I Wrote a Lot About How "Whole Language" Reading Programs

in elementary school, which basically force a high school-style literacy program on students who really need to know the basics in how to read in order to enjoy reading, helped to contribute to the explosion of students in special education programs.

"Balanced literacy" and all of the other "whole language" programs are total junk. Children really need to have basal anthologies in school which also tie in with phonics (REAL phonics, not Marie Clay-style pseudophonics which is NO phonics at all), grammar, and spelling and are done in a sequential manner.

Ken Goodman, the "guru" of "whole language," has done more damage to public education than almost anybody in the past fifty years, including even the privatizers.

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Actually, it isn't so much a plot to get rid of veteran teachers as it is some naive belief by crackpots who think reading and writing are as "natural" as speaking and listening, when in fact both of the former MUST be explicitly taught.

My old school district was infested with this kind of rot until the other rot, NCLB, came along.

The Education Wars

My little rant on a board about inappropriate curriculum:

Well, "really" high "achieving" kids were NOT taking algebra in middle school when I went

This is entirely the fault of the standardistas, as Susan Ohanian calls them, and it is completely inappropriate to teach high-level math in middle school, and it is trickling down into the lower grades, and many if not MOST kids cannot handle it. But that's okay, because there are always special education teachers to pick up the slack, and the kids who are "failing" math are forever labeled as "failing" when in reality it is shitty, inappropriate curriculum that is being shoved down kids' throats.

Thirty or forty years ago one almost NEVER saw kids in special education (only those who would be labeled "life skills" students were found in self-contained classrooms--the TRUE special education students such as the "mentally retarded" and of course others severely disabled weren't in schools at all or were in institutions) and very few students got ANY remedial help in reading or in math, and yes, there have always been second-language learners in public schools, so that isn't the reason for the huge explosion of kids in special education, nor can poverty or divorce be blamed, either. No, what happened is trends in education "upped" the ante in requiring kids to go on college-track preparation in high school and the lower grades, thanks to the fraudulent Nation at Risk report and other reports pushed by anti-public school politicians saying this country was falling behind academically compared to other countries and many, many kids have fallen through the cracks as a result because they can't do the work. And then there was the whole language fad, promoted by Ken Goodman and others trying to put an inappropriate high school-style language arts pedagogy on elementary school students who need explicit, sequential language arts instruction. Inappropriate curriculum/pedagogy is the real reason so many kids are in special education today, and if there is any blame leveled at teachers, it should be that many of them aren't taught how to teach reading.

Now your child is an exception, but it is the exception which proves the rule. Hundreds of thousands of middle school kids can't handle abstract concepts like algebra. That is a fact. They aren't stupid, they aren't lazy, though standardistas would say they are, or they, like you, blame the teachers. These kids simply aren't cognitively ready to handle abstract concepts.

By the way, many, many intelligent adults can't do algebra, either.

What I Truly Object To

is the increasingly more difficult mathematics concepts being taught to elementary and middle school students, which are totally inappropriate because most students are not able to process abstract ideas. I am referring to the push for algebraic concepts in the early grades, a recipe for academic failure.

Not only are most elementary school teachers not versed in algebra and therefore can't teach it and shouldn't, but the idea of shoving high school and college level mathematics ideas will almost certainly result in an increase in special education students. Special education students, in turn, are more likely to drop out of school and end up in low-level jobs, assuming they can get them. Besides, algebra is basically a useless concept for job and career preparation; the only purpose it serves is to teach abstract thinking.

But perhaps that's the point: create a two-tiered education system with the "dregs" being shoved into special education, while the "smart" kids are pushed into college.

Here is an opinion piece that sticks in my craw.

The same garbage has been done in language arts with the whole language bullshit, which is nothing more than shoving high school-level concepts onto little kids, when in fact they should be learning phonics, grammar, spelling, the whole building blocks of reading and writing, and then gradually move into "real" books. Now we have millions upon millions of students who are way below grade level because of crappy curriculum.

I am going to go out on a limb and say 90 percent of students in special education should not even be there in the first place. They have no behavioral or real cognitive problems such as mental retardation to actually qualify. But because they are taught absolutely inappropriate curriculum and more often than not by inexperienced teachers who themselves were trained in college with nutty concepts such as whole language, reading recovery, reading workshops, and "new math" ideas, these students end up further and further behind. A generation ago, this would never have happened. The second-language excuse doesn't fly, either; after all, this country was made up of second-language learners and almost all of them made it through the traditional curriculum just fine.

It's the curriculum and teacher training, stupid.