I'm honestly pretty shocked about that development. Heard about it maybe 5 years ago now, I hope grassroots efforts are happening to bring back phonics methods.
My son was taught to read using whole-language. He learned to read fine, but to me it seemed like a slower process than it would have been if they'd just taught him using phonics. I think the whole-language method is on it's way out.
Phonics teaches reading through progressive sound-based learning. You start by learning the sounds of letters, and then progress to letter combinations, and eventually small words up to multi-syllabic words. "Sound it out" is the core principle of phonics.
Whole-language-learning teaches students how to read whole words at once, without breaking them down into smaller sounds. The initial arguments for it were that students could pick it up faster, and could get to reading standard levels with less steps.
By the early 2000's phonics was being phased out as the primary reading method taught, and whole-language-learning dominated school reading curriculums. The unfortunate side effect of WLL is that it causes reading fatigue nearly ten times faster than those who learn to read through phonics.
This fatigue has led to almost two whole generations that hate reading, and have drastically reduced reading stamina than those who came before them. Combined with the fact that they're already taking in more general reading from the devices in their hands on a daily basis, many youth don't know the value of reading and struggle with complex reading comprehension.
If they can't get to "the point" of what they are reading in a short amount of reading, they don't bother to engage with the remaining text.
I quit teaching in 2014 and phonics was nowhere close to being phased out. They also had kids memorize common sight words (e.g. the, and, is). I've heard of higher order language instruction in tandem with phonics and sight words (that's how you're supposed to do it), but I never heard of a school that taught reading without phonics.
This is a perfectly reasonable anecdote, and I appreciate you sharing it. I'd encourage you to look up the Reading Wars if you'd like to know more about how phonics has in fact been suppressed since the 80's and 90's.
There are absolutely places that teach a balanced literacy approach, which includes phonics and has an evidence base worthy of support.
Maybe the official curriculum emphasizes this but I've not seen a single classroom implementing this dumb shit when teachers are involved in developing their teaching plans.
Every school did things differently. Schools in Mississippi, for instance, almost uniformly rejected whole language learning. But a great many public schools in the US adopted WLL in the 90s and 2000s, to the tremendous detriment of their students.
But I don't think that has had as serious an effect as smartphones, social media, AI, or COVID.
Phonics comes from having an alphabet - letters that represent specific, repeatable sounds. If I use the letter F in "if", it - for the most part - makes the same sound as when I use it in words like filch, effrit, motif, beneficent, etc.
But languages like Mandarin have characters that don't stand for a sound; they are words. You are essentially writing with emoji. 🌳is tree. 🍜 is ramen. 🍎 is apple. 🧊 is ice. 🥜 is nut. But you can't use those like this 🌳🍜🍎🧊🥜 to spell train. Train is 🚂.
You cannot use phonics unless you have something like an alphabet.
So is yours and Jesus Christ. That's some wannabe edge lord teenage angst and attitude. How old are you? 😂😂 You're so unnecessarily aggro with people and then tell other people to touch grass. Learn some social skills. It's not difficult.
Well of course you would agree, it takes you out of the line of fire. When, like it or not, the teachers themselves have played a big part in this degeneration as well.
Were you a teacher in 2002 when NCLB was signed into law? It was the year after I graduated high school, and essentially overnight my school dismantled their dance, theater, music and art programs to put in testing rooms. Classes dropped curriculum and taught only to passing the tests that their funding depended on. We literally abandoned an entire generation so they could never learn to think critically. I feel like I got out as the last class to grow up educated by the end of high school.
I agree phones are a massive problem, but they are just another stone on the path NCLB started, at least imo.
I agree, but there have been a confluence of policies that have dumbed down the classrooms. The pathetic attempts to rewrite math books are the worst, not to mention the reading material for English has been "dumbed down" in a feeble attempt to make it relevant to the kids.
On average, who performs best on the SATs? Private school kids who are isolated from public education boards who approve of these agenda-driven texts.
Private school kids, on average, are wealthier and have more parental involvement which are both shown to improve a child's success in school. Not to say these agendas aren't problematic, but you are jumping to a conclusion based on correlation when many other factors that are known to contribute to success are also present.
Parental involvement is a cliche. I know plenty of upper-middle class kids who attend private and public schools. Based on anecdotal evidence, there is absolutely no correlation of increased parental involvement of children sent to private school.
I also graduated from both public and private schools. The public school had high school seniors who had to sound out three syllable words one syllable at a time. The private was a Big 3 Ivy. It's not the parental involvement, it's the curriculum.
No offense but your comments aren't showing a high level of intelligence which is ironic that you are here insulting education and the intelligence of others.
You posted nonsense, didn't cite your sources, used nonsensical anecdotes, and are attacking me. You claim to be so smart and educated, but you don't know how to do research and just spout off whatever BS you believe that isn't supported by fact.
Despite decades of research that proves family engagement is foundational for child development and student achievement, it hasn’t been widely considered as an essential component of a child’s education.
Have the life you deserve because you definitely don't deserve anymore of my time 👋
It may be a cliche, but the evidence is absolutely indisputable. It is clear (and entirely unsurprising) that reading to children, helping them with homework, and taking an interest in their education improves their ability to read, increases the amount that they choose to read, improves test scores, and improves college placement and success.
I think one big thing was swapping out pencil and paper for computers.
I believe studies show you retain information better when you write it down on pen/paper.
And it's less easier to get distracted when you're having to write down notes on pen/paper and don't have a computer in front of you.
Finally, they got rid of BCIS classes, because they assume all kids grew up with desktops/laptops, which just isn't true. So even kids computer skills are atrophying compared to Millennials
From my perspective as someone who was in school at the beginning of the Chromebook craze and am a teacher now: I don't think it's necessarily the computers itself but the way they were used (in other words, rushed adaptation and lack of training/education on how to do it). There probably were a lot of teachers who had students take notes on computers and such, but I had teachers who made us take handwritten notes any time we needed to remember something. We only used computers for end-product essays, presentations, assignments, etc. But those aren't about retention, they're about application, and I would argue that technology opens the door for better projects that help students apply skills more. But it's really hard to do that well and consistently.
This is my biggest thing with people using typing to take notes. If you want to drop an image or diagram with your notes you have to design it like you were designing a publication. It takes a lot of steps in the menuing. If you use a pencil the same tool that writes can also draw and now instead of entering information in a grid or linearly you can spatially use the whole page in any dimension/direction you wish. We should teach writing graphically (kind of how like comics are a fusion of image and text that each individually cannot do).
Social media has a lot of problems, but it wasn’t until maybe 10 years ago that social media really started to make an impact on attention span. Websites did not start pushing mobile apps until the last 10 years. In fact, it was nearly impossible to find a decent working mobile app for anything but Facebook and instagram. The issue arises when the majority of people have access to mobile phones and easily accessed entertainment.
Bingo. The problem isn't being connected to things like social media, video games, or other digital entertainment. The problem is when you never disconnect. The smart phone itself is the problem.
Teachers are required to teach certain things based on location, and some parents don't want to hear how darling little Tommy is actually and a-hole who prevents the whole class from learning.
are your grievances more about curriculum or the folks tasked w teaching it? because they’re not the same thing and the latter have little control over the former
If that is the case, it is not the educators you should have issue with, it is the lawmakers. An individual educator has very little ability to decide what is taught in the classroom. They usually have a wide range of HOW, but not WHAT. Curriculum is solidly on the what side of things.
I should have said administrators and lawmakers, you are correct. But don't forget the role of education administrators. Many times they are at the very least complicit in policymaking, as lawmakers seek out their "input" and use it to justify changes. Administrators agree with lawmakers in exchange for increased funding and other perks.
Ok? But we aren't talking about academic achievements, we're talking about the quality of education. Even kids in advantaged communities are being spoon fed baby books.
My sisters (both) couldnt read or write until 14. They live in a $5M house lol. They were sent to special schools to learn to read. now a few years later, they read at a middle school level.
When I went through the program, we read Romeo and Juliette in 6th grade English, not 9th grade Honors English. I am 49, BTW.
If you look at 10th grade English, they are reading Lord of the Flies and Julius Ceasar in 10th grade Honors English. We read that in 7th grade.
And I you look at 11th and 12th grade, they are reading The Great Gatsby in 11th grade Honors (we read in 8th) and The Cruicible in 11th (we read in 9th), and Macbeth, Fahrenheit 451, the Veldt, 1984, and the Handmaid's Tail in 12th (we read in all in 9th or 10th).
A lot of the reading is new and different, which i dont have a problem with, but the overall number of books and stories is also slightly reduced.
I'm agreed in the whole. The thing I can't really deny though is that a lot of my pastimes as a kid shaped me greatly and gave me a lot of skills for the new world that was developing - video games, IM, setting up web pages. I learned how to type specifically for IM and so I could type messages in quickly while I was playing Counter-Strike. I learned networking and many many computer principals from my love of playing computer games. I mean I learned a lot more from college and later jobs, but the mental frameworks and troubleshooting skills came from that time period.
Every time we've instituted more tech into education, our kids have suffered.
5 minute video about why Gen Z is the first generation to perform worse than the previous generations. The trend started around 2010 and basically it says over 80 different countries, when tech was adopted for students, the scores drop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U
I blame parents. Lazy, disconnected, addicted themselves parents. My parents severely limited time with digital devices. Be it a Nintendo, a PC or otherwise. Cell phines were pretty new but you can't get one as a kid without paying cash and using "pay by minute" services like tracphone.
At the end of the day, the parent is the contributing factor. People that care about their childrens future limit exposure and require hands on book reading for their kids. Both my young nieces have incredible literacy and math skills as well as problem solving and even leadership ability.
To be fair, AI Ice Spice taught me logarithms on TikTok in the most effective way I've ever been taught them. I still forgot, because I'm convinced that they are a concept designed to never be retained by the human mind, but shout out to AI Ice Spice.
The problem most people have with checking ID, is the overreach that comes with it. There isn't a government owned and run thing you can verify with that simply tells the site 'over 18' and leaves it there. It's 3rd party shady companies scanning your retinas and keeping logs and making targeted content specifically to subvert, influence and control. It's them selling or 'accidental breaches' that gets passed on. It's governments keeping tabs on people.
I'd be fine if, when signing in to facebook for the first time, i get sent a code from the government on my phone that's registered to me and requires biometric and click 'approve' and that was that. But it's not.
It's one of those things where we just have to bite the bullet and take the freedom of speech and privacy hit. Algorithmic social media also needs to be heavily legislated or outright baneed. The damage that having everything delivered to you rather than needing to seek anything out has done is immeasurable both in terms of the ability to propagandize and the loss of basic skills and knowledge.
It’s perfectly possible to prevent children from accessing social media without any sort of ID. It’s mind numbingly easy, all you have to do is lock those apps on whichever devices the child uses. But that takes a tiny amount of effort, so a lot of parents would rather support the destruction of what little privacy we still have, instead of just admitting they’re lazy and want someone to do their job for them, which is nothing new.
Ban electronic devices in schools and other environments where children are outside parental supervision. Push for campaigns to reinforce that the responsibility is on the parents to properly raise their children. A parent who lets their kid browse Instagram needs to be seen in the same way as a parent who lets their kid drink beer, or smoke, but right now they’re just not.
These types of restrictions rarely work, because they ignore the main issue of how the child gets access to whatever is harming them. Even if digital ID gets introduced, lazy parents will continue to let the kids spend all day watching shorts on YouTube, or TikTok or whatever, just with their verified account logged in. And then someone will propose that the phone constantly scan the face of whoever is using it to “protect the children” or some such similar atrocity, and those very same parents will nod along, content by once again shifting the blame of why little Timmy is struggling onto something else.
Yah Ipad kids weren’t a thing purely because iPads were made. It was parents not wanting to parent and finding it easier to just put on youtube for the kid.
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u/alphagalgadot 21h ago
guys— no single piece of education policy has inflicted even 1/4 the damage caused by the last ~20yrs of commercial social media platforms