Why 65 Percent of Fourth Graders Can’t Really Read

I wrote previously about the 230,000 kids who didn’t show up to school after the pandemic. This is a tragic tragedy that has never been seen in American history. Many of those who didn’t show up are children from K-3rd grade. These children are hopelessly behind because they were not taught critical skills from early education.

The pandemic was not the cause of the problem. It revealed problems that were already present and were exacerbated by incompetence and, it turned out, incorrect-headed teaching.

Take into account the fact that nearly 65% of fourth-grade American students cannot read. This is due to a fundamental shift in how children learn to read.

Was there anything wrong with the old way of doing things?

The Free Press:

American Public Media’s Emily Hanford reveals this shocking truth through her podcast, Sold a Story. She examines the influence of education authors who promoted a flawed way to teach reading to American children. She exposes how educators all over the country believed in a flawed system and now faces the consequences: children being hurt. There was a lot of money lost. A system of education that has been thrown out.

It is beyond comprehension for me. Blessed nuns taught us how to read. They made us “sound out words”, which not only instilled good habits but also exercised our minds so that we could “sound out words” faster.

The instruction was based on vocabulary and phonics. Many students found reading second nature after this.

However, “sounding out” words do not teach children how to read.

American Public Media reporter Emily Hanford examines a flawed theory that has shaped the way we read for many decades. Children can learn how to read by simply looking at the picture or using other strategies to find out what they are saying. Strategies such as “Look at the picture” and “Think of a word to make sense” are examples.

Cognitive scientists have shown that reading comprehension is essential for all readers. This theory is still supported by some teacher training programs, as well as books and other materials that are widely used in classrooms around the globe. These strategies, according to scientists, teach children how to read poorly. Children learn to skip letters and words, and then struggle to comprehend what they are reading.

What are these teachers teaching children? These “other strategies” are creating generations of children who hate reading and have difficulty reading at their grade level.

Forbes:

The standard approach to teaching children how to read and decode text has been based on the assumption that most kids can connect the sounds in words with the letters they represent. Although teachers may include some instruction (often called “phonics”), they are guided by their materials and training to help kids guess words using context or images. However, scientific evidence clearly shows that fluent reading will not be possible for many children if they don’t receive systematic instruction in phonics.

It’s no wonder that these children can’t learn to read. It doesn’t help those children of color are not able to read because the grown-ups consider phonics “racist.”

After decades of reading and teaching this way, with no success, one would think that even a leftist would give up and return to what worked. But not on your life. This would indicate that the critics of this terrible education system were correct. We all know that leftists prefer to blow up the country rather than admit they are doing more harm than good.