Eagle Forum on Phonics

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

Greetings saints!

Below is a letter by Phyllis Schlafly that she wrote for a newsletter
of August 18, 1999.  My wife sent it to me.  So, I'm sending it to you.
Many of you know that the Nally's are homeschoolers.... (I'm not a fan
of public school at all ... with the violence and crud coming down the
pike at them, it's just not a good situation.  Even when I was in public
school back in Champaign [graduated with honors in 1976] my high school
was pretty decent.  Now, every 40 - 50 feet in the hallways there's a
security guard/monitor/teacher with a two way radio that will enable them
to call the office to call for security backup or police in a moments
notice.  When I was there, our class was somewhere between 300-400 
students large and there were only sophomores, juniors, and seniors
attending in the building.  Nowadays, there's everyone between freshman
and senior attending.  Whether or not there's 300-400 in each class 
nowadays I cannot say.  Anyway, public school is entirely different 
atmosphere *now* compared to even twenty years ago.  Completely different.
Also, by what Phyllis Schlafly describes below, the teachers are receiving
textbooks (in teacher school) that is describing how evil the right-wing
is and how everything they do is because they have a religious agenda
to accomplish, etc, etc, etc.  I guess I do have an agenda, I want my
kids to be able to read the big words, do the hard math, and be good
independent thinkers for themselves.  Rather than them becoming a part 
of a system that will label them, put them in a class, and then teach the
class in a way where nobody really attains excellence but what they call
*mastery* [which is the whole idea of Outcome Based Education] so that
they have a classful of everybody doing the same thing at the same level.
Oh well, I could go on and on.... here's Mrs Schlafly's report ....
read about how/what the *new* teachers are taught....

Bro Tyler

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

             Beware Of The Phonics Conspiracy 

August 18, 1999 by:  Phyllis Schlafly

When Hillary Rodham Clinton charged that Bill Clinton's
impeachment was caused by a "vast right-wing conspiracy," she
displayed the typical paranoia of liberals. It's not just Watergate and
Iran-Contra that nurture their faith in plots; liberals think conspiracies
against them are lurking behind every bend in the road. 

This attitude is not just acquired by reading fundraisers from People
for the American Way (who live in perpetual fear of parental
"censorship" over their children's books and videos). The existence of
vast right-wing conspiracies is actually being taught in the teachers
colleges. 

A "reentry woman" (that's the jargon to describe a woman who has
reentered college after having been in the real world for some years)
just sent me a textbook currently used in a state university in New
York to teach aspiring teachers how to teach Whole Language to
elementary school students. Whole Language means teaching
children to guess at words from the pictures or the context, to skip
over words the child doesn't know, and to substitute words that seem
to fit. 

The textbook includes a chapter warning teachers against a "Far
Right" conspiracy of "laypersons" to teach phonics, i.e., sounding
out the syllables of the English language. The textbook identifies
yours truly as a co-conspirator, along with the Heritage Foundation,
the highly-advertised Hooked on Phonics, Norma and Mel Gabler, Dr.
Robert Simonds, scholar Sam Blumenfeld, Robert W. Sweet of the
National Right to Read Foundation, Pat Robertson, the Reverend
Jerry Falwell, and U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Jesse Helms. 

If this were merely the wild-eyed rantings of some leftwing activist, it
wouldn't be worth a comment. But all this is from an actual
teachers-college textbook, "Reading Process and Practice, From
Socio-Psycholinguistics to Whole Language" by Constance Weaver
(1994). 

The textbook warns that the "Far Right" urges that children be taught
"a lot of phonics" and even phonics "first, before giving children the
opportunity to read real literature -- or even sentences!" Italics,
capitalization and exclamation points emphasize these ominous
accusations. 

The textbook author is shocked, shocked that children might be
taught to sound out words before they are given whole sentences.
The truth is that thrusting complete sentences or books on children
before they are taught to sound out words is equivalent to putting
children on a football or a tennis team before they are taught how to
play the game. 

Next, the textbook probes into the motive of the Far Right in
advocating phonics, dismissing the thought that it could possibly be
anything so sincere as wanting all children to be good readers. We
now see the paranoia of the conspiracy-minded leftwingers in full
flower. 

According to this textbook used to teach teachers, the "hidden
agenda" of phonics-advocating Far Righters is "to promote a religious
agenda." They supposedly advocate phonics so that children will get
all the words "right" and thereby be able to read all the words in the
Bible instead of guessing at some of them. 

According to this textbook, teaching intensive phonics is a Far Right
plot to keep children "from reading or thinking for themselves." It
appears not to have occurred to the textbook author that, if children
are such good readers that they can read all those big words in the
Bible, they will have the ability to read the classics of Western
civilization, too. 

Undeterred by common sense, the textbook plows ahead with its
fantasy about a Far Right plot. The book alleges that another, even
more devious, motive of Far Right phonics advocates is to promote
"docility and obedience on the part of the lower classes," and thereby
"maintain the socioeconomic status quo" and preserve
"socioeconomic stratification." 

The textbook proudly includes an illustration of the work of a first
grader taught by the Whole Language method: "1. RAET MY NAM.
2. RAET THE DAET." The other words are even more unintelligible. 

The fact is that nothing, nothing at all, has done more to prevent the
"lower classes" from rising above their "socioeconomic stratification"
than the failure to teach them how to read. Illiteracy is the systemic
disease of the unemployed, the welfare class, and the prison
population, all those pathetic thousands of Americans who, despite
having attended public schools, are unable to "write my name" or
"write the date." 

A recent three-line headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
screamed: "A third of our secondary school students are behind in
their reading. What should the region's citizens do?" 

My answer is, scrap the failed method called Whole Language, and
instead teach children how to read by the proven phonics method so
they will be able to realize the American dream. But the schools
aren't going to do that because their teachers are brainwashed into
believing that phonics is a Far Right religious and political
conspiracy. How sad. 
                                                   
                               Phyllis Schlafly column 8-18-99 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
This column may also be found at:
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/1999/aug99/99-08-18.html
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Eagle Forum              http://www.eagleforum.org
PO Box 618               eagle@eagleforum.org
Alton, IL  62002         Phone: 618-462-5415  
           Fax: 618-462-8909
---------------------------------------------------------------
To subscribe to Eagle E-mail 
please e-mail  eagle@eagleforum.org 
with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.
To unsubscribe, please send a message with
UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.
-----------------------------------------------------








v



--
Tyler Nally  ... just call me "GeekBert"
[] tnally@iquest.net [] tnally@netzero.net     [] tnally@mcp.com []
                     [] tgnally@prairienet.org []