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Ignorance Is Not Forever

December 2, 2004 by 2 Comments

There are some things that I just take too personally. For instance, I recently heard about a woman whose now-adult son had been diagnosed as “Learning Disabled” all through his public school education. Despite her protests, despite her insistence on closer examination of the problem, he was dumped into LD classes and left there.

The root of the problem was that, as a boy, he had never learned to read. No teacher had ever taken the time to investigate why he had difficulty in class. Teachers repeatedly tested him year after year, always with the same result: he was at grade level and should be moved on to the next grade. When Mom’s persistence succeeded in inquiring as to how he was being tested (since the results strongly contradicted his at-home behavior), the current teacher confessed that her tests had been given to him orally. “He has so much trouble… it’s just easier to read it to him… reading it to him keeps him from becoming frustrated… ”

Now the boy is an adult, and the scene is being repeated with his child. The mom/grandmother is concerned that this time will have the same undesirable result. She was inquiring about homeschooling, probably wondering if it could rescue her grandchild, and whether it is too late for her son. As a former student of poor teachers myself and as the parent of a student whose early education was similarly neglected, I know first-hand some of the frustration these people are going through. Therefore, I tend to take these stories personally, flashing back to my own bad experiences. I find myself offended when students are purposely neglected, parents are intentionally ignored or pacified, and we are all expected to believe that this public education system is something sacred that should not be questioned. As Dorothy was instructed by The Great and Powerful Oz, we also are advised to “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
If I were to purchase a car and drive it until it ran out of gas, would anyone think I was justified in calling the junkyard to come and get it because it no longer ran? Hardly! I would be laughed at as the new village idiot. Even a child could tell me I only need to buy more gasoline to make my car work. Yet, here we have a car (student) which has used up its supply of fuel (knowledge) and cannot proceed without more. However, rather than simply adding more fuel (knowledge) to the car (student), the chosen method of propulsion is to push the car manually to the next block (grade level) instead of enabling it to move under its own power.

Is it so difficult to teach a child to read? I did not think it was when I taught my children to read. Millions of children throughout history have been successfully taught to read, whether by “professional educators” or by their very own parents. Yet, we have here the unfortunate account of professionals too baffled by their own system to diagnose (correctly) a child who had not learned to read. This problem is easily remedied through homeschooling — avoid the “professionals” altogether and do it yourself, one on one. It is not too late for the man in the story above — he can still learn to read with an intensive phonics program and the assistance of a caring friend or family member, and he will probably learn this much more quickly as an adult than he would have as a child. Illiterate adults have conquered reading in as little as 3 weeks. His child should also be taught intensive phonics to avoid a repeat of his tragic scenario.

I once tried to discuss phonics-based reading programs with some local professional elementary educators, only to discover that we had words in common, but meant different things by them. They sincerely believed that using a few starting-letter sounds and contextual hints made their program “phonics.” Buzzwords, such as “decoding,” were used to lull curious parents into thinking their children were learning to break down words into syllables and letter patterns. Creative writing exercises were required of students who had not even conquered handwriting, again to persuade the unsuspecting parents that their children had a reasonable grasp of the reading-writing connection.

The evidence that reading has not been learned phonetically will show itself in the inability to spell. A person who understands how to break down a word into syllables will repeat those syllable-patterns when trying to spell a word. Fluent reading ability will also prove itself in composition: elegant sentence structure is easily mimicked. If you are reading good sentences, you will be able to write good sentences. A person who cannot read will not be able to spell consistently. A person who does not consume quality reading material will not be able to write well.

Perhaps I should pity the educational system that is pawning off such methods to future generations of teachers. I see it as a prime example of “the blind leading the blind” — those who do not understand are trying to give understanding to others. The contemporary axiom, “Ignorance can be fixed; stupid is forever,” has been altered: ignorance is no longer seen by them as being fixable. I am here to testify that ignorance is not a life sentence: ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. Once a person has been taught the skill of reading, a world full of knowledge is there for the taking.

Filed Under: Encouragement for Parents, Encouraging Your Student, Phonics, Reading, Roadblocks to Learning, Visual Learning

Help! My Student Finished the Book Too Fast!

October 12, 2004 by Leave a Comment

This question appeared in my email box one day: What would or did you do when your children zoomed through a book with only one problem? He did great except for the part where he had to read a riddle and figure out what the answer was. He didn’t know what “pup” was so he missed it. It was also hard for him to comprehend because he reads slowly. By the time he gets to the next word he already forgot what he read. But when I read to him he can tell me the correct answer. The mom who wrote the email was puzzled by a student who had no difficulty reading his first book. They had worked together on letter sounds and short vowel words and were attempting to have him read an actual book. Young Son read slowly, methodically working word by word, but stumbled over only one word. Mom was not at all sure that it should be so easy.

First, there is no reason to dwell on lessons that have already been learned. Make sure your student learns the part he had trouble with, and then keep going forward. His reading speed will increase with practice — just like riding a bicycle, you start slowly and shakily, but you get better and faster the more you do it.

Second, if your early reader is able to answer questions from what you read to him, then you know his listening skills and comprehension are good. What you will be working on improving is his own reading — do not expect fantastic comprehension immediately from his own reading time. It will come with practice. Remember that your student is just entering a new world of written communication: up to this point, he has only had to interpret pictures and symbols, not words. Try mentally relating it (for your own understanding) to developing a brand new skill yourself, such as learning to read Chinese. An entirely new system of symbolizing words and thoughts would be difficult to comprehend all at once, but practice would enable you to learn little bits, then bigger bits, and then bunches. Your student will master reading in the same way.

Perhaps the child having difficulty with comprehension would benefit from decoding 3-4 words individually, then backing up to read those words together, gradually assembling the separate words into a sentence. In that way, his mind will learn to switch back and forth from decoding mode into reading mode: solving what the word is and then remembering it to read it in context with the other words. Getting the hands involved often helps transfer an idea to the brain, so if your student needs a little more help, you might consider supplementing (at least for a while) with homemade flash cards of the individual words to touch and hold and slide around on the tabletop. Let him decode each word as a task in itself, then line up some words on the table to see how a few words can form a sentence and actually SAY something. Then he can begin to understand longer and longer sentences. This is the “learning to balance the bicycle” stage. Expect it to be a little shaky and ungraceful temporarily. Also expect it to be mentally and physically exhausting to your little one as he struggles his way up these word-mountains, so do not push him beyond the limits of his endurance.

Third, for proceeding to the next book, if your diligent reader is ready, move on with confidence! Just remember that learning is like terrain: uphill climbs, downhill coasting, and an occasional plateau. The boy at the beginning of this story was fresh and ready and ran up an easy hill — no problem, little expenditure of energy. He may continue that way for a while. Then, just when you have gotten used to his jackrabbit pace, he will hit a plateau and need to stay there for a while to absorb all that he has been taking in rapidly. Sometimes progress will seem so slow that you will wonder if the hill actually has a top or if you are possibly sliding backwards!

Children grow physically in the same way — in little spurts — but we do not worry that they are going to shrink the next week. We know they will keep going forward, and eventually they may skip a size here and there. Children will learn in little spurts, but will always continue to move forward. Sometimes it may seem that they have forgotten a lesson or tended to slide backwards, but in actuality they are resting on a plateau and absorbing all that has been learned. Whether you can see it or not, the child’s mind is sorting all the information and contemplating how it all fits together. Give him time to “catch his breath” and he will soon be ready to move on again.

Filed Under: Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's, Reading, Visual Learning

When Children Mispronounce Words

September 27, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Every Mom’s living nightmare: your little boy has finally begun talking; he toddles out to greet the grandparents/friends/neighbors and show them his favorite toy truck; you prompt him (or he volunteers) to show off his newfound speech; he substitutes the “tr” at the beginning of the toy’s name with “fw” and you find yourself embarrassed beyond comprehension. I am using a boy in this illustration simply because girls more often have a baby doll as their favorite toy and “baby” is much easier to pronounce. Girls can have equal difficulty with pronouncing certain sounds.

If you have acquaintances or family members who jump at the chance to turn everything into an off-color joke, you know you want to avoid this scene at any cost. The poor child has no idea why everyone is suddenly laughing and pointing fingers at him, or worse, scolding him for committing such a grievous sin. He is confused because he thought he was doing a good thing — speaking. His parents had just been begging him to talk; now he did and got punished (or humiliated) for it. What a confusing world!

Some children develop difficulty with pronunciation later on when they begin losing baby teeth and gaining adult teeth. Simple physics can explain this one: suddenly the child has some very large teeth in a still small mouth. It is the same principle as putting a family of six into a sedan. They do fit, but it is a tighter squeeze than if they were in a roomy minivan. Imagine those family members rapidly growing from T-ball players to football-team-starters and you will see my point even better.

Children will often outgrow speech difficulties as they gradually “grow into” their teeth, but we can also help them in the process by extending patience and loving instruction. Illustrate the letters and sounds present in the word and make sure the child knows how the word is supposed to sound. Get out the dictionary and look it up together — that way Webster is the authority of record, not just Mom. Lovingly coach the pronunciation practice, do not become the Dictatorial Tyrant of Corrections who inflicts fear of public speaking into anyone within earshot. Instill confidence in the child that he is not destined to a life of sounding like Elmer Fudd: he can and will learn to speak correctly, it will just take practice, and you will be there to help him every step of the way.

When my children had difficulty pronouncing words, I tenderly explained to them how it is important to be able to pronounce words correctly, since that is where most people get their first impressions of us: from our speech. Then I wrote out the word and we discussed all of the sounds made by the letters, including (when necessary) how some letters may make different sounds in other words, but sound this way in this word. Next I had them practice saying the word correctly, assuring them that I was not making fun of the way they pronounced it, nor was I “picking on them,” but trying to help them learn a difficult but necessary task. Usually, the faulty pronunciation was rooted in haste — the child had “heard” the word incorrectly, began pronouncing it incorrectly, and got into a bad habit. I had further reinforced that bad habit by not correcting the problem sooner, and I apologized to my child for my neglect. Now we were taking the time and effort to fix it, and things worked out well. We repeated this process — successfully — many times over, with no hurt or embarrassed feelings.

My son used to pronounce the word weapon as “weapond.” I showed him that there is no “d” on the end, and explained that it should not sound like “second.” It took several gentle reminders for him to begin catching and correcting himself, especially because he was usually enthusiastically telling me about his favorite subject!

Before he began reading, he had a few other mispronunciations. Those are more difficult to correct, just because the non-reader cannot appreciate the illustrated word and is limited to hearing the correction. My son consistently referred to the girl in the backyard: the contraption we used in the summertime to cook hamburgers and hotdogs. With patience, kindness, and a lot of practice, I was able to help him switch those sounds around and put the “r” right after the “g,” giving us a barbecue grill.

Another slightly defective word was not fully correctable until he learned to read the letters: he always said “shore” when he meant “sure.” It caught the attention of many church ladies who uttered a doting AWWWWW whenever he answered “Shore” instead of “Yes,” especially since he tended to draw the word out into nearly two syllables. Once he began to understand that letters have sounds and make up words, then I could convince him that there was a correct way to pronounce each word, and his insistence of “But I say it this way” was not an acceptable alternative.

I did have to point out to my children an adult appearing on a local TV news program who spoke with a slight speech impediment. I did not do it in a way that ridiculed the man, but rather asked my children what their impressions were of him. They understood immediately, and said that someone should have helped him learn to speak correctly when he was a small boy, so that he would not still have that juvenile speech pattern as an adult.

It is important to stress with beginning readers to read the sounds in order. In their anxious desire to read, children tend to rush through the words, guessing at what a word may be. Slow them down, encouraging them to take their time and be sure of what letter sounds are in the word, reading and pronouncing those sounds in the order that they appear in the word — that is reading, not guessing.

Practice with the child on difficult sounds such as “r,” “l,” or “s.” Assure the child that you are helping in his best interest, and do not allow any family members to poke fun at him. I am personally appalled at parents who dwell on the “cuteness” of a child’s mispronunciations and, rather than correct the ignorance, begin using the faulty word themselves. What a disservice to the child — I will not teach you the correct way to say the word, I will just repeat your mistake back to you every day for the rest of your life! Children recognize that they live in an adult world, and they want to be seen as being grown-up; they do not want to see grown-ups acting like children. Therefore, we should help them learn to say and do things the way they will need to say and do them in an adult world, not sentence them to spending any extra time trapped in childhood when they should be maturing. Yes, it may be cute when they are 2 or 3, but it is not doing them any favors to have them still using babyish speech at 12 or 13, or 22, or 33.

Filed Under: Auditory Learning, Parenting, Preschoolers, Reading, Speech, Visual Learning

A Homeschool Success Story: Teaching a 5th Grader to Read

July 7, 2004 by 1 Comment

We had pulled our children out of public school with my daughter starting fifth grade and my son beginning first grade. My daughter had been taught to “read” with this farce: when you come to a word you do not know, think of a word that begins with the same sound as the first letter of the unknown word, and if it fits in the sentence, it is probably right. Wrong. As I evaluated her reading ability, I realized she was guessing at more words than she was reading — and guessing incorrectly. She would use most of the letter-sounds in a word, but pronounce them in random order, a process which could lead the unsuspecting to cry “Dyslexia!” But I knew better. She was a very bright child who had grown slower and more despondent with each year of public schooling. She caught on to activities done at home with lightning speed, but the formal education lessons just did not take.

I had learned to read in first grade through a very thorough phonics program and was teaching my young son phonics as well, so I quickly recognized that my dear daughter had not had the benefit of learning to “sound out” entire words, even though she obviously knew the letter sounds. Her government school had pushed reading activities, using the read-as-many-books-as-possible-this-month rallies. Whenever that came along, my daughter would go back through the little children’s storybooks we owned, rereading them year after year, instead of pursuing new reading material. Reading familiar things was obviously much easier and more comfortable for her than the effort involved in tackling anything new.

Trying desperately not to bruise the psyche of this sensitive 10-year-old, I suggested that perhaps we needed to expand her reading capabilities by teaching her a new method for discovering how to read unknown words. Our supervising teacher that year was a close friend and (coincidentally) special education teacher who recommended her favorite remedial phonics system — a 2-week “crash course” in phonics for older students. (Ironic, isn’t it, that the “special ed” kids eventually get taught phonics, but the “normal” ones never do?) Although I knew my daughter’s capabilities well enough not to suspect learning disabilities, I knew she needed help — and fast, before she got discouraged with homeschooling and a mom who corrected her whenever she read a word incorrectly. It was a complete shock to me at that time that she had gone so many years in public school without anyone noticing that she was not reading at grade level (in 5th grade, she was accurately reading only the words for 2nd grade level). That revelation was the point when whatever faith I had left in free government education went swirling down the drain.

I bought the recommended book (Mary Pecci’s At Last! A Reading Method for Every Child), took my daughter through the 2-week crash course, and then thought “Now what?” Seeing she needed more practice to reinforce her newly learned skills, I grabbed my son’s phonics book for a guide and wrote my own remedial phonics practice sheets for fifth grade “beginning” phonics. I made up word games and puzzles to make the lessons fun and yet challenging. After I felt she had gained enough skill and confidence (and could actually read big new words), I challenged her to go back to one of the books she had “read” several times and read it again, this time sounding out the difficult words. I was confident that she would see the change in how many words she had guessed at before, but I was not prepared for her response: “Mom, you ruined this story! It’s a whole different book now!” However, her emotion was based more in surprise than anger, because she also realized how poor her reading skills had been. She also saw that her newfound ability to break a word into syllables and sound them out meant that no word in the world was too difficult for her now. We pulled long words out of the dictionary and chemical names from shampoo labels and she correctly read them all. Her desire to read Little Golden Books was quickly transferred to long chapter books, and the bookshelves in her bedroom grew heavy with her expanding collection of favorites.

Once reading was no longer a struggle, her schoolwork became a challenge for me as I was pressed to keep up with her, checking her work and reading over her assignments. During Christmas break of her 7th grade year, she calmly asked if I had ordered her 8th grade English book yet. Baffled as to why she would care nine months early, I said that no, of course I had not ordered next year’s book yet — why would she ask such a silly question? Her reply left me speechless: “Because I just finished the 7th grade book and I’m ready to start the next one.” I ordered the book.

She continued at that pace, to graduate from high school ten days before her 17th birthday — sixteen years old, with 7 credit hours at the community college in chemistry and English composition. She has now graduated from a 4-year college with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration — at age 20. Another day I will tell you about my son who just graduated from Homeschool High with 26 hours of college credits.

Filed Under: Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's, Phonics, Reading, Visual Learning

Tests, Book Reports, and Other Un-necessities

April 15, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Tests are valuable only if you do not know what your student has learned. If Johnny spends 45 minutes telling me about something that only took him 20 minutes to read, he is ready to tackle the next thing. He does not need to waste time (his or mine) taking a test or writing a book report. Tests are great for a classroom of 30 kids and a teacher who has no idea who knows what. Unless you have an extremely large homeschool family, you probably have a pretty good idea of what is being learned.

It is my personal opinion that book reports should be banned. Reading books should be encouraged, but I do not want to ruin a budding love of reading by enforcing reports. Reading well-written books teaches by example: sentence structure, grammar (formal/descriptive and informal/conversational), spelling, punctuation, etc. A student who reads often and reads from a variety of sources will pick up a surprising amount by observation. Then, and only then, should they be expected to write.

My students participated in a co-op class in novel-writing (meeting twice a month for a semester). My daughter, a voracious reader, had little difficulty with descriptions, character development, etc. My son, who had read very little on his own at that point, struggled tremendously. He had great difficulty trying to put his thoughts on paper. His scene descriptions were awkward, and he felt every scene should be done with only dialogue. I eventually realized that he was not writing a book, he was writing a screenplay — he was more familiar with movies than with books and therefore wanted to use that format. I changed plans and rearranged my son’s assignments to include more time for reading and a greater variety of reading materials, emphasizing things of special interest to him. Sometimes I allowed him to watch a video, then read the book afterward, reasoning that knowing the plot ahead of time would help to keep his interest as the story slowly developed through the pages of the book. It worked. His reading speed increased dramatically, his comprehension level increased, and his understanding of grammatical rules increased.

After a couple of years of heavy-on-the-reading-time-but-no-writing lessons, I again brought in a serious writing assignment. Wow! What a difference! I actually had to (tactfully) ask him where the idea had come from for the paper, because I suspected he might have plagiarized it from a magazine article. Not the case. He had used a magazine article as his resource material, but it was an article he had read months before at the library and just used the facts from memory. (Several weeks into his first semester of college English composition, the instructor pulled my son aside and remarked, “You know you don’t really belong in this class — you already know how to write very well!”)

Filed Under: Homeschool How-To's, Reading, Testing, Visual Learning, Writing
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