Education Site Reveals "The War Against Reading"

[Francis Hult]

The Open Press

 

Education Site Reveals "The War Against Reading"

 

Everyone hears the scary stats: 65% of the kids in fourth grade haven't learned to read; the country has 50 million functional illiterates, i.e., people who can't read a newspaper or cereal box; U.S. students don't compete well against students from other countries. Is all this accidental? Or somebody's idea of tough-minded social policy?

"What a story," says education writer Bruce Deitrick Price. "You don't want to believe the worst, but all the evidence points in one direction. Eighty years ago, the people at the top, including elite educators, were terrified of massive immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. Too much upheaval. Some leaders apparently decided that slowing things down would be a good plan. What better way than to dumb down the schools? Undermining reading was very likely a part of that strategy. Perhaps they believed they were doing the best thing for the long term. In which case they were tragically short-sighted. We don't need dumb and dumber. More than ever, we need smart and smarter."

 

Full story:

http://www.theopenpress.com/index.php?a=press&id=27169

_______________________________________________
Edling mailing list
Edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu
https://lists.sis.utsa.edu/mailman/listinfo/edling
List Manager: Francis M. Hult