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<\/a><\/p>\nCatching up a little, but tomorrow I have an auditory appointment in the hopes of finding hearing devices that will work for me. I have had bad hearing since 1950, and after the radiation treatment in 2008 it became dramatically worse, and has been deteriorating ever since. I have known I needed hearing aids since 1975 but the problem is that I have a very irregular pattern: I hear some frequencies quite well, so anything that amplifies everything caused some sounds to be very loud, and what I hear isn\u2019t intelligible. It has strained Roberta\u2019s indulgence for decades. Now I am told there are new devices that will work for me, some developed by the VA. We will see. Tomorrow I try anyway.<\/p>\n
I was going to do an essay on the futility of pre-school education as an attempt to \u201csolve the education problem\u201d or \u201cclean up the education mess\u201d or even \u201cAvoid the impending education catastrophe\u201d. All of it is summed up in one statistic> In Illinois, a high spending state on education \u2013 at least money goes into the system \u2013 the number of kids in fourth grade who read at grade level is said to be 60% although some put it as low as 40%. This is an average among all students. Other states have about the same results.<\/p>\n This is a disaster, and adding pre-school isn\u2019t going to solve it, because what it means is that we have at least a 50% illiteracy rate. Half the kids CAN\u2019T READ by fourth grade. That means that instead of learning history or math or mechanical drawing or biology they will primarily be taught remedial reading, which is harder and harder to do as they get older because the teachers don\u2019t know how to do it, and the professors of education who don\u2019t teach people to read \u2013 they teach people how to teach people to read \u2013 generally have no experience in actually reaching reading and work from inadequate theories.<\/p>\n My mother in rural Florida in the 20\u2019s taught first grade. I asked her if any of her first grade students did not learn how to read. She said, well there were a few, but they didn\u2019t learn anything else either. The notion that a child of normal or dull normal intelligence \u2013 in other words 85 to 90% of the students \u2013 would not learn to read in first grade had not occurred to her. They were expected to learn to read, and the teachers taught them to read. It\u2019s hard work but it can be done for every kid of normal to dull normal intelligence. Once they learn to read they can read anything, and \u201creading at grade level\u201d has no meaning. \u201cUnderstanding at grade level\u201d does mean something; but for children who can read it means they can read, slower with \u201cbig words\u201d (like, as Dr. Seuss says, Constantinople and Timbuktu) and faster with Hop on Pop and Green Cheese and Ham and Horton Hears a Who, and very slowly with words like omnicompetent and polymorhhochromatic (and no I don\u2019t know what that last one means either but I can read it).<\/p>\n By fourth grade kids ought to be reading real stories, and real history, some poetry and they ought to be finding out their potential \u2013 will they be intellectuals learning symbol manipulation (what we call geek smart) or learning skills in manipulating objects or people, teachers or mechanics or bookkeepers or clerks \u2013 but they sure shouldn\u2019t be spending time learning to read.<\/p>\n Now if the preschools were to teach kids to read before the regular teachers get hold of them, they might so some good, but that won\u2019t happen because the same professors of education who can\u2019t do in 2013 what the Florida Normal School at Gainesville taught high school grads to do in two years, namely teach those students how to teach first graders to read, will be put to teaching four year college graduates; and the incompetence of the Education Department Professors at reaching teachers to teach reading has been adequately demonstrated.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a national disaster and throwing more money into the system to hire deans and sub deans and administrators and assistant associate deans and all the rest of it which now requires the middle class to go into debt for life to do what my wife and I did on our own, get through college, will only increase the debts and the costs. It won\u2019t do any good.<\/p>\n Teach your own kids to read before the system gets to them. Of course it also means they will have to learn things in school that the teachers won\u2019t have time to teach because the upper grade teachers will be struggling with the half the kids who can\u2019t read at grade level. Smart kids are on their own. The good news is that you can teach them to read early \u2013I learned at age 3, but that was unusual; but all the kids in my first grade school at St Anne\u2019s on Highland Ave in the Normal district of Memphis learned to read by the end of First Grade.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t need pre school we need first grade teachers who understand that first graders can learn to read if only they are taught to do it, and all the theories about why they haven\u2019t learned are worthless. But then I have been saying that for about Sixty years. Sigh.<\/p>\n Allowing a true 50% illiteracy rate in effect condemns half the population to being hewers of wood and drawers of water. No republic can afford to waste half the population. We are in thrall to politicians elected by teacher unions who have made it impossible to fire teachers for incompetence. Hell, in Los Angeles we can\u2019t fire them for anything: the man who fed his pupils cookies smeared with his own semen was allowed to resign with pension. No one gets fired. Can\u2019t allow that.<\/p>\n And the remedy is not to create new jobs for more teachers. The remedy is to insist that the education establishment get out of the way since it will neither lead nor follow.<\/p>\n Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. <\/p>\n View 802 Thursday, December 19, 2013 \u201cTransparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.\u201d President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009 Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave. Syrian Freedom Fighters What we have now is all we will ever have. Conservationist motto If you like \u2026 Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"