Hear ye, hear ye!  The 2009 award for the most Stupid Educational Fad goes to… all schools where spelling is no longer being taught; with special “Fickle Finger of Failure” prizes to administrators, school boards, state school boards, departments of education, and all others who believe that teachers should officially “stop teaching spelling”… as if trashing of the last vestige of actual academic instruction in America should be celebrated.   

I suggest that in the last 50 years, American public schools have not taught enough spelling to even make a “stoppage” worthy of media coverage. Instead of making announcements, these criminals should sign confessions down at their local police departments. Frankly, schools have long been attempting to hide their educational crimes of omission, and of teacher inefficiency, by forcing students to memorize lists of spelling words for Friday tests.

The schools should put an end to the counterproductive foolishness that passes for “reading instruction” and use their time instead to only teach spelling. My mother (who taught school until she was 72 years old) is accurate when she states that “those children, who do learn to read in today’s schools, learn in spite of the instruction.” Nothing else accounts for the few children who escape, actually literate, from the ever-deepening rot that has taken over academics in this nation.  Massachusetts had a literacy rate of 98 percent until … they opened public schools. Their literacy rates have been in freefall since then, and the other 49 states blindly leaped for the band wagon … but to their academic deaths, as well.

Teacher-training (LOL) professors; school administrators; local school boards; state school boards; state and federal Departments of Education, I need your attention. The language of America — English, for those who have forgotten — is written in a CODE and the only way to learn how to read and write anything written in that CODE is to first learn how to SPELL. Musical performers and creators learn to read and write the Code in which music is written. Dancers and choreographers learn to read and write the Code in which movement can be recorded. Stenographers used to learn to read and write shorthand notation which also is a Code. When schools lost the teachers who understood the importance of, and how to teach spelling — real education came to a standstill. Schools no longer are capable of teaching students how to Encode, or how to Decode, the Code In Which English is Recorded. 

A moment, please, to defend young teachers because they have lost out twice — once in the K-12 schools of their youth, and again with the nothingness that they learned in teacher-training programs. They paid tuition to be trained as effective teachers. (Can anyone imagine an accountant who cannot account receiving a college degree?) Unfortunately, college professors are usually so busy theorizing or developing new fads to foist upon the mis-education culture, that they have little to teach; and almost no focus from which to teach. Furthermore, they have little-to-no-effective teaching experience of their own because, frankly, teachers learn more in the first three to five years of teaching than they get taught to their students. To “train” future teachers, one only is expected to have a research PhD and 3-4 years of teaching. (Remember, those first teaching years are only partially effective.)

For teachers who have taught more than five ineffective years but still carry on as usual; refusing to acknowledge and learn missing skills; ignoring blatant failure and suffering students — shame on you. There are libraries. There is the Internet. There is Spalding International. There are my articles. There is no excuse for stubbornness and laziness. Such teachers spend their days NOT teaching children to read, spell, and learn, but happily collect unearned paychecks and ask for raises. They are destroying lives with each day of fraudulent instruction. 

Our jails and prisons are filled with 1st-3rd grade readers. Our welfare rolls are filled with the same. How can we expect adults to be fully self-sufficient and lead families with wisdom, in a technical culture, if our schools cannot and will not teach them to read, write, spell, and learn knowledge? If America’s educational mess is not cleaned up ASAP, there will be no future for our nation; for our people; for our Rights and Freedoms. We must start changing local policies today. My mission is to teach Michigan to read; to again retake the leadership position that it held back when I was in school in the Sixties; back when Michigan and California led the nation. Please join me.

Learn to teach systematic, methodical encoding of the English language. The term for that is “Spelling.” If schools must drop anything, they should drop reading lessons in order to more perfectly teach spelling lessons.  Buy The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Spalding. Order a set of the Spalding phono/gram (Greek for sound/write) cards.  Learn how to carefully teach students of all ages to Encode (put into code = Spell) and Decode (take from code = Read) English. Use precise pronunciation and expect the same from your students of all ages. 

Why are Hispanic and black children failing to learn to read and spell? They lack precision with their pronunciation of English! There is too much of a breakdown — a disconnect — when a child says “baf roo” while trying to write or read the word “bathroom.” We do children great harm when we accept dialects and slang as a substitute for Standard English. The Code for English is based upon Standard English. I explain to my students that in my home we call whipped cream, “creama-whippa” because that was how my very deaf brother pronounced the name for that product. However … never do we go to the grocery store and ask for Creama-Whippa! Never do we expect the people of America to accept our mis-speak as real English. Dialect is fine for use within family circles and subcultures but when teachers, parents, and the nation allow dialect and slang to take the place of properly-spoken English, educational failure is the Expected Outcome! Politically Correct has turned schools into crime-filled places. PC > CP — Crimes against Pupils, Parents, Public.

Toss out textbooks that fail to teach children to read, spell, write. Replace them with the $5.40 readers from Spalding. Think about this: of all businesses, only textbook publishers get rich by selling products that fail. Why does America tolerate such an anti-economically-sensible and educationally-destructive situation? Textbook sales representative to school official: “We know that our 103rd edition failed to teach your students to read, but if your district will only buy our new, bigger, more expensive, flashier 104th edition, your students might learn to read this time. Oh, btw, we sell failing fuzzy math books, also. Crashing math scores, anyone?” 

Demand that your districts invest in products that work, like those from non-profit Spalding International. Demand that your districts hire Spalding trainers to do what the colleges failed to accomplish — train teachers to effectively instruct. I promise, teachers will learn more in two weeks of Spalding training than they would learn in years spent at most of today’s university teacher-training programs.

School decision makers — if you are unwilling to follow my advice to teach spelling, and then just stop teaching reading, also. You are wasting everyone’s time and money while you turn America into a mass of illiterates. Instead, direct your teachers to spend every day reading aloud to the classes. Students can use their auditory skills and so learn a wealth of vocabulary, concepts, and facts in order to develop a wide general knowledge base. For fulltime oral reading of increasingly more challenging texts, the public would finally gain from the money spent on teachers’ salaries. Students would exit school as educated individuals; as complete, whole human beings. America owes our children at least that much.


Linda Schrock Taylor, M.A., taught special education for 35 years in public schools. Now retired from teaching, she is finishing her book for reclaiming lives, “Rapid Reading Remediation;” and is running for Governor of Michigan on a platform for A Constitutional & Literate Michigan.  (U.S. Taxpayers Party of Michigan, a branch of The Constitution Party)  Michigan residents who are interested in being trained to teach reading as volunteers in Linda’s “Literacy for Michigan” campaign can contact her at readinglessons@hotmail.com.

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DDW

December 28, 2009

173.74.213.85

Votes: +8

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This is all

A direct product of the deliberate dumbing down of the citizens and future citizens of these United States. After all, it's much easier to control people who can't read, write or do math, isn't it? You just keep telling the truth just as you've been doing in your past articles, Linda Schrock Taylor. There must be people who are reading/listening and care.

EC

December 28, 2009

216.164.143.29

Votes: +8

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Spelling Comes From Reading

I feel lucky to be a teacher who never got a degree in teaching (education). I fell into teaching sort of sideways--after graduate school (I have my MFA). Some days, I feel as though I must get certified, others I am glad I never did, because the entire system is absurd and meaningless, and the certified teachers I know (many of them) can't spell themselves and don't know the difference between "affect" and "effect"--and worse

It all comes down to READING--not enough has been read by these people or current students. Teachers who believe in reading widely (as I do) can't even ask our students to read as much as we would like them to, because Admin often *won't let us.* No time, no room for reading!

I wrote about this on my blog in recent weeks...

Thanks for this.

Mike Rogers

December 28, 2009

220.99.211.213

Votes: +8

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If only....

We followed the instructions and guidance of Linda Schrock Taylor for our now 6-year-old who has been labeled "Genius" by his teachers and principal. If today's instructors were even half as dedicated and motivated as Ms. Taylor, our country wouldn't be in the mess it's in. (By the way, my son is not a genius, he just can read and write, so that makes him look like a genius next to the rest of the kids.

Thanks to Linda Schrock Taylor.

Strider

December 29, 2009

130.94.121.237

Votes: +6

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Linda's analysis is right on, but I'm afraid her solution (demand school districts teach reading again) is hopeless. Public schools are corrupt past any hope of reform. They benefit too much from the havoc they have wrought, just as police departments benefit from rampant crime. The only remedy is abandonment. Either homeschool your kids or send them to private school. If just 20-25% of all parents did this, the system would collapse under its own dead weight.

RichardR369

December 29, 2009

143.166.255.60

Votes: +3

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Baptist Convention

The Baptist Convention almost had it right one year. But instead of making sacrifices to bring this country around, they left to kids in government schools to be taught as bible-haters.

RichardR369

December 29, 2009

143.166.226.57

Votes: +1

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Typo

I need to fix my typo.
"they left their* kids in government...".

Danielle

December 29, 2009

216.73.232.8

Votes: +4

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Reading Isn't Good Enough?

This probably is not a very good argument against Linda, and I don't mean to say she doesn't have a point, but just like to share my experience. This probably isn't a very good argument, because Linda is talking about public schools, and I've been homeschooled. But my parents never taught me spelling per se, we had some spelling drill books, but soon put them up in the attic because I hated it so much. I am very good reader, as my siblings are also, and was reading college-level books in 10th grade. I've seen most words so many times that when I spell, I spell according to how it "looks" on the page. If a word doesn't look right, I'll work with the letters, switch them around, add letters, or do whatever it takes until the word "looks" right. Of course, being homeschooled or public schooled makes a difference, and so does the child. Some kids probably would have a hard time spelling visually from memory. But that's my experience, and although I really enjoy all the automatic spell-checkers now, I am still confident of being to spell on my own. I think many kids would do much better in any environment outside public school, and hope that parents will start embracing the opportunity to homeschool their kids. It is much easier now than it was 20 or 30 years ago, when "no one" did it, and you were on your own. Now there are groups to join, lots of resources, materials, counseling, everything that parents need to get started, but that's the only way we're going to take our country back, by bringing up a new generation of passionate and intelligent individuals.

Paul Galvin

December 29, 2009

72.70.235.79

Votes: +4

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...

Let's celebrate by misspelling, in any letters sent to them, the names of teachers and principals, as well as misspelling their names on their "earned" paychecks. Then we'll see if spelling is of any importance.

Keith Hamburger

December 29, 2009

70.59.194.74

Votes: +1

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Spelling/reading

Danielle said that she was reading college level books in 10th grade. Well, I was doing the same in 5th grade and was taught in a government school. But, our school was an exception and considered "backwards" in the 1960's. They actually used phonics to teach reading. Of course, I was actually starting to read at the age of three.

There seems to be a bit of chicken/egg issue here. Are good spellers that way because they read or are good readers that way because they can spell? My guess is, and I did have a teaching certificate at one time, it's a little of both. It probably has to do with the particular child and their learning style. Some students will pick up spelling from reading, some students will pick up reading from writing.

I don't think Linda was completely serious saying we should get rid of reading education but was using a bit of hyperbole to show how important it is to offer complete education that is successful rather than failing with incomplete curricula. The main thing I got out of this is that what we are doing is failing and that it is of vital importance that we succeed in this effort.

Unfortunately I doubt that many in the educational system will listen so the best answer is to get your kids out of that system as early as possible.

Mike Chase

December 29, 2009

65.1.251.178

Votes: +3

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Reading

IF YOU CAN'T READ HOW CAN YOU LEARN.....TO READ IS EVERYTHING.....THEN COMES MATH...

Linda Schrock Taylor

December 29, 2009

174.42.209.185

Votes: +3

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author

Keith is right---the "stop teaching reading" was a bit of tongue-in-cheek. However, I was serious, too, because if an early learner is only taught systematic, phonetic spelling, the reading just sorta happens on it own. By learning to encode (spell) the language a learner becomes able to skillfully manipulate the Code via both spelling AND reading. "Reading alot" then helps good spellers become better spellers and great vocabulary users. I am one of the very skilled readers who is a rather poor speller. Dick & Jane filled my K-3rd grade years. Phonics was tossed aside. By reading so much, I have learned the "look" of many words and that helped much. Now, I study word origins, syllable types, Latin and Greek additions to English. I spell better but still have problems. I have to slow down my inner speech to "hear" the actual sounds, then make a point of thinking through the 29 spelling rules, and then....work at it. If schools (like the ones the Texas that are announcing their decision to drop spelling instruction) MUST drop something....then children will be better off if they miss "reading lessons" to receive skilled spelling lessons.

Linda Schrock Taylor

BP

December 30, 2009

24.1.3.192

Votes: +1

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spelling

If spelling is such a needed skill, why are engineers typically poor spellers?

Maybe being able to spell words on demand without tools isn't really that big of deal and has little to do with reading ability. At least perhaps for people who are wired in such a way they are good at things like engineering.

I don't doubt that for more language oriented minds that spelling isn't key, but all people aren't wired the same way. One of the things I despised most about government school was that there was only one right way to do things. The conformity of it. I often ignored lessons when I found the method being taught to be needlessly difficult (for me) and devised my own ways of doing things that were easier (for me).

Maybe the problem isn't a lack of teaching spelling but the one-size-fits-all teaching instead of the more independent learning methods that pre-dated the government schools.

val Yule

January 05, 2010

58.175.34.235

Votes: +0

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Dr

Let your students have a look at www.ozreadandspell.com.au. It's a half-hour cartoon graphics demonstration overview of spelling, for individual use, not groups. Individuals can see what they need to watch again, and what they need help from teachers.
A good complement to Spalding.

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