If you graduated before they implemented this or aren’t American, the system they started to use to teach kids how to read is called three cuing. They teach kids to identify unknown words by guessing based on clues in pictures with the sentences, what word would ‘make sense’, and whether the answer they came up with looks right based on the first letter.

As you may have noticed, none of that is reading a word. These are strategies that borderline illiterate people will use to try to understand words, and for decades it’s been the method used by many schools across the country.

So that person you’re arguing with online who keeps going off on bizarre rants barely related to anything you said might not be a troll, they might just be functionally illiterate due to having never been taught to read. Yaaay!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [S] 2 points 5 days ago (1 child)

The idea that how you teach children something doesn’t affect how well they learn it is flat out stupid. Going ‘oh well some kids are better at learning this core skill than others so it doesn’t matter how you teach them, therefor it doesn’t matter how you teach anyone because some of them were just going to be bad at it no matter what’ is built on assumptions on top of assumptions. I don’t accept that some children are destined to be bad at reading, and I hope to god anyone teaching children doesn’t believe that. Even special ed teachers should be believing in the capabilities of their students.

Literally everything you’re bringing up is addressed in the reporting I’ve linked you. You aren’t tellling me anything new. It doesn’t change that starting kids off on a poor foundation for understanding how to read is not going to magically turn them into readers. In fact, the very issues you bring up (wealth inequality) tie in to how this is disguised in rich peoples’ school districts by the fact that they can just afford tutors if their kid struggles. BTW, if you want people to focus on the non-curriculum aspects of teaching you should probably just say that instead of hinting around it and then implying someone is an idiot for not changing the subject.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • If A causes B, and you see B, it's a logical fallacy to presume that the B you observe was caused by A. That's the core of what I'm discussing here: pointing out that B is caused by more than just A, and that A itself isn't as common as you seem to suggest, so your Bayesian inference of how much B is caused by A is weighted all wrong.

    You came in, excited to share with the world about the reading debates, and then making the mistake of overassigning that cause to every effect you see. I'm pointing out the errors in your reasoning.

    I'm not discouraging you from being excited about the topic. It's important. I already agree with you. I also don't need hours of podcast audio to summarize what I already know from extensive reading on the topic, over literal decades. I'm not arguing with you about the history or the science.

    I am, however, asking you to, like, actually read and understand what I'm saying. You've leapt to an unsupported conclusion (the illiterate people I encounter are illiterate because they weren't taught phonics) based on a bad reasoning from a correct premise that I agree with (phonics instruction is the best method of teaching literacy, and too many educators went down the wrong path in the past). And separately, you seem to be under the misconception that people born in 2000 suffer from this problem worse than people born in 1980 or 1960. That's been my consistent position this entire thread.

  • source
  • parent