Johnny Can’t Read: Blame Government Schools
By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. Updated December 12, 2017 World Net Daily June 10, 2017
Despite billions of dollars being dumped into government schools, nearly 50 percent of Americans can barely read while some cannot read at all.
According to the Department of Justice, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure.” The statistics back up this claim: 85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, and over 60 percent of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level. Two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare.
The National Assessment of Adult Literacy defines literacy as “using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.”
In Baltimore at least six government schools cannot produce a single student who was proficient in either English or math. No surprisingly, they are “socially promoted” – allowed to graduate. At $16,000 per student, Baltimore ranks third in the nation for education spending among the 100 largest school school districts.
In Washington, D.C. more than two-thirds of the population over age 15 is functionally illiterate.
In California government schools, state assessment results show that 48 percent of the students cannot read.
National test scores after seven years of Common Core are embarrassing for the world’s superpower. The Washington Post reported results from the 2015 NAEP scores, “Reading performance… was sobering: Eighth-grade scores dropped… while fourth-grade performance was stagnant compared with 2013… The 2015 scores show that 64 percent of fourth-graders and 66 percent of eighth-graders are not considered proficient in reading.”
But money is not the reason for the education tragedy in America.
Our government schools are doing what they were programmed to do by their left wing architects. An avowed socialist and humanist, John Dewey, known as the “father of progressive education,” aimed to change the focus of education from the development of individual intellectual skills to the development of group social skills required for living in a collectivist state.
Dewey believed the classroom should be used to drive political and social change. His radical education ideas were implemented at the experimental Lincoln School for Teachers’ College, Columbia University in New York where Dewey taught and set the direction for teacher education. The teacher program included the experiment of his colleague, James Cattrell, who wanted to test a new method to teach reading in early education. That method is known today as “whole language” (also “whole word” and look-say”) because students see words as a whole rather than learning letters and their sounds first.
The Rockefeller General Education Board helped to fund Dewey’s experimental school. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a huge fan of Dewey, also donated $3 million to the Lincoln school. He sent four of his five sons there to be educated under the new progressive philosophy. They were taught the new way of reading and all four became dyslexic.
This quackery teaches children to recognize a few words in kindergarten using picture books and computer videos that connect a word with a picture. As the child enters second and then third grade, memorizing a much larger number of words is an overload and the child falls behind in his work.
Common Core continues the whole-language method by having children memorize words in kindergarten. By the time children are taught phonics in elementary grades, the whole-word pattern of learning has already created brain problems.
According to renowned educator and reading specialist Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld, brain research has shown how faulty teaching methods can physically alter the brain. Using whole language to teach reading has been found to cause dyslexia.
Politicians eternally press for more money for classroom computers, job training classes, Taj Mahal buildings, palatial sports facilities, more layers of bureaucracy -- everything except what students really need.
If we are going to improve the literacy rate in America, then we must provide students with basic, remedial reading instruction that teaches them intensive phonics. Unless children learn to read and to comprehend what they are reading, they are doomed to lives of poverty, violence, drugs, government dependency, broken homes, prison, and hatred of all that is good about America.
Economic security and the ability to actively participate in civic life all depend on an individual’s ability to read.Government schools can teach children to read if they will stop using whole language and return to phonics.
Being proficient in reading is not only important to one’s personal life, it is vital for America if we are to become great again.