen to it anyway.

Potatoes I would love to see a picture of a female cave woman starting fire with sticks all the ones I have seen have been men.

Most of the pictures that is used to describe the transition from ape to human is always male. Rare to find a female one. With the caption this is how man involved or we understand it as this how man has evolved over time. It's more history than herstory

herecomes - it was just a question for clarification. No need for the sneery response, thanks.

Biwi - yes, sorry, but it was a strange thing to want 'clarified' as my post said how I demonstrate my feminism.

Garlic - you say "jocular" and "tend", I say 'hypocritical' and 'sexist'. I understand you think it's fine and maybe don't use it vindictively but you give the impression your hackles would be raised by a reverse situation.

feenie there is recommended teaching of sight words. It is in the recommended scheme of teaching 'letters and sounds'. It is referred to in both the EYFS assessments of reading and writing skills and in the KS1 assessment of reading skills. It's an important part of developing early reading skills.

No there isn't. Letters and Sounds recommends that 'tricky' words are taught by writing the sound buttons under each phoneme and blending. At no point does it recommend learning words by sight.

The NC for year one says that children should be taught to read 'common exception words' by noting unusual correspondences and where they occur in a word.

You won't find the term 'sight word' used in either document.

My DCs all learned what is called 'sight words' in the US. There are 220 of them that are taught in the US because many are not amenable to phonetic decoding, and most of them are among the 220 words that account for about 75% of the words on any given page of any given children's reading material for children up to about age 7. The reason to learn them is to make reading accessible, which aids in developing fluency, confidence, interest in reading more...

Sixinabed, you are right.

Imagine it talked about all the white men who'd walked on the moon, and wondered whether white men would ever do it again. Then imagine that there were some hypothetical phonetic reason why this should be written and black/Asian/Hispanic could not, and any way the historical part was accurate and it was printed a long time ago. Would that be ok? [Sixinabed]

And well said.

Ok they might not be called sight words but the expectation is they learn some common words by sight.

ELG reading 'they also read some common irregular words'

I don't think it says 'they also read some common irregular words by sight' though.

The expectation is not that teachers should be teaching common words by sight. It's that they teach 'tricky words' by pointing out the phonics of the irregular part of the word. The nature of common words is that children meet them frequently so will move on to not needing to overtly blend them every time much quicker than other words. That isn't the same process as teaching them by sight though.

That used to be the case in the US but is slowly changing, math. The newer reading programs are moving towards a more evidence based approach to reading instruction and have moved away from teaching the Dolch or Fry word lists by sight.

It seems to me that what goes on in schools should happen alongside and complementary to what goes on at home. I'm not a teacher but I taught my DC all the letter sounds phonically and read to them as tiny babies. We have a touching pic of ds at about give/six months turning a page of the FT on all fours

Our DC read easily and read far more at home than at school. We didn't always get it right and nor did school but on the whole they turned out pretty rounded.

I don't think the book would have upset me although lots of things did during the school years, the obsession, for example, with non competitive sports days, and doing multiplication by something calls partitioning which seemed bizarre.

Children spend more time at home than school overall and if we disagree with how something is represented we can challenge it.

My youngest is in sixth firm now and the only thing I actually remember challenging was a teacher who accused an 8 year old boy of cheating and a school nurse who taught a class of 14 year olds to use a condom in the absence of any discussion about loving relationships, consent or the age of.

It looks like we have a potential writer and a potential scientist on our hands. DD being the latter.

Oh and whilst typing this I've just remembered. I banned Bob the Builder because Wendy was always typing a letter or making tea.

That's a direct quote from the EYFS guidance rafals.

How else will you read a common irregular word?

For eg. You teach the word was.

You show the word was. You look at the letters that make the word. You sound it out and agree it makes no sense. You agree w is OK, but the a sound like an o on this word and the s sounds like a z. You discuss this. Children practise reading the word, but they are in effect reading was by sight.

The eventual aim of phonics is that children are able to read a whole range of words by sight. Phonics is a tool to read unfamiliar words. The building blocks of reading and writing.

Btw, I have a 1st class degree.

Good for you. Despite all those men holding you back? That's even more impressive! Really, men should need to get an extra 10% in their exams for the same degree because of their man-privilege.

You have taken every single quote out of context as anyone with a first would surely know and shouldn't do.

I said it's the people who take offence at any perceived slight who come across as over-zealous feminazis.

Yes, those same ones make the most noise about immaterial things, go way beyond feminism meaning equality and make irrational arguments which don't make feminism look good.

I certainly didn't suggest that anyone who disagrees with me a lazy feminist. I just have the same sinking feeling when anything which isn't gender neutral is described as due to our patriarchal society without understanding the meaning of a word and how we came to use it. 2 years ago I wasted a day with HR after sacking an employee who claimed sex discrimination. She said I was a terrible feminist, that I should have supported her more, understood why she struggled with her targets etc. There was nothing of the sort going on. She was earning being paid nearly £60k and line managed a significant number of staff. She had had several meetings, discussions, training sessions regarding her performance but thought I should overlook it all because "we should stick together being women in a man's world" - yes, she used that phrase, in writing.

Another example of unthinking feminism was that was a thread recently where someone didn't want to become husband and wife but partners. They seemed to think 'husband' referred to animal husbandry as though their partner was going to breed her and 'wife' described a possession. FWIW, wif comes from wifmann, 'female thinker'

Understanding a simple analogy and agreeing with it are entirely different things. Do I think there's a wall? No especially. The state education system in the UK is failing boys yet no one dare mention it for fear of upsetting feminazis (remember, the ones who aren't for equality but matriarchy). Death rates, crime rates, health - they're usually in favour of women. Women are more likely The CFO in my company is female. At my level there are 12 staff, 7 of which are women. I line mange 20 senior managers. 9 women. Below that the staff are more male dominated but at the top it's clearly relatively balanced. That's despite the fact that it's a traditionally male industry as well as other factors such as the vast majority of SAHP being female.

How many young children do you know who clearly and consistently understand the difference between a capital and a non-capital letter?

Mine. He can write them all and knows they're used in certain adjectives, proper nouns, and the starts of sentences. He is very nearly 5. As equally scientific example as yours.

What do you think about the (admittedly unscientific) sample of my Ds who, despite knowing about Man/Mankind, still pictured a male astronaut?

That you should explain to her that women can be astronauts.

man the fuck up was supposed to be ironic. Sadly no ironic 'smiley' yet.

So our young girls and women should just 'man the fuck up' and get on with their lives not letting their lack of penis get in their way because you have been able to.

Yes. Absolutely. You can make "poor me" victims out of people or you can tell them they can do anything they want and lead by example.

They should just ignore the miriad subtle and insidious ways in which they are conditioned not to expect or aspire to certain careers?

Of course. If they want to be a [whatever male job here] then they bloody well should.

And if they don't (can't) then then can be lumped into the boxes and put downs listed above and ignored?

See, where does the 'can't' come from? The put downs above weren't aimed at people unhappy with discrimination, they were talking about people who see the use of 'Man' as the reason they don't earn as much as their husbands. The people who don't want equality of opportunity (which we happily have in the UK) but equality of outcome or a step futher, a matriarchal society.

The wonderful thing about the UK is we already have equality of opportunity. It is illegal to discriminate on sex. This is demonstrated by higher employment amongst women graduates. Higher salaries for the first decade amongst female graduates in like-for-like jobs. Higher numbers of women in higher education and girls dominating the top sets in schools.

So, slight re-cap.

I'm all for equality in all its forms.

I want to lead by example and not be happy to fail as long as I have a scapegoat. I wouldn't allow myself to be held back and if it was done unlawfully, I'd use the law.

I absolutely disagree with over-zealous feminazis who a) take the meaning of feminism way beyond equality b) make a lot of noise about the gender of a pronoun or the use of 'Man' / 'man' at the end of a book as an example of their 'cause'.

Ignore the typos. I'm jetlagged and on my phone.

I think things like this do matter, because when you begin to notice it you realise that this casual, everyday sexism is everywhere - the idea that men are here to get stuff done and women don't really matter unless they look pretty - and it does influence the way children think. My 8yo DS asked recently (I think we were watching the marathon) why someone kept referring to women as girls but didn't call the men boys. DH didnt think it mattered and I was so proud of DS's insistence that it did "because girls are children, they don't refer to the men as children". Seems he's a better feminist than some on here.

fear of upsetting feminazis - I've never noticed anyone being afraid to upset feminists! It seems a very popular hobby Let's not mention the use of 'feminazi' by someone who finds 'mansplain' offensive.

Obviously I don't know the ins & outs of your work relationship, potatoes, but I agree with your complainant that you are not very good at feminism.

I think things like this do matter, because when you begin to notice it you realise that this casual, everyday sexism is everywhere - Yup, thumbnail. Congrats on your beautifully rational DS!

Thumbcat - sorry

By sounding it out owlinatree. I know that's a direct quote from the EYFS, but you seem to be suggesting that it says to teach sight words, and it doesn't.

In the case of 'was'. I would normally already have introduced the idea of 's' as an alternative spelling for /z/. So the 'w' and 's' would be decodable. Then explain that the /o/ sound after /w/ is often uses the spelling 'a', teaching the word alongside 'want' and probably 'what'. Then I'd get them to practice reading and writing the word by running their finger under it, saying each sound and blending or saying each sound as you write the spelling. As you say decoding is the route to fluent reading and they will only need to do that until they can manage it without overt sounding and blending. And with high frequency words, that will take less time because the encounter the words more often. That is not the same thing as teaching words as wholes 'because they make no sense'.

IIRC there was a fair bit of discussion when that particular sentence was published because it was felt that it wasn't clear enough and that some teachers would interpret it as teaching sight words/words as wholes.

feenie there is recommended teaching of sight words. It is in the recommended scheme of teaching 'letters and sounds'.

Oh dear! Yet another classic case of serious misinterpretation of this document.

It is referred to in both the EYFS assessments of reading and writing skills and in the KS1 assessment of reading skills.

No, it isn't. Seriously, you need to read them more carefully.

Some of it is about sight and memory though, especially if 'c' is used as an example.

Cat
Charisma
Chair
Circle
Recede
Fiction

There may be rules but surely more than phonics apply.

Educationalist dictats are always concerning. What matters are the children and what and how much they are learning.

It's about learning words to automaticity. That's not learning by sight.

All of those words can be decoded using phonics. Children are taught to try alternatives for 'c' -they know it can make different sounds and will substitute alternatives very quickly to decode an unfamiliar word.