In spite of 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 programed to do by their left-wing architects whose aim it was to change the focus of education from the development of individual intellectual skills to the development of group social skills. Government schools are designed to change an American student from a fiercely competitive individual in a capitalist society to a groupthink, compliant person required for a collectivist state.
As socialist/humanist John Dewey is reported to have said more than century ago, “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists – children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”
Dewey shunned the highly successful phonics method to teach reading and introduced “whole language.” Alternate names are “sight words,” “whole word,” and “look-say.” 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 Dewey method by having children memorize 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 renown 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.
