I found this podcast from this 
post:
I subbed today for a 7th and 8th grade teacher. I’m not exaggerating when I say at least 50% of the students were at a 2nd grade reading level. The students were to spend the class time filling out an “all about me” worksheet, what’s your name, favorite color, favorite food etc. I was asked 20 times today “what is this word?”. Movie. Excited. Trait. “How do I spell race car driver?”
I’ve only listened to one episode so far, but it’s really well produced, seems well-researched and very well put together.
From what I gather so far, the ways that the American public school system “teaches” kids how to read is not only completely wrong, but actually saddles them bad habits which fundamentally hinder their reading comprehension.
A huge swath of American adults are functionally illiterate, and I think I’m starting to understand why.
Wait, what would the alternative to phonics be?
Either read through some of the linked thread or listen to the first episode of the podcast. It’s so dumb it’s unbelievable. There’s a “system” that is literally “just guess lol”.
Yeah I’m seeing it now, but I just couldn’t believe it - Thought I must’ve misunderstood something. They just make kids memorize whole words instead of learning how letters funtion? It’s wild. The us is apparently just full of illiterate youths now?
It does explain quite a few encounters I’ve had on here and twitter, where users misunderstood basic stuff. A lot of people just reiterating what I write as if it was an argument against me and the like. Seems like reading comprehension is non-existent.
no no, it’s even worse. read the whole word is an older idea. they’re teaching kids to guess the word without even looking at it. they’re taught to check if they have the word right by looking at the first couple of letters. like they’re teaching kids by literally covering up the word and only showing it after they guess.
But how can they check if they don’t know what the letters say? This seems like such an odd idea.
It’s always good with several different ways of learning something, but this doesn’t seem to be teaching the subject at all? Like it’s just guesswork, and it’s guesswork that still requires the ability to parse letters, which at that point just teach 'em to read.
context, syntax, and the first couple of letters. they teach them phonics but prevent them from using it to sound out words.
Cutting off kids fingers so they can get past the crutch of counting using their fingers
Cutting off their fingers so they can refine their motor skill by trying to write with their stubs.
Wild. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me
You are taught to use context clues or whatever word comes to your head at first thought.
You might even say it’s reactionary. Imagine trying to explain something to someone but they’re reading a totally different sentence, based on years of US education.
i can’t really believe what i’m reading. i’m a teacher in the global south. i don’t even teach formative years, but this feels like the Three Dimensional Chess fantasy applied to pedagogy.
yeah, it’s less teaching kids how to read and more purposefully sabotaging their ability to read, based on a fantasy of teaching them to love reading. it’s cult woo shit.
why would you teach guesswork as though language is something inherent to the soul and oh fuck thats it isn’t it
yep, it’s literally based on the idea that if you put enough books in front of kids, they’ll teach themselves how to read.
if there is one thing that is universal about teachers is that we aren’t well paid. at least in some places we are actually respected and such, but still not well paid. the one thing that keeps teachers going is that its a social profession with lots of meaning behind it. what sort of teacher looks at reading and thinks its not glamorous enough to teach it step by step as a learned skill.
Thats actually how i used to read a while back. I was taugth the normal way letter by letter. But then somtime in middle school i realised i read way too slow so i started experimenting trying to get rid of vocalization wich was the biggest inefficiency. And the solution was to grasp the meaning of the word without reading it compleatly. If its some set of consonants i cant even pronounce i cant suvvocalize them can i? Until eventually i no longer needed to do that.
Granted i cant spell for shit. But its actually more efficient to read like that.
It took me over a decade of trying really hard to stop my subvocalizing. If i had been taugth like you descrive from the begining i would not have had to spend so much effort to get rid of bad reading habits.
I’ve never heard this term and I’m losing my mind because I’m a very slow reader and, based on what I’m seeing, more-literate people don’t hear the text in their head? I literally never considered that this would be absent from reading aside from recognizing a familiar term (like the name of a store, “ambulance,” whatever). God damn it . . .
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I don’t think so. I’m a very fast reader and I still kinda “hear” words in my head when I go at a relaxed pace. It’s just that at a certain level of literacy, your brain has the ability to visually recognize words faster than you can mentally enunciate them, and it can also recognize words faster than you can mentally process for comprehension. I realized this when of my relatives started to play a game with me where he would flash me a paragraph on his phone for just a second or two, and then I would somehow be able to recite it back. You can deliberately make yourself read at this speed but it’s not very fun, requires focus, and again, is often so fast that you start losing full comprehension of the content.
See the speed reading subsection here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization - in summary: everyone seems to subvocalize to varying extents, unless you deliberately train yourself not to, which you can, but you shouldn’t, because it sucks.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I think I read slower and subvocalise more since I started reading theory. Like obviously when trying to fully understand a text it makes sense to take your time, but it feels like it’s involuntary extended itself to other reading as well
I mean I don’t think this method of education has ever been widespread enough to entirely explain low literacy rates in the US. There are other factors at play here.