In the fourth show of his new series, Lindsay talks to educator Graham Crawshaw from Windy Ridge Boys Farm about his unique reading camps for troubled boys, and the debate over Phonics and Look-Say.
In the fourth show of his new series, Lindsay talks to educator Graham Crawshaw from Windy Ridge Boys Farm about his unique reading camps for troubled boys, and the debate over Phonics and Look-Say.
6 comments:
Some of the issues that Perigo raised in correct. Most primary school teachers who are teaching math/numeracy are quite incompetent.
I talked to 2 mates of mine who are math teachers (one in St Peters and one in Otahuhu College) and they say, that kids coming in from primary (as in St Peters) or intermediate (as in Otahuhu) & entering secondary schools are lacking the level of numeracy/math knowledge that they at secondary schools expected them to be at.
Since both of them (my mates) are specialist math teachers (degrees in mathematics), they think that the problem, is because almost all primary school teachers who teach math/numeracy to kids are non-specialists themselves. Their degree backgrounds (primary school teachers) from arts courses and lack vision of how to teach kids properly on numeracy concepts. A teacher with a degree background in say, Anthropology is required to teach everything including maths. In their words, she/he (ie, the all round primary school teacher) will fail to step up to the mark in teaching maths to his/her class. The teacher may be good at other things such as teaching reading and all that stuff, but they will struggle to lift kids understanding of numeracy/math.
I seem to be a lone voice in arguing that the reason for the dreadful fad of "look say" and the villifying of "phonics" was the Post Modern assault on "reductionism" if favour of "holistic thinking".
Phonics was reductionist and hence had to go.
Look Say was holistic and hence was blessed.
As Popper said "Holistic thinking is the hand maiden of fascism."
I remember the primary through intermediate education system being one continuous experiment of flip-flop positions on best-methods and the latest head-games. Ultimately, it always seemed that good (proven) methods were tampered with when the teacher themselves were unable to cope.
Rather than address the failing teacher, the default position was always to blame the system. That emotional logic led to throwing the baby out with the bathwater and reinventing the wheel every year with some new fad pushed down from the Dept of education to address what, I’m still not sure. At high-school, where teachers mostly taught in their specialist areas real education seemed to begin.
Why are we too afraid to address incompetence at the pre-highschool level? These are formative and potentially wasted years. My 2 years of intermediate education were devoid of any useful information. It was one big social experiment placing gifted students in the same room as those who needed serious help with identifying letters of the alphabet. Neither end benefited.
I can only imagine it was yet another effort to even out the bell-curve and cover up that there were real issues at the lower end. I wonder how that self-esteem experiment ultimately helped those students once they left school? I’m not sure “the system” cares about that portion of their efforts.
If they were truly practicing systems thinking rather than their 20 second ADHD “holistic” take on one portion of it, they would have seen the teacher as part of the problem and thus not above being part of the solution.
KSKiwi.
Does anyone know a good reference/guide to teaching someone to read by phonics? To be clear, I mean that I want to know how to teach someone else.
@david for young kids you could have a look at http://www.starfall.com/
I remember the primary through intermediate education system being one continuous experiment of flip-flop positions on best-methods and the latest head-games. Ultimately, it always seemed that good (proven) methods were tampered with when the teacher themselves were unable to cope.
Rather than address the failing teacher, the default position was always to blame the system. That emotional logic led to throwing the baby out with the bathwater and reinventing the wheel every year with some new fad pushed down from the Dept of education to address what, I’m still not sure. At high-school, where teachers mostly taught in their specialist areas real education seemed to begin.
Why are we too afraid to address incompetence at the pre-highschool level? These are formative and potentially wasted years. My 2 years of intermediate education were devoid of any useful information. It was one big social experiment placing gifted students in the same room as those who needed serious help with identifying letters of the alphabet. Neither end benefited.
Perhaps it was yet another effort to even out the bell-curve and cover up that there were real issues at the lower end. I wonder how that self-esteem experiment ultimately helped those students once they left school? I’m not sure “the system” cares about that portion of their efforts.
If they were truly practicing systems thinking rather than their 20 second ADHD “holistic” take on one portion of it, they would have seen the teacher as part of the problem and thus not above being part of the solution.
KSKiwi.
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