Forget about Common Core Curriculum. It's DOA. The future is classical.

For a few weeks I've been working on an article titled "Classical Education --  still the way children learn best today."

Nominally, this article is about three schools in the Tidewater part of Virginia.

But what the article is really about is a better way to run schools and teach children. This approach is called the classical method. These are all the best ideas from Greek and Roman schools, collected, organized and, during the Renaissance, often blended with Christian teaching.

The basic concept, which is just so completely obvious if we didn't live in the long, dark, cold shadow of John Dewey, is that children are changing and evolving in all those early years,  from 5 to 18. So let's  exploit those changes. Use them for the good of education.

Duh, right?

Dewey did not recognize any change. He was trying to move children from A, whatever they are, to B, what he wanted them to be. That's as unsubtle as Stalin sending another thousand people to the gulag.

Some of these good schools today are Christian academies, some are classical academies, some are Christian classical academies. Indeed, don't get mixed up by the details and distinctions. Henceforth, let's ignore them. What matters is that these schools are very serious about creating educated graduates. This is what all schools were trying to do 100 years ago, until the great Darth Vader Dewey showed up.

I urge everyone to take a look at this article or similar articles. Learn a little about the classical approach. Don't get sidetracked by the details, as I say. Focus on the fact that when the children are six, they like certain things so let's give them those things. When they're ten, they like to do other things, so let's give them those things. It's so brilliantly simple, you want to scream insults at the silly people who run our public schools. These people have not had a new idea in 75 years. What they have new is jargon and marketing phrases. Their biggest goal in life is making more ignorant students.

What the classical approach is trying to do is to make more educated students.

There's no question that these students work harder....But do they really?? Have you ever been on a trip where, due to somebody's bad planning or bad luck, you spent the whole day hanging around accomplishing nothing? How much fun was that? Well, that's a perfect capsule description of what goes on every day in our public schools. Children are bored. They're smart enough to know that they're not moving very fast. They're not learning anything very interesting. They often get A's even as they think, I don't know anything.

I'd think most animals and most humans would rather be busy, productively engaged, even worked or overworked, rather than they would like to be sitting around all day doing nothing much, nothing useful, nothing intellectually stimulating. But the truth is, when children are six, they don't even know what it means to be worked or overworked. The British Empire was built on six-year-olds working in factories, 10 hours a day. At that age, they might not have known enough to know that they should hate what they were doing. At least, they could see something real being created by their hands, by their work, by their attention to detail.

The only way to get public schools back on track is that they take it as a sacred mission, when kids are still four, five or six, to bring them all up to the same speed knowledge-wise. Dewey's ideological zealots hate the idea of children learning anything-- so the whole educational process is rendered moot. The classical approach is trying to teach something every minute of every day, but doing this in a way that is simpatico with the child's nature and temperament.

If education has a bright future, it's in that last sentence.

http://www.examiner.com/article/classical-education-still-the-way-children-learn-best-today

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Dyslexia: deception and despair

The Education Establishment continues a weird charade. They maintain that dyslexia is entirely caused by inborn genetic problems.

Phonics experts have always found that if you teach children to read with sight-words, the children will get dyslexia. If you change the pedagogy from sight-words to phonics, the children will recover. Isn’t that fairly clear-cut?

Just recently on Edutopia a self-appointed expert left a perfect statement of the Party Line, which inspired an article on Examiner. 

The expert’s key assertion is this: dyslexia “is not the result of ‘sight words’ or anything other than a brain difference.”

Well, I guess that settles it.

Now, if by chance, this is a new issue to you, it’s important to understand what they’re getting at.

 If the Education Establishment uses sight-words in the schools and if they create millions of dysfunctional, semi-educated people, it’s not their fault. ALL THOSE PEOPLE HAD DEFECTIVE GENES!  See how it works? They blame the parents and the children. They let themselves off the hook.

Bottom line: we’ve got to get rid of every last sight-word still used in the public schools. That’s the only way to clean up the education mess. Doing this, however, is very difficult if the status quo is locked in place by lies.

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One of the most interesting aspects of this whole matter is that many children (and their families), once told that they are dyslexic, actually embrace the situation. Sometimes there are compensations--money or more time on tests. Sometime it's just a matter of having the thing explained in a way that makes them feel special. Dyslexics are told that they have a difference that is almost like being gifted. It then becomes difficult to tell them that they are victims of bad teaching, and that they probably can be corrected. I have a youtube video called " THE STRANGE TRUTH ABOUT DYSLEXIA," which makes these points. But many people leave obscene comments saying that I'm an idiot, etc., etc.

 There are almost 250 comments. Together they almost tell the history of this debate. Possibly some of these people are genetically damaged; I don't have anything to offer these people. But a great number of others have probably been damaged by sight-words. You might think they would be happy to hear that there is hope. Not so. They have been told another reality for so many years, it's become part of their lives. if you go to the Examiner story, be sure to see the video of an English politician who caused a firestorm  a few years ago by simply announcing that dyslexia is a myth.

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Public schools botch reading, create illiteracy

A parent contacted me a few weeks ago, trying to understand why his child couldn’t learn to read. The school officials said the child was getting plenty of phonics. But the father knew that the homework every night was memorizing sight-words.

 An interesting part of the story is that the father had been, for many years, involved in education at the secondary level. But it’s possible to work there and never understand the bogus curricula and failed strategies used in the early grades. That’s when all the damage is done, K-3.

It’s also possible for parents to be ignored and lied to as their children are slowly ground down into functional illiteracy.

 This father’s story is a good illustration of what is happening across the country.

The bigger problem is that the local papers and school boards do not seem to understand the extent of the tragedy. The unnecessary tragedy. They are not doing enough. 

 I used the father’s experiences as a take-off point for an article about the reading wars that continue to hurt the nation’s schools.

 The resulting story is called “Reading Wars still damage many children.”

Please consider sending it to your local school boards and newspapers.

http://www.examiner.com/article/reading-wars-still-damage-many-children?cid=db_articles

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American newspapers protect bad schools

With regard to education, our media tend to stay on the surface.

The reporting tends to deal with administrative problems, testing, grading, budgets, bold new claims, and lots of alibis.

 (Here, for example, is a report on Norfolk schools. The title is "School officials and Virginian-Pilot are good at making excuses." Five front-page stories or prominent editorials are examined. They seem to be substantive, but typically deal with complex outlying problems that parents can't possibly influence.)

 The real, central problems are overlooked. Namely, that a big percentage of kids drift into the third grade unable to read. They can't do basic arithmetic. They don't know very much.

The thrust of progressive education, ever since John Dewey started the whole thing 100 years ago, was to downplay traditional or academic education. That is, kids don't really need all that factual stuff. 

The emphasis was switched to indoctrination, social activities, and preparing kids for a new socialist America. It's obvious with this shift in priorities that your kids wouldn't be well-educated. The astonishing thing is that this misdirection is allowed to continue all these years later.

Evidently, the people who are promoted in this field (the professors at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, for example) must be true believers. They must push forward with all the same old anti-education, anti-knowledge approaches. Of course, they often dress up these destructive ideas with new jargon.

Point is, newspapers have a responsibility to the community. They must serve the parents, not the NEA. They should pressure schools to examine their unstated premises. 

I just got a letter of from a man whose first-grade kid is very smart but can't read. This kid comes home with lots of homework, but most of it involves memorizing sight-words. That's the crime. That's the story. Why doesn't the Virginian-Pilot talk about the low literacy rates and the reasons for them?

Newspapers don't seem to have enough vision to know they need more READERS. That's hard to understand. But surely they feel a sense of obligation to the community they live in. If children are not learning the basic skills, the entire society is enfeebled.

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Robots, Drones, Artificial Intelligence, and No Intelligence

An editorial titled "May the robot shoot back at the human?" ran in the Virginian-Pilot on Dec. 9. A military officer speculated on the morality of letting  one of our drones fire back if fired upon.

 The article conflated drones and robots, probably confusing lots of readers.  I sent in this response:

 Drones are not robots--

 “May the robot shoot back at the human?,” a column in Sunday’s paper, is misleading, even preposterous.

People are going to think that our military has developed truly autonomous fighting machines, or robots. Not at all. That is still a distant future.

Our military is deploying thousands of remote-controlled drones. These machines may cost millions of dollars but conceptually they are like radio-controlled toys. These drones are flown by human operators seated in remote cockpits.

 This is not to say that our scientists couldn’t jury-rig a very lethal robot. But they wouldn’t dare. Invariably, the robot will make crazy decisions, and probably cause more trouble than it is worth.

 People need to understand that human beings are extremely complex; and so-called robots are still far behind. The things that are easy for us (crossing the street, sorting laundry, deciding what to do today) are hugely difficult for a robot. Why would a robot want to do any one thing more than any other thing? It wouldn’t, not unless you tell it to. Then it’s no longer a robot.

Bruce Deitrick Price

Improve-Education.org

Virginia Beach, Virginia

It's a big mystery to me why the Virginian-Pilot keeps publishing oblivious columns and articles about robots. (There have been several.) Then I post what seems like a fairly simple explanation of the confusions. The Pilot doesn't publish it. That's also a big mystery. Is it that no one will admit they don't know robotics? They can't possibly sit around a table and say, let's not tell our readers anything about robots. As I say, a big mystery.

But for everyone else, here's the simplest way to get up to speed on robots. Take a look at "17: Understanding Robots." I'm very proud of this piece, precisely because I'm not an engineer. I approach the problem as a futurist. You see certain tendencies and you extrapolate forward and backward.

Sandy Hook massacre: media and politicians fail us. Not to mention, public schools.

The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk) has published many articles on the Sandy Hook massacre, provoking an intense debate about what we should do. I just left this comment at the paper's site, which I like enough to post here as well:

"I see so many extreme positions. I don't see any proof that we know exactly what happened in Sandy Hook. So why are people sounding off as if they know exactly what happened???

This new massacre is very much like the one in Aurora. There are many discrepancies. The closer you look, the more murky it gets. In both cases you have a mentally/emotionally impaired person, who seems almost unable to function in society, but we are supposed to believe that this person organized a complex commando raid, requiring professional skills comparable to what a Navy seal has????? (It's not enough to say they're out of their minds on some drug or mental problem. That just makes you more clumsy and erratic, and unable to follow-through on a long list of operational steps.)

Obviously, if these are contrived or staged events, the main danger is that the public will overreact. The Pilot et al have spent a week trying to make sure that this happens. I am disgusted with our politicians and media. They know how complex these events are, and how unlikely anybody less than a Rambo-type could pull them off. It's quite possible that Adam Lanza is the fall guy or patsy. Feel sorry for him. I can see some scenarios where he didn't even fire a shot."

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Mayor Bloomberg, New York City's little dictator, set the tone for this whole last week. The dead were hardly dead, the police hadn't started to investigate at all, but Mayor Bloomberg was confident that he knew all the facts and could therefore proclaim to the world precisely what we should do. I bet he's wrong on his facts and on our proper response. His long-suffering subjects should invite him to take a vacation. Mayor, you're working too hard. Spend some time in the Caribbean.

Well, it's Saturday, December 22, and the story is still unfolding. But I will share with you what is on my mind. If you go to the New York Times now and search Sandy Hook massacre discrepancies, you will find zero results. This is where our media, in terms of fulfilling its responsibilities to a free society, is almost in free fall. 

Our media is fatally incompetent or corrupt, just like our education establishment. The schools don't teach the facts. The newspaper don't report the facts. But, boy, do they know how to waste time on propaganda, indoctrination, and social engineering.

 As for Sandy Hook, the major discrepancy is that the police took two people into custody just minutes after the shooting stopped. There is a lot of evidence on scans of police radio, and video from a news helicopter. The men ran along the side of the school to the rear, and then tried to run up a wooded hill. One of the men seems to been subdued by a police dog. Have you heard anything in your paper about other possible shooters being arrested?

 Perhaps the single most bizarre feature of the massacre is that all of the victims were shot three or more times. Why? I don't see any news stories analyzing this question. But there is really only one answer. Normally, in a murderous shooting rampage, you have a great percentage of wounded. Clearly, in this case the shooters did not want there to be any wounded. No survivors means no witnesses. But again, why? Shooters can wear ski mask and fake beards or other disguises. What is it that witnesses, even one of them, might see that would be so crucial? I think the answer is simple. The witness would see that there was more than one shooter.

The media wants to believe that some sort of mental/drug combination led to this extreme behavior. But that's precisely the kind of person who would not think for a second about things like methodically shooting everyone over and over to make sure that no one is left alive.

 So here's what we need to see to accept the official version. We need a psychiatrist to say, yes if this kind of young man, in a certain state that day, took this particular drug, he could be transformed into exactly the systematic, careful murderer who is nonetheless intending to commit suicide in the end.

Motives Matter, e.g., those of our Education Establishment

Townhall.com, and many other sites, have discussed a recent Pravda story arguing that Putin is the real capitalist, while Obama is the wrong-headed Communist, intent on using every bad idea the Russian people have had to suffer through.

Just in passing, Pravda casually alleges that US public schools have been taken over by Communists. That's what I've been explaining for years. I had to leave a comment:

"To save our schools, the first step is to realize they didn't go to hell by accident. John Dewey, his so-called Progressives, and all the people following them, have been Socialists, Communists, Marxists, etc. They degrade the schools as a way of making kids dumber and more pliable. The same ruthless twits, as I think of them, are now campaigning under the banners of Social Justice and Fairness. For these far-left people, bad education is a good thing. 

(These people, the ones at the top of the Education Establishment, are probably best understood as the Pigs that Orwell described in Animal Farm.)"

Until we deal with motives, there's no way to make sense of the mediocrity found in so many public schools. It's deliberate mediocrity. That is what is so tough to accept. Doctors who make people sick?? So-called education experts who seem always to lower scores?? Same weirdly counter-intuitive deal. For further analysis along this line, see "Education: What Lurks Below The Surface?"
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Education Establishment continues assault on USA

A few years ago, the big question for me was whether we should say that the public schools are bad because of incompetence or subversion.

 Incompetence is a pleasant cop-out. You have clumsy people who can’t do a job right. You have the gang that can’t shoot straight. You have F Troop, an old TV program. They’re clumsy and sort of ridiculous. But you don’t have to deal with that whole realm of intentional malfeasance, of evil.

 More and more, when I looked at the patterns over decades -- the same dumb methods and bad results--you couldn’t conclude it was incompetence. Even the most incompetent persons, when they see themselves doing badly over and over and over again, will seek help and find better answers. But our Education Establishment never does. They keep all their bad ideas in play decade after decade. It’s quite a shocking thing. 

When Rudolf Flesch wrote his famous book in 1955, you might have thought that the schools would banish sight-words forever. Wrong. Public schools today are just as keen on sight-words in the first grade as they were 50 years ago. The only thing that changes is the jargon and supporting arguments, that is, the razzmatazz they feed to parents and teachers.

I have no trouble now using the words subversion and conspiracy. They seem correct. Now, I’m more focused on motive or mental state. Are these people sociopathic, pathological liars, sadists, or what? There is something so seriously wrong with a group that can consistently harm children -- that is, dumb them down in a variety of ways. How would YOU describe that group?
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For best antitdote to this assault, see BILL OF RIGHTS FOR STUDENTS 2012

Tell Kids The Truth About Education

Instead of nagging kids to do their homework, etc. how about this strategy: tell them the facts of life, educationally speaking. A good education is just like a good physique --- you have to work at it. 

A lot of public schools are just lazy and mediocre to the bone. Kids have to understand that they're not being pushed, even if they think they're being pushed. Ergo, they have to start pushing themselves. Here are TWO assists:

"A SPEECH TO TEENAGERS ABOUT THEIR EDUCATION." This piece is only about 700 words, very direct, the kind of thing that tough-minded ministers, principals, and community leaders might say to an audience of unruly15-year-olds. Do you own version; or just read the speech; or let them read it. This will save you a lot of trouble and your kids will get the message.

"IS YOUR SCHOOL REALLY EDUCATING YOU?" This is a longer article, for older students who may be ready for the news that they really haven't gotten a very good education, and now it's time to take stock and do something about it. 

The broader question here is, how do you motivate kids when they may be in a situation where everyone is lying to them? Self-esteem dictates that children should get constant praise. Grade inflation means everybody gets an A or B. Guessing is encouraged; while finding the one correct answer is disdained. Constructivism mixed in with fuzzy thinking creates a world where solid facts and precise answers rarely intrude. The broader answer is: tell them the truth to the best of your ability.


The message preached here is that the Education Establishment doesn't care about "education" as most parents define the term. The Establishment is lost in progressive visions for a collectivist future. If you can't change these ideologues, try at least to maneuver around them.
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Healthcare and public schools are different worlds

The Virginian-Pilot just ran (July 15) a column taken from Bloomberg News, that basically argues that the public didn’t initially support public education but now they do and everybody loves it, THEREFORE it’s only a matter of time before the public wants free healthcare and everybody will love it. So shut up and give Obama whatever he demands.

The column wants to suggest a parallel; but there may be more differences than similarities.

First, doctors and nurses must try to make you healthier, thanks to the Hippocratic Oath, morality, and  thousands of lawsuits. This means that free healthcare will cost all the money we have; and we may still end up with rationing. Chasing an impossible, unaffordable perfection will be built into the system. Still, it's comforting to know that doctors, etc. are really trying. 

Meanwhile, the public schools have no such constraints. They can keep children illiterate and unable to do arithmetic. Our public schools are still following John Dewey’s prescription that education should really be indoctrination (social engineering). That’s why we have the Reading Wars, the Math Wars, and the Education Wars generally -- because the Education Establishment is focused on ideological goals, and is not primarily concerned with educational goals. I tend to think that our public schools are a mess; and  we shouldn’t try to make policy arguments based on what is  going on there.

Here's another huge difference. Our public schools, as they are now, are vastly expensive but we get bad results. If the public schools would kick John Dewey aside, and follow the most sensible theories and methods, we would find an extraordinary reversal. Education will be much improved. Costs would be much reduced.

 What the Bloomberg column is saying is that we are drifting toward a cliff and don't fight it. I’m saying each cliff is different and maybe sometimes it’s okay to fall off. Sometimes you should run back the other way. But the point is to try to be critically discriminating. The column seems to think that more health care equals more education. And the brain should stop working right there.

 As you look at health care and schools, you're mainly struck by the different institutional inertia within each. Many of the big problems in health care are because we’re trying to screen, test, and insure for for every possible situation; and we're treating people who don’t want to be alive and perhaps should be allowed to die. The point is, that’s the very noble tradition in healthcare. You do everything possible to keep people alive.

 In the education world, there is a different tradition. John Dewey and his progressives introduced the notion that you could change everything, deform everything, and lie about everything, because we had to build a brave new socialist country.

QED: different worlds. Parallels are hard to come by.

[Title in Pilot: "Our governments, raising the bar.]" 

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Is Education Reform Even Possible???

Anyone taking even a casual glance at American public schools during the last 75 years would have to scream: “NO!”

My thesis, often written about, is that John Dewey and his progressives got control by the 1930s, and from then on they dumbed-down education to whatever degree they could in each particular school district. 

The point to focus on is that virtually every public school is LESS THAN IT COULD BE. The Education Establishment uses the most extraordinary array of bogus theories and methods to undermine the schools. Whole Word guarantees illiteracy. Reform Math guarantees that many children can’t do arithmetic. Constructivism guarantees the kids don’t have much knowledge. Etc. For quick recap of this tragedy, see “56: Top 10 Worst Ideas in Education.”

The past few weeks I’ve been writing a lot of articles about John Saxon. He was a brilliant man. His books were clearly superior. And yet the Education Establishment was able to marginalize him, and is now slowly trying to grind him into irrelevance. That they wish to do so is the great sin. “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 declared that the public schools, if designed by another country, would be regarded as “an act of war.” Think what they were saying. 

The Education Establishment is, in effect, that other country. It seems to operate as a cult, with its own rules, its own initiation ceremonies, its own way of making sure that all the people who rise to the top are true believers. So it’s easy to be pessimistic and cynical about any chances for improvement.

However, there are some positive signs. I listed eight in a piece called “Good News About K-12 Education.” The title is lightly ironic. The people in charge of K-12 education would see this news as bad. However, Americans in general should be glad for anything that reduces the power of the Education Establishment, that undermines the monopoly of the public schools system, and that allows people to try other ways to educate kids.

 I write all over the Internet, and I know from comments that many people are bitter and have given up hope. Their attitude is that public schools should just be burned to the ground. And then we start over. That doesn't seem to me even remotely realistic. I’ve always held to the idea that if we are clever, and we understand the opposition, we can work our way toward better ideas. If you agree with that approach, please read this article and pass it on to others who might appreciate a short article about hope.

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Homeschooling...the Bigger Picture

Homeschooling is alive and well in the USA. This is very important, not just for homeschoolers, but for everyone.

We need diversity: public schools, private schools, charter schools, homeschooling, etc. We need competition, which is why vouchers are so important.

The bigger point is that the Education Establishment has, for the most part, a monopoly. They abuse this monopoly. They refuse to correct their bad behavior and their flawed methods. So the best defense is to encourage alternatives and options. Let the public see that education can be handled in many ways. Help the public to understand that many of the favorite methods used in the public schools are, in fact, inferior.

 The bottom line on American education is that we wouldn't need these alternatives, just as there wouldn't be a billion-dollar tutoring business in this country, if the public schools did a good job. They don't. I'm sure they could do a better job at less cost. They simply do not seem to be interested in doing a better job. They seem to prefer mediocrity. It fits in with their ideological preference for leveling and collectivism.

 Are you interested in raising standards? One good strategy is to defend and support all other forms of public education. This strategy is especially crucial now that the Education Establishment is trying to grab more power over schools and curricula, under the banner of Common Core Curriculum.

 The linked article contains specifics about Hampton Roads in Virginia. But it's a good big-picture article about the situation nationally.

http://www.examiner.com/article/homeschooling-hampton-roads-the-big-picture

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Media and Schools Should Provide FACTS

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to comment on local things, educational and political. For example, the Virginian-Pilot has a bad habit of pushing its favorite issues 10 or 25 times. Gays in the military was worth at least 50 times. Same for those lacrosse-playing racists at Duke!

But something they don’t want you to know, silence!!! They are not even subtle about it. I mean, if you want to downplay something and still pretend to be balanced, you can drop the item into the last paragraph. But not mentioning it at all?

A practical result is I can go to the gym or an art show, and talk to people about things I’m following on the Internet, and they look at me blankly. No idea. And some of these are big stories.

For example, two days ago the Pilot reported that the controversial Arizona sheriff was being sued by the equally controversial Attorney General. That would be Eric Holder, who many people think has politicized and corrupted the DOJ. Holder apparently lied about his prior knowledge of Fast and Furious. So the Pilot  blandly reported all of Arpaio’s alleged excesses. But did not bother to mention that this Department of Justice is under its own cloud.

But the much greater omission was forgetting to mention that Sheriff Arpaio is bringing incredible heat down on President Obama for presenting what is very likely a forged birth certificate. This of course gives a huge motive for Obama to try to pressure Arpaio into shutting up. (We might call all this Gunfight at the O-No Corral.)

 I just put a piece on the Examiner where I tie the Pilot’s bad journalism in with the public schools’ tendency not to teach facts. In a way, all one big educational issue. Do you believe in giving people the truth or don’t you? Well, do you?

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Comedy Gold

American Thinker has article called "Musings of a College Instructor." Dumb things said by ill-educated students, basically. A lot of people left hostile comments directed at the incompetent clique in control of our schools. Not so fast, I objected. Incompetent?? I think not! I left this comment, which is so good I couldn't let it languish in forum obscurity:

"Folks, many of you are being very stingy. I want to remind you of your manners.

 We Americans are lucky to have an Education Establishment that is truly gifted at the task of dumbing-down an entire population. Be more appreciative. This work requires constant dedication and an almost inhuman devotion to ever lower standards. Admire the sacrifice.

Sure, they're Commies more or less. They hate us and want to grind this civilization into the dirt. Point is, they're good at what they do. They're geniuses. Personally, I don't admire illiteracy, ignorance, cultural nihilism, and intellectual decline. These people do!! They're working to build a beautiful dream. Surely we can praise the sincere effort they so generously make on our behalf. 

Bruce Deitrick Price

Improve-Education.org" 

A Letter to the Virginian-Pilot

Say Goodbye To Common Core Curriculum

Let's all be grateful for George Will. In his recent column (“Those pesky things called laws," March 11), Will explained the dangers and illegality of Common Core Curriculum.

For three years, the Virginian-Pilot, local foundations, leading citizens, and retired military dignitaries have crusaded for this federal intrusion, and lambasted Governor McDonnell for trying to keep Virginia safe from it.

I do not understand why so many smart people cannot see a power grab when it is unfolding in front of their eyes. If Obama didn’t bribe the states with million-dollar grants, Common Core Curriculum was DOA. Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know? 

The federal government has no constitutional business getting involved in education. George Will quotes several laws that prohibit the Department of Education from meddling in curriculum. Why doesn’t that end the discussion?

I suspect Obama wants to do to education what he‘s doing to the economy and health care. Now is a good time for all states to roll back their involvement, if any, with Common Core Curriculum. 

ADDENDUM: IT HAS BEEN SURREAL FOR ME TO WATCH THIS NEWSPAPER, AND MANY BIG SHOTS IN MY AREA, AGITATE FOR SOMETHING WHICH THEY WILL SURELY LATER BE ASHAMED THEY SUPPORTED. IT'S FEDERAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION BY PEOPLE LIKE OBAMA AND HIS CZARS. NO ALARM BELLS THERE! WHAT COULD GO WRONG? ...I'VE JUST POSTED "PROTOCOLS FOR IMPROVING EDUCATION," WHICH TELLS HOW TO OUTWIT THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT.

Blame those in charge

“The value of teachers,” a column by Nicholas Kristof (Jan. 20), provides an example of an unsatisfying pattern. An expert announces that “our faltering education system may be the most important long-term threat to America’s economy and national well-being,” and then presumes to tell us precisely why we are in this mess. Kristof’s answer is bad teachers.

Other experts focus on other explanations. Parents. Students. Poverty. The culture. The internet. Drugs. Sex. Rock ‘n roll. The usual suspects. 

Here is the obvious truth that nobody bothers to speak. If public education were a publicly traded corporation, all of top management would be immediately fired. New leadership would be brought in. This process would be repeated until our schools showed clear improvement.

The more I studied public schools, the more I felt that the system is weighed down by bad theories and failed methods. I blame the Education Establishment (that is, the people at the top) for these misguided decisions.

Bruce Deitrick Price

Improve-Education.org

Virginia Beach

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>letter to VIRGINIAN-PILOT

Why Do We Need A Bill Of Rights For Students??

Easy! Because in the process of dumbing down the schools, our Education Establishment has cheated children out of their most basic rights: the right to read, to do math, to know history, to learn geography, to study science, to engage in real critical thinking, and in general to become an educated person.

All the things we call basics and fundamental knowledge....our Education Establishment has waged a relentless war of attrition against them. It's time to stop the war, and to save all the essential things that children have a right to  expect when they attend public schools.

If you're involved in school reform, please take a look at this handy 10-point  agenda for improving public schools:  A BILL OF RIGHTS FOR STUDENTS 2012. (On Improve-Education.org. Form can be printed.) 

www.improve-education.org/id90.html
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Modern Reading Theory Is The Scandal Of Our Age

Here is the really astonishing fact about the Reading Wars that everyone should know. Almost without exception the phonics proponents insist they teach 99+ percent of children to read in the first grade.

 Some of these experts, with 25+ years in the trenches, actually claim they have no failures. Every--or close to every--kid learns to read by Christmas of the first grade, or for sure by the end of the year.

Please stop and savor this. Apparently humans are wired to read. Given half a chance, they learn it easily enough. Teach them the alphabet, get across the idea that the letters represent sounds, as in B is for Ball. Then it's not a big deal. Some kids pick it up almost automatically. The slower kids need direct instruction for a few months.

The reason we think that learning to read is so difficult is that our Education Establishment, for almost 80 years, has used a method that does not work. In order to protect themselves, these phonies have to pretend that reading is a really exotic skill, like singing opera, and only the rare few can really break through.

If you actually look at this completely illegitimate pedagogy, the puny goal that the Whole Word experts were aiming for was a very limited literacy all through elementary school. This low agenda pretty much destroyed all of the education that had traditionally taken place in the early grades... It seems that about half the children reach a stunted level called functional illiteracy and never move past that point throughout their lives!

 To make people confront just how stupid and evil some of these theories are, I just posted an article titled "Fake Reading Theory Is the Slave Trade of Our Era."  Please send it to your local school board.

As a simple practical matter, as long as the Education Establishment can get away with using sight-words to teach reading, our entire system of public education will remain at a retarded level.
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Teachers Are Not The Problem. The Top Officials Are

AN EDUCATION PROFESSOR WROTE YET ANOTHER COLUMN ALLEGING THAT EVERYONE IS PICKING ON TEACHERS, AND PLEASE SAY A FEW KIND WORDS TO YOUR LOCAL TEACHERS.  BAH HUMBUG. (Here's the comment I left:)

Columns like this are somewhat disingenuous and not very helpful. The premise is that the whole world is lining up to criticize teachers. This is not true.

I write about education every day, often negatively, and rarely even mention teachers. I never blame our problems on them. In my view, teachers, along with students and parents, are the victims of an often dysfunctional system.

All of my criticism is directed at the so-called experts at the top, what I call the Education Establishment. These people, mostly professors and ideologues, have devised all the bogus methods used in the schools. These people are responsible for the 50,000,000 functional illiterates this country has, and the continuing low scores in math and basic knowledge. 

If we are going to improve education, we need clarity. Let's stop using teachers as a propaganda ploy that lets the Education Establishment escape scrutiny. 

Let's ask: Who actually makes policy? Who controls the theories and methods used in k-12 education? Who manipulates the system from far-off control centers such as the Harvard Graduate School of Education, not to mention the DOE and NEA?

My own recommendation, often stated, is that we replace the top people. We need education officials (preferably local) who care more about knowledge and the mind than about social engineering. That would be wonderful to see.

Bruce Deitrick Price

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 HERE'S WHY THIS ARTICLE IS SO DANGEROUS. A LOT OF PEOPLE THINK THAT IF WE JUST HAD BETTER TEACHERS, EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE. NOT SO. THE BEST TEACHERS IN THE WORLD CAN'T DO A GOOD JOB IF WEIGHED DOWN BY BOGUS METHODS. WHOLE WORD WILL ALWAYS PRODUCE LOTS OF ILLITERACY. WE NEED TO GET RID OF THE BOGUS METHODS, AND THE PRETENDERS WHO CREATED THEM.  

(Longwood College, Department of Education, Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk,

Letter sent to Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)
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Be suspicious of Common Core Standards

I want to say how proud I am that Virginia has not jumped on the Common Core bandwagon. Kudos to Governor Bob McDonnell and Dr. Patricia Wright, Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Suspicion is the only rational reaction. Does this country’s Education Establishment have a history of improving education? Quite the opposite. That’s why critics invented the term “dumbing down.” If you want more of that, you know where to find it.

As for 40+ states signing on, remember that Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan went around the country with suitcases of cash (nominally grants but better described as bribes) to seduce states into signing on. Most would not have done so otherwise.

Especially scary is the notion that schools will now concentrate on literacy and numeracy, two subjects that our Education Establishment has mangled for many decades.

I suggest letting the other states test this thing. Wait a few years. Then we’ll at least have hard data.

ADDENDUM: it's truly amazing the way our local media pushes for this stuff.

Maybe Somebody Wants Dumb Schools Dumb

Big article in Las Vegas Sun explains what a mess some schools are. But good news: there's a new superintendent who is going to fix it all.

But he says it will take time, a long time. There are tests to gauge results at end of year...

Here's the comment I left on paper's site::::

Folks, you've got to see the comedy. The school system flails around, carefully pretending to peer at every possible factor that could have caused decades of dumbing down. Except the main one. It's a kind of Inspector Clouseau slapstick.

Our Education Establishment has a deathly fear of facts, knowledge, basics, and mastery. Focus on those. The schools will turn around so fast, people will have whiplash.

As to what to get rid of, that would be all the usual suspects. (Google "56: Top 10 Worst Ideas In Education.")

Bruce Deitrick Price

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Sorry to be so cynical. But more and more, it all seems like a giant charade to me. Go to those schools, you will probably find every bad idea in education, all piled on top of each other. Cooperative Learning; Constructivism; Reform Math; Sight-Words; Learning Styles; No Memorization of Basic Knowledge; and above all, no real desire to create an educated person. 

Get rid of the phony gimmicks. Watch education soar.

That's the same advice contained in A REPORT TO BUSINESS LEADERS ABOUT EDUCATION (prepared by Improve-Education.org), just published at this link: http://fastpitchnetworking.com/pressrelease.cfm?PRID=68321 

Bottom line: take education away from the Education Establishment or learn to love dumb. 

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Missouri & the Gang: Still Making Them Illiterate After All These Years

A reading coach in Missouri told me a revealing story.

A nine-year-old boy, unable to read; showed up for remedial help. Pointing at “bead,” the tutor explained, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” The puzzled third-grader looked up and asked: “What’s a vowel?”

Which prompts the question: “Has the state of Missouri lost its mind?”

Specifically, the school board members, administrators, superintendents, principals, politicians, civic leaders, and all the other people in charge of public education, all the people who let a smart boy reach the third-grade without being able to read. What process of deliberate non-education allows this?

“What’s a vowel??” Isn’t that like asking what’s a number, what’s a street, what’s an hour?

I blame all these officials, these Hard Hearted Hannahs, who seem not to care that reading is the one essential skill. What are these officials afraid of, that American children might actually become literate? That they might become engineers or skilled workers, people who can build a TV or something else to help us compete against the Chinese. On the other hand, such kids might learn to think for themselves. Perhaps some officials don’t want to take that chance....


For rest of article, see: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2764099/posts

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Complicit Media Spread Incompetent Education's Big Cop-Out

Des Moines Register ran editorial with this head: "What occurs at home a key in education."

 Pull quote: "It is at home where a child’s educational future is largely determined."
I'm seeing this idea everywhere, like kudzu. Sure, there's some truth, but it's finally a dishonest CYA. I left this comment on the Register site:   


"The spin in this editorial is the #1 Favorite Excuse For Schools Doing A Bad Job. 

Please observe the key ingredient: nothing bad is EVER the fault of the schools or the so-called experts running those schools. All bad outcomes are the fault of the kids, drugs, TV, computers, the internet, 15 other cop-outs, and especially PARENTS. They are just the worst. Uggg, parents!

Forget about it. A century ago many kids arrived in school much less literate and acculturated. The parents just got here. Or the parents were illiterate farmers and workers. It is precisely the task of the public schools to take the kids that show up and transform them into educated citizens. No excuses.

Here's a blue-sky idea. What if the schools stopped messing up young minds with Dolch Words and start teaching the kids to read? What if the schools stopped messing up young minds with Reform Math and taught them to do arithmetic? What if the schools stopped messing up young minds with Constructivism and start teaching facts and knowledge? 

Bruce Deitrick Price
Improve-Education.org
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Major Media Tricked By Education Spoof

July 25th--President Obama met with executives from the nation’s largest corporations and demanded large cash payments for education.

Corporate bosses eagerly agreed to fork over what amounts to additional taxes for a school system that does little to educate future employees.

President Obama agreed to do nothing in return to improve the state of the public schools. He orated: “We’ll tell you what you need. Your job is to feel guilty and sign checks.”

Corporate executives and government officials held hands and sang verses from Gilbert and Sullivan, with an especially rousing rendition of “We are the very model of a modern major educrat” and other ditties....

This joke item somehow made it into the nation’s news cycle. Numerous editors were apparently asleep at the switch. No one could possibly suppose that American businesses would give millions more to education officials who misspent the previous trillion dollars. 

At the very least, savvy business executives would point out to the President, in no uncertain terms, that millions of children were not being taught to read or to do basic arithmetic. Our titans of industry would tell the President, right to his face, that the schools must rise to a MUCH higher level. Tough-minded CEO’s would wave a stern  finger at the President and say, “Sir, you’ll have to deliver a far better school system if you expect us to take you seriously.” 

The CFO of Bank of America or some such place would surely say: “Any practical person knows that schools should emphasize reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography in the first year or two, and then segue into history, science, literature, and the arts. Anything else, Mr. President, is just whistling in the dark. We don’t want all this silly social engineering. We want basics, facts, knowledge, and mastery. We want intellectual engineering, for a change...”

Wait a minute! This just in. It’s not a spoof? WTF. This actually happened??? Major American corporations agreed to give money to an intellectually corrupt Education Establishment. But this time around they expect to get different results? Isn’t that what Einstein called insanity?

 Where are we living? The Comedy Channel or SyFy?

 Actual Bloomberg news story here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-18/obama-meets-att-time-warner-cable-ceos-on-improving-education.html

(Posted by Bruce Deitrick Price, founder of Improve-Education.org, where the motto is:  NOT ONE CENT FOR SIGHT-WORDS.)

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Man-Made Educational Harming???

Yes, it’s a clever phrase. Unfortunately, it sums up what is going on in too many public schools.


Here is the pattern for more than a half-century: a THIRD of high-school students can't read at the fifth-grade level. That’s what LIFE  magazine reported in 1946! We see more or less the same stat today. Every third kid is illiterate (and thinking about dropping out). That’s because the schools insist on using bad methods. It should be a huge scandal.


Schools that can’t teach kids to read probably can’t do anything right. Because they don’t care. Or they’re ideologically motivated to level differences.


Education Establishment should adopt wisdom of Medical Establishment: FIRST, DO NO HARM.

See full version: "Do You Believe in Man-Made Educational Harming?"

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News: Cooperative Learning & "Faces of Learning"

Big News: new article about Cooperative Learning, on Improve-Education.org, was prompted by casual conversation, thus: "A member of the local school board told me, 'In the 21st century they’ll have to be able to work in groups, so we may as well teach them how to do it.' He was so confident in his pronouncement, and seemed to think there was nothing else to say. His confidence had the opposite effect on me.  I heard nothing but sophistry in that little comment; and I realized, with some regret, I had to write an article explaining why Cooperative Learning is just another tawdry gimmick."...See it here.

More Big News: new book consists of statements by 50 teachers, thinkers and community leaders. (I'm #6.)  "Faces of Learning" is an excellent gift for teachers. Sam Chaltain, the editor, is crusading from the center. I'm more the contrarian, so I'm pleased he included me. (Facesoflearning,net)

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Reading Instruction for Young Children (FREE)

The biggest battleground in education... it's not where you think. 

It's around the ages of 3,4,5. Right in there, a child needs to learn the alphabet, and the most primitive sort of phonics. Letters represent sounds; and all the words that start with the letter B start with the same buh- sound.

Similarly, all the words that start with any given letter start with the sound represented by that letter.

So, maybe you think that's all very obvious. Not at all. For the last 75 years, the Education Establishment in this country has tried to hide the alphabet and the sounds. Children were trained to see the design or configurational aspects of letters, not the sounds that the letters represented.

This was a  grand triumph of stupid over smart. The name of this gimmick was Whole Word. The most important thing that parents want to achieve is to keep this nonsense away from their children. If you don't take preventive steps, then the children will go off to pre-K, K, and first grade, and some schools will make them memorize sight-words. At that point you may lose them, or reading may lose them.

 For a very simple guide to early reading and literacy, see this new article on hubpages: THEY NEED TO READ. For ages 1-4.

Here's the main conclusion I've been pushing: most children--if you just kept them busy with nursery rhymes, singing, printing letters, in short, all kinds of verbal and literary activities--would probably start reading without a whole lot of specific training. The more verbal kids are going to read just the way the more musical kids can pick up playing an instrument. They make it look easy.

 Unexpectedly, it turns out that it's the less verbal kids that need the most systematic instruction.  They need to learn the phonics rules so they will feel in control. When they feel in control, they can start to slowly improve their skills. But if you take the kid without a lot of verbal skills and you tell him to memorize 50, 100, then 200 sight-words, he is totally lost. It's a bare beginning for reading purposes, but he can't even master that, not with instant recall. Everywhere he looks, he sees alien unknown words. A few years later they will say he has ADHD, he's dyslexic, he has mental problems...

Yes, he has a huge mental problem. His school made him illiterate. The Education Establishment made him illiterate.

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