8/7/2019 Blumenfeld Education Letter April_1996 http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/blumenfeld-education-letter-april1996 1/8 The Blumenfeld Education Letter Vol. 11, No.4 (Letter # 115) liMy People Are Destroyed For lack Of Knowledge" HOSEA 4:6 AprIl 1996 DITOR: Samuell. Blumenfeld The purpose of this news!etter is to provide knowledge for porents and educators who want to save the children of America from the destructive forces that endanger them. Our children In the public schools are at grave risk in 4 ways. occdamiccliy; spiritually, morally, and physically - and only a well-informed public will be able to reduce these risks "Wi thout vi si on, t he peopl e per is h. " California's Reading Debacle: When the Incompetent Rule, the Children. Suffer A lady in Southern California recently faxed me an article about California's liter- acy disaster containing much interesting information about what happened when Whole language was introduced in Califor-' nia schools in 1987. The article, "The Black- board Bungle' by Jill Stewart, appeared in the March 1-7, 1996, issue of LA Weekly. M s. Stewart writes: Since 1987, whole-language theory has swept California. At its further extreme are whole-language zealots who believe reading and writing are natural processes that children will pick up on their own without formal instruction if they are im mer se d in good literature and allowed to freely write without correction. The theory's basic principles have been institutionalized in the fonn of a widely aedairred reading "fnunework" adopted by the state Board of Public Education that downplays th e teaching of tra- ditional reading skills. On the plus side, the ern. of whole language has ushered into California's class- rooms th e use of literature and popular storybooks, and has inspired teachers to push children to create their own handwritten stories. "The core idea of whole Ianguage," says one of its rrost vocal propo- nents, Mel Grubb of the California literature Project at Cal State Dominguez Hills, "is that children ro longer are forced to learn skills that a re disembodied from the experience of reading a story. The enpy- ment and th e wonder of th e story are absorbed just as the skills are absorbed." Poor Mr. Grubb seems to be confused about the difference between reading a story and learning to read. Apparently he thinks both are the same. Ms. Stewart continues: But whole language, which sounds so promis- ing wkn described by its proponents, has proved to be a near disaster wben applied to-and by-real people, In th e eight years s ince whole language first appeared. in the state's grade schools, California's fourth-grade reading scores have plummeted to near the bottom nationally, according to th e National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In- deed, California's fourth-graders are now such poor readers that only the children in Louisiana and Guam=both hampered by pitifully backward edu- cation systems-get worse reading scores. And who is to blame for this linear dis- aster"-which is not near but actual? The article states: It has become clear that many of the problems stem from a tragic misinterpretation of th e state's 1989 reading framework,. intended as a helpful sup- plement to baditional lessons but used by many ad- ministra10rs as a wholesale replacement for them. Was it, indeed, a "tragic" misinterpreta- tion or a deliberate misinterpretation? In 1987, California already had a horrendous I__ ~_rl ~ ~ The B lu menf el d Edu cati on Letter is p ub li she d m on th ly . Original material is copyrighta:i by The Blumenfeld Education Letter. Permission to quote is graneed provided proper crOOu is given. Readers are encouraged to order and distribute addimnal copies of those news1etta's they believe should be sent to 1egisIators, columnists, ta1k shows, pastors, etc. Subscription Rate: 1 year $36.00. Address: Box 45161, Boise, Idaho 83711. (2flI) 322-4440. WWW address; http://www.cyberhighway.net/-phil/b1umenfd.html
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
teammates and acquain tances who neve r knew. 'They
never knew Jorgensen did not join th e Brownies
organization as a girl because sh e could not memorize
the motto. They never knew she wonied about
getting her drivers license because of the written test.
Iorgensen's fear was th e ridicule of others, so
she turned to her ploys, anything to avoid the shameinher e ye s. . .. But the t r ickery would never take away
th e sting within: Basketball did. The zeal with which
sh e played th e game, which she seemingly failed to
expend in th e class room, became her escape . . ..
But when her California State University, Fresno,
basketball eligibility ran dry, Jorgensen began taking
a hard look at her life, a life where she could not run
from her reading disorder. . . .
The words of her daughter keep spinning in
Carolyn Brown's mind. "Karl would say, 'Mom,
what am I going to do? ' . •. I'd s ay , 'K a rl , 1 1 1always
take care of you for th e rest of your life.' I told her that
whatever sh e did, happiness wasn't so much how
much money you make. It was more than that." ...
Family , friends and a conununity will be tor-
mented by las t Thursday, th e day Karl Jorgensen was
found hanging in a room in her r o m e .
Comment:
God knows how many Kar is have been
created by California's primary reading
programs. Most of these individuals will go
through life crippled by the teaching meth-ods used by teachers imbued "with the best
of intentions" and the dumbest of brains.
Much has been written about how reading
disabilities and dyslexia af fec t the emotional
lives of th e victims. But, apparently, reading
teachers are the last people to know or care
about such things.
Reading S k ills D ec line in Brita in
The following is from the london Dai l y
Telegraph of Nov. 28, 1995:
What is happening in Britain and the
u.s. is also taking place in the rest of the
English speaking world. The dumbing downprocess is being carried out to prepare chi l -
dren for the New World Order. In fact, the
very same process is also taking place
throughout th e Western world via the United
Nations educational ann, UNESCO. A new
book, published in France, entitled z v r J t l C h i a -
vel p e d a g o g u e au Ie min i s t ere de 1 a r t fo rme p e d a -
gogique (Machiavelli as Educator or The
Ministry of Educational Reform) by Pascal IBernardin, documents what UNESCO has Ib een doing in education to destroy Western
iChristian civilization through values and t
behavior modification and multiculturalism, jl
In other words, the author found corning out I
Alarming ev idence of a sharp a m . accelerating of UNESCO all of th e same pagan, socialist I
drop in th e reading abilities and overall educational programs now be ing promoted in American !attainment of ll-year-olds was publ ished yesterday schools. The book can b e ordered from: I
by Secondary Heads Association, A survey of nearly Librairie La Proue, Esca1iers du Marche 17, I
~---The Blumenfeld Education Letter - Post Office Box 45161- Boise, Idaho 83711__j
500 state and independent secondary schools in
England and Wales found that s tanda rds of read ing ,
spelling, comprehension and literacy fell continu-
ously between 1 9 9 1 and last year.
Two earlier national studies showed that the
average reading ability of seven-year-olds fell signifi-
cantly between 1985 and 1 9 9 1 . The fall was widely
attributed to "progressive" teaching. John Sutton,genera l secretary of th e association, whose members
run the majority of comprehensives, described th e
results as shocking and called for a "blitz on literacy"
in pr imary schools.
TIle findings were based on the standard tests of
reading. verbal and non-verbal reasoning admini-
stered by 90 pe r cent of secondary schools to teach
new intake ....
Estelle Morris, one of labour's education spokes -
men, said: 'The f indings are an important warning of
the need to ra ise standards---partiru1ly in th e Three
Rs--- in pr imary school. Unless we ge t th e basics right
at an early age, we cannot improve achievement in
later years." . . .Many secondary h ea ds re ma rk ed on a deterio-
ration in It-year-old 's behavior, confirming that chil-
dren's experience of failure tends to be accompanied
exactly do Iwant them to learn? Most of th e stuff they
study in school is completely useless. But some
incredibly valuable things you don't learn until you're
older-yet you could learn them when you're younger.
And you start to think, What would Ido if Iset acurriculum for a school?
G O O , how exciting that could be! But you can't
do it today. You don't ge t to do what you want. You
don't ge t to pick your books, your curriculum. You
get to teach one narrow specialization Who would
ever want to do that?
1here are solutions to our problems in educa-
tion. Unfortunately, teclmology isn't it. You're not
going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge
onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in everyschool--none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us
into thinking we're doing something to solve the
problem with education,Lincoln did not have a Web site at th e log cabin
where his pi iI ren tS homesch:>oled him, and he t u rned
out pretty mteresting. Historical precedent shows
that we can tum out amazing human beings without
teclmology. Precedent also shows that we ca n turn
out very uninteresting human beings with technol-
ogy.
It's not as simple as you think when you're in
your aJs-that technology's going to change the world.
In some ways it will , in some ways it won't .
S teve Job s on C omputers andEducat ion
Steve Jobs, legendary founder of Apple
C om puter, w as interviewed in the February
1996 issue of Wimi magazine. He was asked,
"Could teclmology help by improving edu-
cation?" His response was quite interesting:
I used to think that technology could help edu-
cation I've probably spearheaded giving away morecomputer equipment to schools than anybody else on
the planet But I've had to rome to th e inevitable
conclusion that the problem is not one that technol-
ogy can hope to solve. What's wrong with education
cannot be .fixed with technology. No amount of
technology will make a dent.
It's a political problem. The problems are sodo-
political. The problems are th e unions. You plot the
growth of th e NEA [National Education Association}
and th e dropp i ng of SAT s co re s, and they're inversely
proportional. The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of
these people who believes th e bes t th ing we could
ever do is go to the full voucher system.I have a 17-year-dd daughter who went to a
private school for a few years before high school. This
private school is th e best school I've seen in my life. Itwas judged one of the 100 bes t schools in America. It
was phenomenal The tuition was $5,500 a year,which is a lot of money for most parents . But th e
teachers were paid less th an p ub lic school teacher&-
so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked th e
state treasurer that year what California pays on
average to send kids to school, and I bel ieve it was
$4,400. While there are rot man y p are nts who could
rome up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could
come up with $1,(00 a year.H we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, ence.
schools would. be start ing right and left. People The study analyzed nuns' youthfulwould ge t out of oollegeand say, ''Let's start a school." "Wr i ti ngs and found. that those who showedYou could have a tmck at Stanford within the MBA low linguistic ability in their 20 s had a muchprog ram on how to be the business-person of a school. hizher risk of Alzhei:mer's when they wereAnd that MBA would ge t together with somebody 8~
else, and they'd start schools. And you'd have these elderly. The findings could indicate thatyoung, idealistic people start ing schools, worldng for Alzheimer's impairs language ability when
L T h e B lu me nfeld E duca tion Letter - Post Office Box 4 .0 ;1 6 1 - B o is e, Idaho 83711 .....1