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Where Do I Begin???

December 22, 2004 by Leave a Comment

[co-written by Jenny and Carolyn]

You would like to begin homeschooling. Your children are already in school. How do you begin? Start with a trip through the Home School Legal Defense Association’s website (http://www.hslda.org) to learn what must be done in your area to be in compliance with your state’s laws. Some states require notification before you remove your children from a formal school; some do not. Trust HSLDA as your final authority: public school officials are often woefully ignorant of their state’s laws. Laws and requirements vary from state to state, so do not assume you can do the same thing as your friend’s neighbor’s sister-in-law who lives three states away. HSLDA also has links to homeschool support groups in your state or local region. Find the name of a homeschooling family and call them up — if they do not feel they can answer your questions, ask them to suggest someone else who can. I have spoken to many potential homeschooling families who just needed a little boost in the encouragement department.

The first physical step would be to pull your children from the school system they are in, but truly, you already have started teaching them. Your children have been learning from you from the time when their big eyes first followed you around the room, though they could not even speak or understand you, and it has progressed from there (see Who Taught This Kid to Walk…). Not getting your children up early enough to catch the bus may seem too simple of a way to begin homeschooling, but that is the beauty of home education. You may choose to delay removal from a school system until a semester break or major holiday break, but it often is not necessary. Others (in more drastic circumstances) choose to pull their children out NOW before another day goes by.

From there you can begin with the books that you already have around the house. Literature is a great way to start: read to your children, and have them read to you. Make cookies together and do the math of fractions. Play with water or corn meal and all your measuring utensils. There is no need to freak out and think you need a formal set-up. Relax and enjoy having your family together, and learn from life. Watch an historical video and discuss the parts that interest you. Spend an afternoon at the library. Walk around your local business district and see what you have never noticed before. If you are the only customers in a shop, talking to the owner can result in a fantastic, spontaneous field trip. Visit a local museum or antique shop and ask questions of the proprietor. Later, textbooks or organized lessons can be added, but it is not necessary right away, even if you are starting with a child who is in junior high or high school. You can still allow yourselves to take it easy at first; it helps make the transition less stressful and more enjoyable. Do not worry about desks and art supplies and music lessons until you find a need for them. Cuddling together on the sofa or gathering around the dining table will work just fine for now.

When you begin to doubt whether you are doing enough, stop to consider how much time your children would be wasting in a classroom while waiting in line, waiting for silence, or waiting for the teacher to finish whatever is going on before they can all move on to the next thing. A lesson that requires 45 minutes for a classroom to do may take only 10 minutes at home with one student. If you have multiple children, you may be able to combine lessons sometimes and save even more time. The entire family can enjoy a video or read-aloud book, and then your students can continue the lesson with assignments appropriate to their ages and abilities (i.e. further research, comparison or analysis of characters, make a costume and re-enact a scene). When my daughter had to read Hamlet for a college class, my son joined her for the video/read-along session and used it for high school literature credit.

It is beneficial and therapeutic to spend time contemplating what things you and your students have learned at home — remembering that we learn much more from life’s experiences than we do from books! Enjoy your time together as a family. From mealtime conversation to family game night, the educational opportunities never stop. Those opportunities were always there, but you were all too exhausted from rushing to keep up with school schedules to take advantage of them.

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Homeschool How-To's, Leaving Public School

Sorting Toys Is Algebra

December 20, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Do you realize that the mental skill used in sorting army men from building blocks is the same mental skill used in sorting variables in algebra problems? Makes higher math a little less scary, doesn’t it?

When a child can recognize and organize a playroom floor full of toys, he is honing the same skill he will use years later in recognizing and organizing an equation full of x’s, y’s, and xy’s. Whether the army men are green or tan, they are all considered army men, and building blocks are building blocks, regardless of their color. Whether the math variable is 2x or 3x, it is still considered an x-quantity. Army men do not get stored with building blocks, and x’s do not get combined with y’s.

If children are old enough to play with toys, they are old enough to put those toys away again. We used shoeboxes and plastic ice cream buckets large enough to hold all the army men or all the building blocks. Long before reading skills were acquired, I drew picture labels on index cards and taped them to each container (nothing fancy, just rough, cartoon-style illustrations — no words). Each child also had a picture chart for how to clean his room: a drawing of a messy bed and an arrow pointing to a drawing of a made-up bed; a drawing of books on the floor and an arrow pointing to a drawing of books on the shelf; a drawing of clothes in a pile on the floor and an arrow pointing to a drawing of the hamper. You get the idea. So will your kids. The artistically-challenged can adapt the idea with photos or pictures cut from magazines or catalogs.

The skill of tidying up the play area is extremely valuable, both to children and to parents. The children will grow in confidence and courage as they realize they have a new skill. Obviously, the parents will appreciate any amount of help in clearing a path through the house. However, do not expect your tiny tykes to understand this endeavor the first time you spring it on them, and do not expect them to do a first-class, absolutely perfect job… ever (hence the need for containers roomy enough to easily fit the contents). To begin with, sit on the floor with your little darlings and challenge them to pick out all of one specific type of toy from the jumble on the floor and put them into their container while you dispatch all of the other toys to their assigned spots. Point out to them how it is simpler to pick out the largest pieces first, before trying to select the tiniest pieces. Eventually, your little helper will be able to tackle two or three types of toys, one after the other. After they have mastered their sorting skills, you will notice them sorting out several different types of toys at the same time, as you would. Be sure to point out their progress and praise them for it.

Make your pick-up time fun by challenging each other to races or by sliding the Matchbox cars down a strip of racetrack into their storage box. Always allow for clean-up time as a part of playtime, so that no one is caught by surprise, and you are not left to clean up the mess after everyone else is tucked into bed. I did not want to make pick-up time feel like a punishment to be dreaded, so I helped my children as they learned the task and praised them for the good jobs they were doing. I have always enjoyed having someone to talk to while I clean up my kitchen, so I could easily understand why my children wanted my company while picking up their toys. “Together-time” with your children is never wasted time.

Another reward for a job well done was permission to play with more than one board game at a time. When I was a child, my mother had a strict rule that one game or puzzle had to be completely picked up and put away before a second one could be brought out. My children’s success at efficiently sorting and storing won them the privilege of playing with more than one thing at a time — which their creative minds took to new heights as they invented ways of combining games. They found it as much fun to sort out the pieces from multiple games, as it had been to play with the games themselves. Plus, you can only have enough letter tiles to solve some word puzzles when you combine the tiles from Scrabble, Scrabble Junior, and Upwords along with the anagram tiles!

I began teaching this sorting task to my children when they were very small — toddlers, in fact — years before we began homeschooling. I did not actually see the connection to higher math until years later. My children had no difficulty with understanding the concepts of polynomials (xy-type variables, for those of you who have forgotten or not reached that point yet in your homeschool), due in great part, I feel, to the sorting skills they possessed.

We held a birthday party for my daughter at age 15 and invited a handful of her homeschool peers. One of the games we had prepared was a jigsaw puzzle challenge. Each team of 2 girls was given a bag of jigsaw puzzle pieces: 3 puzzles combined — all simple, elementary level puzzles of varying size and complexity, but with all their pieces combined. The challenge was to separate the puzzles and reassemble all 3 puzzles before the other teams completed theirs. I was amazed at how difficult this was for some of the girls. Even though the puzzles were easily separated by the size of their pieces, some of the players had extreme difficulty in recognizing that. None of the puzzles contained more than 100 pieces, and each one was very simple to distinguish from the others and put together. As I later analyzed this situation in regard to the families involved, I concluded that the players who had the most difficulty came from families where Overworked Mom did all the picking up.

We should never feel that teaching our children to do household cleaning tasks is a punishment for them — it is giving them a future, valuable, life skill. In this particular case, they will learn recognition, sorting, and organization — skills valuable for their further education, as well as being beneficial for personal and professional choices they will make later in their lives. Learning to sort toys is learning to prioritize.

[See also The Importance of Play in Education]

Filed Under: Home Chores, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning

Screening — Paying Attention to Red Flags

December 15, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Be aware of what is being taught in any outside groups in which your children participate. Just because your friends approve of a certain group, it does not mean that you also have to approve or will approve of the same group. This applies to church-sponsored youth groups, church-sponsored Bible classes or clubs, scout troops, homeschool co-op classes, library story hours, etc. If you have already chosen to homeschool your children, you are obviously rather particular about what things they learn and how they learn them. If your children are currently enrolled in a public or private school, you may be noticing attitude changes taking place that correspond to their participation in specific activities, clubs, groups, etc.

Any changes in your child’s typical behavior should call you to attention. The changes may be positive ones, in which case you want to take notice of what caused the change and see if you can use that tactic in other areas as well to produce additional positive results. If, however, the changes in your child’s behavior are towards more negative behavior, you will want to investigate what has prompted those changes in order to correct a small problem before it becomes a major disaster.

Does your child look forward to attending the group/activity, or does the child suddenly become unruly, stubborn, and disruptive as the appointed time draws near? Does your child tell you about the group in great detail, or is it nearly impossible to glean any details whatsoever (especially noteworthy in a usually talkative child)? Does the child exhibit markedly different behavior upon returning home from the group/activity — is his attitude towards parents or siblings undesirable: rude, selfish, or extraordinarily superior? These are red flags, telltale signs that your child may be receiving teaching/coaching/prompting that is contrary to your family’s values. It may be coming from the leader of the group/activity or from friends he encounters at the group. Whatever the source, you will want to look deeper into the situation before it becomes a bigger problem.

Offer to assist the teacher with “crowd control” as a subtle way to check out what values are being passed on to your students. Mild differences can be discussed with your students before or after the class while still gaining as much benefit as possible from the class/activity itself. Major differences of value systems may require that your family withdraw their participation from the group. If the group is worth being involved with, it is worth your time as well as your child’s. Volunteer in whatever capacity will obtain you the spot you need in order to see what is going on. Speaking as a former leader, I would never have refused an offer of help; extra hands were always appreciated, whether the group was large or small.

We have run up against other children whose families simply had different values from ours. A brief discussion of “family values” with our children helped to clarify things for them, so that they could evaluate others’ points of view and determine for themselves what was worthy of ignoring. At other times, we found ourselves head-to-head with an important difference of philosophy from the leadership of an entire group. In those situations, we had to spend a great deal of time in soul-searching, family discussions, and meeting with the group leadership in efforts to rectify differences. When the problem was simply a misunderstanding, getting everything out in the open would quickly clear up any problems. Other, larger confrontations stemmed from troubles deep within organizational structures. Investigative probing revealed difficulties so vast that we knew our family’s voice could not have any positive influence. In those situations, we saw that it was time to pull out. When we deemed it necessary, we left immediately; other times we felt it beneficial to stay until a desired activity was concluded, then slip quietly away.

We have encountered anti-family philosophies in a wide assortment of organizations, all claiming to be child-centered and family-oriented. As I have said before, the proof is in the pudding. I have learned not to be fooled by words; anyone can say anything they like. A very wise pastor once said that you can tell a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing by what he eats: wolves eat sheep. A wolf may disguise himself for a while, but sooner or later he has to eat a sheep — it’s what he does; it’s what he is; he cannot change his nature.

I became justifiably suspicious when told by a leader that parents were not allowed to sit in with the group, even when it met in that parent’s home. One leader pulled my child aside and coached the child, “You don’t agree with your parents, do you!” I have confronted administrators, forcing them to admit that, although they did not approve of what their underlings were teaching to children and felt it was wrong to do so, they would not take any measures to correct the behavior. I have also met face-to-face with parents who were not aware of their own children’s poor conduct, who thanked me for bringing it to their attention, and who took steps on the spot to reinstate the damaged relationship between our families.

I may sound rather cynical, but it is only because I have become cynical through misplaced trust. I now know (after more than a decade of homeschooling) that my children’s parents are the best teachers for them, and my children realize this fact also. We have all been taught through the school of experience that no one’s best intentions can replace the care and concern of family. If something about a group bothers you, consider that to be a red flag, and start looking around. As you screen things through your own “values filter,” you may find it to have a simple solution. You may occasionally find a much larger can of worms, but you will be grateful in the end that you took the effort to look. Your child is at stake. The risk is too great to ignore.

Filed Under: Behavior, Encouragement for Parents, Family Unity, Homeschooling as a Lifestyle, Parenting

Transcript Writing

December 9, 2004 by Leave a Comment

A transcript is basically a class-by-class listing of a student’s high school career, the grades received, and the time period involved. A transcript is requested by college admission personnel to evaluate what college classes your student will be able to handle, whether your student is eligible for any academic scholarships, and generally what type of person they can expect your student to be. When a student has been homeschooled through high school, their classes have often been personally tailored to their own interests and may, therefore, lie outside traditional expectations.

First, let me say that no one’s transcript comes down from Mount Sinai. Every transcript is produced by some human being on a computer or typewriter somewhere, so let that eliminate your first fear right here, right now. The same goes for homeschool diplomas: design your own or use a prepared template without guilt, because that is how all diplomas originate. College or job applications frequently ask if you have a high school diploma, and printing your own for a completed homeschool education will fulfill that requirement.

Writing a high school transcript is not a complicated exercise, but it does require a little preparation. If you have a homeschool student already in high school or one who will soon be in high school, begin writing their transcript now. At this point, you only need to keep a rough record of what subjects they are doing, the texts used, and any extra-curricular activities. Polishing this list into a finely-honed transcript will come later when they are preparing to apply to colleges or will need the transcript for job applications. A motivated student is capable of maintaining these records himself, but the point is to keep the records. Voice of Experience: One person’s memory is a remarkably inefficient source when you suddenly find yourself typing up four years’ worth of educational activities in one evening.

My children’s high school classes did not follow a strict semester schedule or fall neatly into four 9-month blocks. I would suspect that many of you have students on the same, typical homeschool, non-scheduled “schedule.” For that reason, we formatted our transcripts by listing the “Date Completed” for each class (month/year), instead of trying to establish artificial grade levels of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. The course titles were then grouped together by subject (earliest first) and listed in an order that put recognizable subjects at the top of the list and digressed to the less-important, non-academic courses. Your students’ transcripts should be individually tailored for their specific goals: a student planning to major in music at college should have a transcript which gives preference to musical training and performance; a student desiring a career in engineering should have a transcript which gives preference to math and science courses.

Because of the personal nature of home education, we did not send a simple one-page transcript to colleges. Think transcript “packet” here, because I am usually referring collectively to the entire packet, consisting of three documents: the Transcript itself (list of courses taken and grades received), Course Descriptions (brief explanations of the unusual courses and what texts were used), and Extra-Curricular Activities (covering group activities such as team sports or church youth group, and work experience — both paid and voluntary).

Right now, while your student is still in high school, it is a valuable effort to keep track of every book read — both factual and fiction, both for schoolwork and for pleasure reading. We included a “Literature Reading List” at the end of the Course Descriptions document, separated into American authors and foreign authors. This list was primarily works read during the last two years of high school, since that is primarily when public schools offer literature classes. Various forms of prose and poetry were covered, often referred to as “assorted works” by certain authors.

The many other books read during high school were grouped together and given course descriptions. My daughter read most of the “Uncle Eric” books by Richard Maybury, then grouped them to make courses called “Economics” (Whatever Happened to Penny Candy and The Clipper Ship Strategy) and “Introduction to Law” (The Thousand Year War in the Mideast, Ancient Rome–How It Affects You Today, and Whatever Happened to Justice?). Her dedication to a hobby of collecting antique clothing buttons became a course in art history, citing a reference book on buttons in art periods for the text. An assortment of Presidential biographies was awarded the course title “Introduction to Politics.” My son’s piano lessons counted for high school credit, as well as the time he spent teaching himself guitar and percussion.

When my daughter made the decision to take chemistry at our local community college (earning high school credit from me, plus the college credit), she quickly sped up the pace of her senior year of high school. Completing most of her homeschool work over the summer left her fall semester free for concentrating on the college class. When the spring semester rolled around, my daughter enrolled in English Composition I — which was listed on her high school transcript as “English 5.” Listing the “date completed” for high school courses de-emphasized the speed with which some courses were finished, since no starting date was included. Courses which may have required extra time were also hard to spot, since completion dates occurred in nearly every month.

Special notes on the transcript indicated that our credits were assigned on the same Carnegie standard used by most public schools and colleges. Asterisks denoted any course taken from the local college, and a note further explained that these courses were taken at the college, from college professors, with other college students. An advisor at the college encouraged me to make that notation on the transcripts I made up for my students, saying, “That is more impressive to us than a student who takes a college class at the high school, from a high school teacher, with other high school students. The classes may look identical, but the only thing they have in common is the textbook.”

Some of you are very anxious about assigning grades on a high school transcript. I gave A’s all the way down the line, and I did not feel guilty about it. Several years ago, I listened in as a dear friend was advising a fellow homeschool mom about preparing her daughter’s transcript. The advisor was currently a teacher at the public middle school and acting as the family’s supervising teacher for their homeschool. Her advice was to give nothing less than an A, because the work done by the homeschooled students was far superior to anything being required at the public school! Since that time, whenever I questioned my children’s homeschool productivity, I looked for evidence of what was being accepted at the public institution, and I dismissed the guilt immediately.

Other goodies to include on the transcript are a graduation date, ACT or SAT score, social security number, address and phone number. The graduation date is an affirmation to the college admissions department that your child actually has completed high school. (We used the phrase “anticipated graduation date” when submitting the document for a scholarship application during my son’s senior year.) College application forms usually ask for your graduation date, so pick one and print it on the diploma; ceremonies and celebrations are optional. Midwestern colleges prefer ACT test scores, while coastal schools seem to desire the SAT. Some colleges will accept the score on your say-so; others will only accept an official document sent to them directly from the testing organization. The student’s name, address, telephone number, birthdate, and Social Security number need to be printed at the top of the first page for easy reference. Any subsequent pages should have the student’s name and SSN reprinted at the top. A photograph of the student is also a good thing to include, although it is not always required. Include a line at the bottom of the transcript for your signature as the principal instructor for your homeschool and date the signature for authenticity.

The one thing about homeschooling through high school that tends to scare off most families is the thought of being accepted into college. Now you have the basic skill for conquering the transcript. A little creative thinking can turn even a seemingly mundane homeschool experience into a list of unique, custom-fit courses.

For further reference, see the book “And What About College?” by Cafi Cohen.

UPDATE: Home School Legal Defense Association is now offering record keeping services, including Transcripts, GPA calculation, report cards, etc — suitable for state records or college applications. Go to the HSLDA website and look for PerX.

See Sample Transcript & Diploma for examples.

Filed Under: High School, Transcripts

If You Have Children, You DO Homeschool

December 3, 2004 by Leave a Comment

During my daughter’s last year in public school (4th grade), we were already homeschooling, but we just did not realize it at the time. Recognizing how much I was already teaching her at home made our decision to homeschool much easier.

She had difficulty keeping her mind on the subject at hand and often daydreamed in class when she should have been working on assignments, so I worked with her at home after school to improve her focus. Many concepts that the public school teacher tried to teach were just not grasped by my daughter, so I explained them in as many different ways as I could think of until she understood. It felt really good to be able to impart confidence to my daughter for the things I was teaching her. She did not get personal feedback in the classroom, and that was something she truly needed to keep her going.

It finally became clear to me that I was becoming the primary teacher in my daughter’s education. The teacher at school handed out the assignments, but her attempts at instruction simply were not successful with my child. More and more often, my daughter came home seeking my confirmation of a lesson from school, and many times the lessons were very confusing. The school did not allow students to take textbooks home; for some subjects they did not even have textbooks. Once in a while the concept learned at school was just plain wrong. (There is no polite way to phrase it: wrong is wrong.) The frustration level soared dramatically as I attempted to teach my daughter at home in late afternoons and evenings (when she was tired and I was busy preparing a meal) without benefit of curriculum. Many parents go through this scenario to a greater or lesser degree — Junior needs help, parent tries to help, success is debatable.

Parents, I would like you to reflect for a moment on all the things that you do successfully teach your children. You have probably already read my soapbox speech on how you taught your children to walk, to talk, to dress themselves, to feed themselves, and how to do a myriad of other tasks before they were considered old enough for “formal education.” You imparted all of that knowledge without the aid of printed textbooks, charts, diagrams, or other visual aids. Now I want to look deeper into the realm of what you teach at home without even trying hard. Your children learn their greatest lessons in life just from observing the everyday routines of their parents and other family members.

Language (including choice of slang words), fashion consciousness, manners, the value of money, person-to-person relationships, the importance of extended family members, community involvement, religion, politics, prejudices — these are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of lessons learned at home. Have your children learned to do their own laundry, have they learned to think of others by sharing in the family laundry task, or have they learned to expect someone else to provide them with clean clothing? Apply the same line of questioning to mealtime — is Mom expected to perform all facets of food preparation and clean-up, do family members help Mom, or is it “every man for himself”? Look around your house right now: are there articles of clothing scattered about, draped over every chair; newspapers lying on the floor next to an endless array of toys, game pieces, and miniature cars; or is every room absolutely spotless, not a speck of dust, and no single article out of place? Remember, this is not a spot inspection of your housekeeping ability — this is your personal, private, in-depth analysis of what and how you teach your children.

I am the only member of my extended family who has chosen to homeschool, but I am not the only one who teaches her children. Some children learn that a parent’s career is much more important than the children’s needs. Some children learn that volunteering in the church/community has a much higher priority than spending time with family. Some children are taught to expect the television to be their constant companion and the basis of all their values. Some children are never taught how to entertain themselves without the use of electronic media. These may not be the lessons that parents desire their children to learn, but it may be what they are teaching.

If you are spending every evening with your child, helping him with his school assignments, you might want to consider the benefits of homeschooling. You could continue to do the same amount of teaching, but you could choose when to do the lessons — ideally, choosing times when you are both fresh and not at the end of very frustrating days. You and your child could also decide together what other subject areas would be interesting to explore and how you would like to investigate them. If you have children, you are already homeschooling. You may not be the one teaching long division, world history, or grammatical sentence structure, but you are teaching.

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Encouragement for Parents, Family Unity, Leaving Public School

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
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