Reading in the 1930's or 1940's

[yvette37]

Hello,

Does anybody know how they used to teach reading in the 1930's or 1940's? or earlier for that matter. What did they use instead of the 'Synthetized Phonics'? I am quite curious about this.

Thank you

Yvette

Claig, I learned to read in kindergarten/primary school. My brothers and I did have random periods of home education. But they weren't very long. My sisters on the other hand were supposed to have been taught by my parents for several years, more's the pity.

Yes, very sad for your sisters. It shows how important it is to be taught correctly.

Does it show how important it is to be taught correctly or does it show how lucky people who are taught correctly are? There are some people from disadvantaged backgrounds who attend failing schools who have no hope of being taught correctly. There is a system of incarceration, dysfunctional family life, substance abuse and more which produces an endless cycle of underachievement. Even if many of the products of this cycle were educated properly would they escape from it?

Personally I believe that a good education is a gift. I know what it's like to be both with it and without it. I'm not taking any chances with my children.

Yes, being taught well is the basic right of every citizen. There should be nio luck involved at all. Checks should be made regularly and anybody who is falling behind should receive extra help and maybe 1 to 1 help.

If the family that the child comes from or substance abuse or one of any range of social problems is a major factor in the child's poor performance how much can merely in-school help do? And is there an endless educational budget to compensate for all of the adverse situations that contribute towards underachievement?

I don't believe in that approach. I think it is a cop out and lets the state, schools and teachers off and blames it all on parents. Children are in school 5 days a week for x hours. That is where their main education should come from. I don't go for this blame of parents. I think it is an excuse for failing schools, failing policy and a failing education system.

We spend billions of taxpayer money on education. It is the duty of teh system to make sure that an effective education system is provided for that money, regardless of what different parents are like.

I'm sorry, claig. You really are quite unbelieveable.

Do you not believe in that approach because you have had years of teaching classes full of children from dysfunctional families and managed to teach them perfectly well and they are now all at uni doing their doctorates?

Have you ever encountered a few children from dysfunctional families?

Did you know that children are influenced by their peers, their families and school, in that order. I am not sure how 5 hours a day is supposed to counteract the effects of the other 19 and teach a child to a high level.

No, I don't believe it because I don't think it is acceptable. That is why we have schools. I don't think it is acceptable that children whose parents are illiterate or whose parents don't speak English should be told by politicians that it is their parents' fault that they may be falling behind. If they need extra help and extra tuition because they are falling behind, then the education system should proivide that.

That's what George Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' policy was intended for.

hmm, Claig. One thing that I do find puzzling about the system you criticise is that while it's happy to blame substance abusing parents, criminal parents, dysfunctional parents and many other types of parents for contributing significantly to their children's cycle of underachievement, opposing parents who are well educated and motivated and interested in their children's educations are labelled pushy and aggressively discouraged by teachers in various different ways. That I do find puzzling, because surely children from good homes ought to be doing well at school in contrast to the children from broken homes, and some of them aren't. But lots of decent parents are frightened of making any comment about this for fear of being labelled as pushy parents.

Screw that, I say. If you're not happy with what your school is doing then tell it.

www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2757891/1-in-5-primary-school-children-cant-read-or-write.html

That report is a disgrace, and the people responsible for it are the people who make policy, not the parents of those children. But the myth is spread that it is the parents' fault, so that no blame is attached to the policy makers.

I don't think Gove blames parents and I think he will make changes to teh system to ensure that education is improved.

'But lots of decent parents are frightened of making any comment about this for fear of being labelled as pushy parents.'

Yes, that's what many progressives want. They don't want you to demand higher standards, to see objective test data. They don't want you to complain and demand change. They blame everyone but themselves.
But with Gove, I hope that things will change.

'The school crisis was exposed by an 18-month investigation by a special Literacy Commission, set up by the Labour Party. It also says literacy in the over-50s is as big a problem, proving Scotland's schools have failed generations of kids.'

That's what needs to change and it will start when the blame is laid at the door of the people who are really responsible, not the parents.

But lots of decent parents are frightened of making any comment about this for fear of being labelled as pushy parents.

Really? Where is your evidence for this? I certainly don't see it in day to day teaching, and it DEFINITELY does not exist on MN.

Dr. Galen Alessi, Professor of Psychology at Western Michigan University, conducted a fascinating study on school psychologists. He asked 50 school psychologists to list the causes of the learning difficulties of about 5,000 students.

''Based on the results of these 5,000 reports prepared by school psychologists, "the results indicate clearly no need to improve curricula, teaching practices, nor school administrative practices and management. The only needs somehow involve improving the stock of children enrolled in the system, and some of their parents." (Page 149) 'After examining several "mainstream" school psychology texts, Alessi found that when assessing children?s reading problems, school factors were mentioned as a factor between 7% and 0% (zero) of the time. "Child factors" were held responsible for reading problems between 90% to 100% of the time''

Wrightslaw.The Blame Game
www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/ALESSI1.html

Label Babel
www.patrickmcevoy.co.uk/2010/02/label-babel.html

Sorry, I've now made those links live:

Wrightslaw.The Blame Game
www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/ALESSI1.html

Label Babel
www.patrickmcevoy.co.uk/2010/02/label-babel.html

maverick, the Blame Game article is very good.

We were told that standards kept on rising and the number A* grades grew exponentially, and then we have reports telling us that 1 in 5 primary school children are struggling with reading. And we are told that it is not the system's fault, it's the parents' fault.

It's an impossibility that the system could be at all dysfuctional, so the system tells us. It can only be families, parents and society who are dysfunctional, so they say.

Changing the subject a little, how much time did they spend teaching reading in the 1930s and 1940s? All teaching time was given over to the '3 Rs' - think they did daily dictation etc too when it came to the writing?

I imagine far more time must have been dedicating to reinforcing reading skills etc?

We were told that standards kept on rising and the number A* grades grew exponentially, and then we have reports telling us that 1 in 5 primary school children are struggling with reading. And we are told that it is not the system's fault, it's the parents' fault.

I think that we have some very muddled thinking going on here. I can't work out whether claig's strictures about schools not teaching children are referring to a child's whole education or just the specific area of learning to read.

I'm still curious to know on what claig is basing the assertions that teachers are well able to compensate for dysfunctional families, peer pressure and all other outside influences on a child and that if they fail to do so they are bad teachers. I also would like to know why parents, who have responsibility for their children for 19 hours a day, as opposed to the 5 hours they spend in school, cannot be held responsible for their children's manners, attititudes to other adults, language, willingness to co-operate etc. etc.?

Its interesting that some of you are talking about parents being responsible for their children being failed by the education system. The problem really is the lack of aspirations and motivation of these parents. If the parents themselves are underachievers in life/education then surely they should be encouraging their children to take the opportunities offered to them at school and do better for themselves. Sadly this is all too lacking. I grew up on a council estate in the 70s both my parents worked but in manual jobs (nothing wrong with that by the way) but they did encourage me to do my best at school so that I would have a wider choice of careers when I left school. I left school at 18 with A levels but decided not to go to university instead entering the workplace where I worked my way through the ranks. DH did the same, I am now a SAHM by choice as DH earns enough for us to do this. We are now teaching our children that they can be anything they want to be in life but they have to make the effort themselves to get there and that education is important and helps you do that.

Well, maizied, claig isn't saying that the parents aren't. She's saying that they should still be well taught. Logically there's no reason why a smelly, foul mouthed, stubborn child or person can't be brilliant at English and maths. In fact there are probably some out there who are. I guess where you and she have ample room for disagreement is about the smelly, foul mouthed stubborn children who aren't any good at English or maths and would rather work out ways to beat up teachers and other pupils than work out 247 plus 623.

The reason I mention A* and then the primary school children struggling with reading is to show that teh politicians were trumpeting their achievements in education, while according to that article 1 in 5 children in Scotland were struggling to read in primary schools. They didn't want the public to focus on the failings, just on the successes.

'
Commission chair Judith Gillespie said: "There needs to be a zero-tolerance approach to tackling poor literacy." Labour leader Iain Gray said: "We need a revolution in literacy teaching. We will pursue this relentlessly."

I agree with the above. It doesn't mean zero tolerance with the parents, it means zero tolerance in the classroom.

I don't believe that 1 in 5 primary school children have bad "manners, attititudes to other adults, language, willingness to co-operate etc", and yet it seems that 1 in 5 children are not reaching their potential.

We had news reports recently that some schools were breaking the law in excluding pupils for minor reasons and in order to help positions in league tables. No wonder some of these children are falling behind.

There was a girl interviewed on the news saying that her family received a letter saying "don't come back", and her family had to fight for months to get her back into a school.

I'm all for getting rid of horrible, nasty, smelly, disruptive children. I think if it's against the law then they should change the law to make it easier to get rid of them. I don't want my children being taught next to little urchins.