Read this.

[teejay100000]

www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/why%20can%27t%20they%20read.pdf

It is a report called: So Why Can't They Read.

It will save you a lot of time forum posting

One of the many tracts we are going to see over the next few months supporting didactic teaching methods, methinks.

Do they also have a report called: So Why Can't They Do Links?

Ive read a bit.

I home educate ds3 -always have,I dont remember him learning to read,I dont unlike his brothers remember a time when we read the same biff and chip book for 5 nights with no fun.

I remember reading comics with ds3 taking turns to be a character I remember teaching him the sound of the words and the 'look' of the words and then he was just reading!!.

A child cannot read until he knows the sounds of the alphabet its the same with an adult -sounds the very basics of education is the key to reading the key to writing.

In the same light ds3 has never had 10 words to learn by friday,but he can more than adequately write a letter and talk on facebook he has his own videos on u tube and he writes his own commentaries.

sounds is where its at Im tellin' ya .

a link for you

RollaCoasta - do you know what the root of didactic happens to be?

I don't! tell me please

I am tired of trendies using the term didactic as a pejorative, as if teacher-led education is something outmoded and out-of-date. Teachers aren't even supposed to regard themselves as such but as "Learners" along with the bloody kids!

Rubbish! I may indeed be learning at my own advanced academic level but I've long since passed theirs and am now officially better educated than they are! Hence when it comes to school based academic education I am NOT LEARNING anything but TEACHING and I know a great deal more than they do!

[Right, rant is now over]

I still don't quite get what didactic means in this context... please explain in layman's terms including what the root of it means [intrigued emoticon]

Well said, Breton1900

well said Breton1900

Didactic comes from the Greek didaktikos from didaskein = teach!

However, it is now perceived (by trendies at least) as being a traditional hence boring way of teaching because it is teacher-led. In other words the kids shut up and listen. They then ask questions about what they have been taught (and older kids will make notes as they go along).

Heavens above we can't have such tedious teaching going on in the classroom today! Oh dear me no. The kiddies will switch off, mess about, and lose interest. So nowadays every lesson is expected to be all singing all dancing with the teacher endlessly seeking new diversions with which to "engage" the kids! I've suggested that the teacher comes in on a unicycle wearing a clown costume or allowing the kids to do the wall of death round the classroom while declaiming Shakespeare but this hasn't gone down well with SMT. (Can't think why!)

When OfSted do their rounds pupils must not be seen sitting quietly silently reading for the first ten minutes of a lesson (a standard practice in many secondary schools especially at KS3). Nor can KS4/KS5 kids be seen simply making notes or drafting coursework because "Hey they're not DOING anything."

The school has become Looking-glass World where nothing bears any relation to the real world of work where the kids will be spending upward of 55 years of their lives. In this real world their job will not be broken down into ten or fifteen minute slots to stop them getting bored and their Team Leader, Supervisor, boss will not be endlessly thinking up new ways to make the job more interesting.

However, try telling that to an OfSted Inspector or a trendy Education officer!

thank you for such a detailed response Breton

and now that I understand it, I can tell you that I agree with you!

Miriam Gross is not a teacher,she is a journalist, hence the title: ALARMING FIGURES - shock horror.

[Of course it is horrible that so many people can't read - feel very sorry for them. But it's nothing new.]

A few points (too depressing to pick her up on every other word):

?most of the kids I?ve worked with
absolutely hate reading.? Why is it so difficult to make reading enjoyable?

'Requiring children to memorise facts and figures has come to be regarded, not as enlarging a child?s world, but as stifling his or her imagination.' I don't recognise this. Regarded by whom? I've never heard anyone say this. Evidence?

'Indeed the very idea of teaching ? that one
person who knows more than another should pass on that knowledge ? has been widely seen as oppressive.' Really? Seen by whom? Evidence?

Now for the best one: 'The belief that equality, not just equality of opportunity but equality of outcome, is an achievable moral good has also been an important aspect of the prevailing orthodoxy.' What??? If anyone wanted to achieve 'equality of outcome' what would be the point of exams?

'Competition within the class has been discouraged.' Who by? Evidence for this?

'Parents in the 1970s and 1980s were often advised by teachers not to help their children with reading.' I was a parent in the 80s. At school in the 70s. Not true.

She goes on to say how awful things are and then: 'Meanwhile the gap between the academic standards of independent schools ? which have by and large stuck with
traditional teaching ? and those of state schools has widened.' Ahh. The real agenda.

Just be careful when you read this. As cat64 says, it's subjective. Also inaccurate, misleading and largely unsubstantiated.

Btw - don't have anything against didactic teaching methods, used in conjunction with letting kids find things out for themselves. Of course it's a question of input, practice and production. Always has been. A good teacher uses a variety of methods, adapted to her learner's different needs.

Sorry to be so bossy. I'll shut up now.

Miriam Goss may not be a teacher but she's making points that have been made by others in journalism and academia.

Check out Charles Sykes 1995 book "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add". Sykes is also a journalist and has/had a regular American radio show wherein he berates the dumbed down USA. He also wrote the classic "50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School" several of which have been attributed to Bill Gates. Then there is Susan Jacoby's "The Age of Unreason: Dumbing Down And the Future of Democracy". She is also an author and journalist. For an academic's perspective on the lamentable state of US public education there is Dr Maureen Stout's "The Feel-good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-esteem". In Britain we have academics who also deplore the state of education. In particular I'd recommend anything by Prof. Frank Furedi, but especially "Where Have All the Intellectual Gone? Confronting 21st Century Philistinism" and "Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating".

Much as I generally loathe her I'd even recommend Melanie Phillips' 1997 book "All Must Have Prizes" in which she also makes some valid observations about the way education was going - and this was before Blair & Co got their mucky little hands on it.

grannieonabike wrote: "[Of course it is horrible that so many people can't read - feel very sorry for them. But it's nothing new.]"

It may not be anything new but it is something that we should be rectifying as we end the first decade of the 21st Century!

One example you didn't mention was the quote on page 12 by the former journalist who attended a working class primary school in the early 1950s and his comments:

"[...]By the age of 11 nearly all of us could read and write fluently and grammatically. I've recently corresponded with an old schoolmate, a motor mechanic, and I was amazed at the elegance of his writing style."

In my Latin class I award prizes to those who get full marks in their vocab tests, no second places! I promote healthy competition, it works

thanks for the great reference books Breton1900. I believe we are being dumbed down, so I will read the books and try and understand why it is happening.

She was on women's hour today. I read the report. It didn't seem to have much substance and her examples were just examples.

How does she get press coverage? I could write a better education article!

Is the real agenda to bash current state education so that the new government can interfere with them and turn lovely, interesting, fun state schools (where I learned lots in the 1980s and where my children are learning lots now) into horrible little schools just good enough for oiks whose parents can't afford private schools.

The 1950s school the journalist's friend went to must have been far better than the ones my parents went to. My mum was utterly miserable throughout her schooling. Though she went on to Cambridge (we are a naturally bright family) she felt that her schooling had let her and her contemporaries down. She still feels the misery of her early years and limited grammar school education now.

Also, the author thinks phonics is the answer to everything. Well all our local state schools do phonics (and a lot of it) but my dd still learned to read very quickly just by sight and - by the age of 6 - is writing well in joined up and reading the Worst Witch? How is she being failed?

argh I still need to read this link. shame DD has dropped her nap

FWIW I am slowly starting phonics with DD but I'm also not convinced it's the only way, I learned to read fluently by 3 naturally, no phonics training at all.

also, my DSDs are non-identical twins, they were taught phonics in the same class and there was a massive difference in their reading skills right from the start!

MathsMadMummy said:
"FWIW I am slowly starting phonics with DD but I'm also not convinced it's the only way, I learned to read fluently by 3 naturally, no phonics training at all."

It would be really interesting to know if, while you are teaching DD, any of the phonics gives you a feeling of recognition or a "Of course, that's what I've always done" kind of moment.

When I first started learning about phonics teaching it was so long since I had learned to read that I couldn't remember how I'd been taught and I hadn't a clue how or why I could read unfamiliar words. However, as I got more and more 'into it' I realised that I had been using phonic knowledge for reading all my life. I just hadn't consciously known it!

It is perfectly possible that you unconsciously worked out the phonics for yourself at an early age. Many children do.

oh yes absolutely Maizie, it's fairly obvious that the recognition readers are mostly just figuring it out by themselves. I'm sure that's what I did. although there are some children who only recognise the individual words and therefore can't decode new words. I guess that nonsense word test would determine if they could or not!

I was hoping it'd happen naturally for DD too but she wasn't showing any signs of it so when she started being interested in letters I thought, well I may as well look up some phonics stuff.

'Didactic', I believe, is about 'instruction' rather than 'teaching'.

Teaching can be done in many ways, to suit all types of learning: visual, audio, kinaesthetic, etc. Children can be actively involved in their own learning process.

'Instruction' on the other hand, implies that the children are not actively learning, but passively absorbing what the teacher is saying. This will not address all learning styles.

BTW, I do enjoy learning with my Y2 children. There are many things we investigate together on the internet because no-one knows the answer - even me. I feel very sad that you know it all, Breton.

'In 1974, around 2 million adults (6% of the population) had insufficient literacy skills to cope with everyday life....' (British Social Trends Data)

Today, most children leave primary school being able to read and write. Whatever the popular press say, the children only attaining Level 3 in Y6 can read and write to get by in life. They are not illiterate. 'Illiteracy' today has become a synonym for 'not achieving the government set target of level 4 by the age of 11'. This is totally different to 'illiteracy' in the past which meant that people couldn't read!