ILLITERATE TAUGHT HIGH SCHOOL FOR 17 YEARS!!!!

[Tom Zurinskas]

This is the story, cited/sited below, of John Corcoran, a student in California who never learned to read yet conned his way through high school, dating the valedictorian, and college and became a teacher.

California was then known as a modernistic "whole language" state, that prohibited phonics or phonetics.  In the whole language method, teaching that the letters stood for sounds is prohibited.  Rather, kids are to learn by reading "rich text" and reading to oneself silently.  John used to pray that he would learn how to read the next day in school, but it never came to him.  Whole language predicts that reading will come to a child just as speaking did.  The National Reading Panel says that that approach is wrong.

Now we know that "Phonemic awareness" is a key indicator of successful readers.  Kids learn that letters stand for sounds.  England has revamped its reading instruction based on "synthetic" phonics.  California made a big mistake adopting "whole language," and John Corcoran, otherwise a bright child, paid the price.

This is the area I am interested in - simple English-based phonetics.  I hope some of the folks in this forum might be interested too.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.




> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: ILLITERATE TAUGHT HIGH SCHOOL FOR 17 YEARS!!!!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> An inspiration to all of us (for diverse reasons):
>
> http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html
>
> JL

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