Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

No social promotion for delinquent dogs!

Is chewing bubble wrap an acceptable substitute for #5? Dogs want to know.

We are filing a discrimination suit under Title IX, but we don't want to go to school with dogs. Separate and equal.

DIE WHOLE LANGUAGE METHOD! DIE! DIE! DIE!

I spent a semester forced to use the whole language method to drive some English into the football players heads. To borrow a phrase, I wouldn't wish that on a dog.

One of mine self-taught reading by the whole language method. It has created some long-term problems with spelling ("phonemic awareness" is still very low: didn't notice that hy-po-the-sis has four syllables, and saw nothing wrong with spelling it "hypothis"). But it got reading started very early and very fast.

My uninformed opinion is that phonics is best for most people, but that flexibility is good and essential...

In the spirit of the exercise

1. No dog shall have a left behind.

(The 13 year old in me says that it was good)

Have the kids been reading the latest news from Santa Fe?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2004-03-25-dog-belts_x.htm

'Santa Fe is considering requiring doggie seat belts. A major rewrite of the city's animal control ordinance proposes that Santa Fe dogs be buckled up when riding in trucks and other vehicles.

'The ordinance endorsed Tuesday by a City Council committee would require an animal in the bed of a truck to be "crated or restrained ... so it cannot fall or jump from the truck or be strangled." It also would require that any animal "in or on" a vehicle be restrained to keep it from falling out.'

Brad gone bonkers. Now we know where all pro-outsourcing articles are coming from.

I have Bassets. There is NO chance of getting them to take any standardized tests--they'd be too busy smelling everything around them. I guess this means schools with high percentages of Bassets will be failed, while schools with high percentages of border collies will succeed.

If chimpanzees chained to typewriters can produce the works of Shakespeare if given enough (i.e., infinite) time, what could dogs create in their stead?

Mmmmm, dog behinds.

ogmb history of the venice republic. Shouldn't americans teach their children american as their first language? When they are a little older introduce them to the foreign languages.

If the dogs eat the pencils, do they fail the standardized tests?

Memo to John Kerry: if Dr. and Mrs. DeLong are willing, I think we found two very good speech writers for your campaign. The kids are good, very good.

I'm afriad the powers that be would encourage my Sophie to drop out. She's part Papillon and very sweet, but not that bright, so she'd pull down the averages. But, hey, it worked in Houston, why not here too :)

2000! is approximately (2000/e)^2000 or about 10^(57000) years from now. The sun will have expired well before then, so the dogs can relax with regard to the math and reading requirement.

10^(5700), but who's counting?

Will dogs be allowed to use "The kid ate my homework." excuses?

One of mine self-taught reading by the whole language method. It has created some long-term problems with spelling ("phonemic awareness" is still very low: didn't notice that hy-po-the-sis has four syllables, and saw nothing wrong with spelling it "hypothis"). But it got reading started very early and very fast.

My uninformed opinion is that phonics is best for most people, but that flexibility is good and essential...

I probably learned by the whole-word method. When I was 5 I told my mother I wanted to learn to read. So she taught me. I don't know by what method and can no longer ask her. I have the pronunciation and spelling problems, however I can read very rapidly. As I see it, the problem with the phonics method is that people go on "sounding out" the words and therefore restrict their ultimate reading speed significantly.

Brad's kids leave the rest of us behind once again . . .

My boys are both learning to read and write using the Whole Language Method is that I find that teachers do not really stress spelling and as a result my kids can not really spell well. In fact it wasn't until parents started to really demand spelling tests that some sort of forced march toward spelling even occured.

My gut is that some combination of Phonics and Whole Language will probably turn out to be the right wethod for teaching reading and writing to our children.

My boys are both learning to read and write using the Whole Language Method is that I find that teachers do not really stress spelling and as a result my kids can not really spell well. In fact it wasn't until parents started to really demand spelling tests that some sort of forced march toward spelling even occured.

My gut is that some combination of Phonics and Whole Language will probably turn out to be the right wethod for teaching reading and writing to our children.

The original advocates of the whole language method saw it as a supplement to phoenics. Then the zealots took over and in some states whole language became the ONLY permissible approach. Test results plummetted in those states.

The right wing (anyone remember Phyllis Shafly?) took this as yet another sign of the decay of civilization caused by liberals and the evil NEA, and took up phoenics with equal zealotry. Of course, it didn't hurt that Phyllis was hawking her own phoenics-based reading product. In some places whole language is no longer allowed even as a supplement.

The truth is what Brad states: phoenics is the best foundation, but whole language is a good supplement. Since people learn differently, the exposure to the alternate styles means that more children will learn to read more quickly.

Mom Rabett, who was the last of the first grade dragons (could teach a stone to read) says that most kids learn reading faster with the whole word method but that some percentage simply don't get it and need phonics. The trick to being a good first grade teacher is to identify the ones who can't grok whole words and give them phonics fast.

But will they non-English speaking dogs be taught English? And will they be left behind on the math and science while they are being taught English? Does any dog speak English?

Phonics may work for dogs, but I don't get how it helps anyone learn to spell in English, American or otherwise.

Cough, Dough, Through, Thought, need I say more.

My mom taught me to read well before I graced any classroom. I understand that I was a bit of a pest during that period, hovering over her while she was reading and pointing out the words I knew.

What I learned was probably closer to whole language, as I believe that I see whole words, not the letters that they're made of, unless the word is unfamiliar.

This became pretty pronounced when I started to study German (where phonetics *does* work.) I can read pretty quickly until I hit a new word, or a compound word where the boundaries between the pieces is not so clear. Then I feel an almost painful grinding of mental gears as I try to parse the word one letter at a time. Ouch.

(A German friend of mine says that English spelling makes the written languge more like Chinese than a Western language.)

Phonics - good for dogs, OK for German, bad for English.

Thinking along the lines of Dr Allen.. I am concerned that because we would rate every kennel not just on how it did overall, but on how it did with each type of dog enrolled, a kennel would fail no matter how well the majority of dogs did if even a small group of low income bassets or Alsatians with English language difficulties did not make it over the bar no matter how much of the gap they closed. This despite the fact that our obedience and dog reading tests are not designed to allow for the degree of specificity to allow us to make judgements about small subgroups within the kennel. While I believe that understanding how the bassets are doing is important, this creates all manner of perverse incentives and asymetrical responses and will lead to 80 percent of the kennels being on the low performing list... And really, Brad, didn't you give your children Kane and Staiger? I would have thought, armed with that info, they would come up with a much better accountability plan than we did in DC.

I'd guess that a lot of municipalities have laws or suchnot against dogs riding in the beds of pickup trucks without being secured. As they should. But being belted while inside the vehicle? Not so much.

9. No poop left behind either.

My mother tells me that I taught myself to read off the backs of cereal boxes. I thought that my parents coached be, but she says not. Anyway I knew how to read when I entered first grade.

There I was part of the first class to get the whole-language approach (1952, rural Minnesota). I became a good speller (county champion, 1960, thank you) but I still frequently mispronounce long words, especially of non-English origin. Since I don't watch TV the problem is worse.

With phonics-vs.-whole-word and bilingual-ed-vs.-immersion the educational issue tends to be overwhelmed by associated political issues such as sex ed and immigration. (Progressive education: evolution, sex-ed, whole-word). I think that a mixed approach is probably best in both cases but the arguments are so heated it's no use getting involved at all.

Incidentally spelling problems seem more likely to come from phonics (not "foniks", see) than from whole-word. My niece has been writing since she was 5 or so and her spelling is awful because it's 95% fonetik. Looking it it's hard to realize that she's not exactly making mistakes; she's just following the rules when she should be remembering the exceptions.

Macauley, the historian taught himself to read, by following the bible as the lesson was read. Unfortunately because the front of the page was facing him, he could only read if the page was upside down,my other reading factoid concerns St Ambrose who could read without saying the words. Though I have often wondered if he moved his lips!.Could the children who move their lips whilst reading be using the phoneme method?

Peraí, que porcaría é esta, os nossos cachorros aprenden francês!

Testing facilities will be monitored by spray wielding cats.

The St. Anselm story comes from Augustine's _Confessions_ and, yes, it does mean reading without moving the lips; this was a new thing at the time, and marks the beginning of the shift from public to private in terms of the arena of the text (the completion of that shift requiring about the next millenium in other ways).

I just recall learning to read and teaching myself from the books read to me before I started school. But that experience and the subsequent experience of reading to a young child leaves me wondering how much is whole language and how much is phonics -- so many of the books seem to be organized around the alphabet and are at least implicitly stressing the basic phonemes.

The irregularities in English spelling are much overstressed -- most "extended" vocabulary which is likely to be learned later is quite regular, and it is by and large a small core of more common words which are irregular. Even there, teaching children a bit of linguistic history at the same time, which is not done, would help tremendously -- once one understands to any level the yogh -> gh transition with the loss of the back spirant the gh-related irregularities become far more transparent.

How about no. 11: Going to a kennel is not mandatory?

Difficulties in English are the 'fault' of priests who put Latin spelling over the language of the day. It still doesn't quite fit. Jared Diamond listed four versions of an English prayer (don't remember which book): one of the 20th, the 16th, the 12th and the 8th century. The first two are readable, the problems show in the next two.
English is of course, as is Dutch (and Frisian), still evolving. Usually there's no telling where it will go. There may come differences in spelling, maybe less. You can only be sure of the past: nobody uses This & That anymore.
A mini version of this evolving happens in kids. My parents still enjoy telling me what I once wanted for my birthday (and how I spelled it): a 'tai-meks'. Spelling it like that wouldn't happen to me now, even though I'm not a native English speaker. I don't think you have to worry about poor spelling in junior high. Provide more language and the problem (I think) corrects itself.

ps. Frisian spells Dutch 'brood' (English: bread) as 'brea' and 'kaas' (cheese) as 'tsies'. 'Boter' (butter) is 'bûter'. Relationship established or just spelling? This dog (hond, hûn) doesn't know.

My mother - a remedial reading teacher - taught me to read using phonics when I was 3. I've never had trouble spelling, I've never had trouble with pronunciation, I'm one of the fastest readers I personally know. My mom's become a bit of an extremist on phonics, but mostly in reaction to teachers and administrators who were adamantly opposed to her teaching it, despite the fact she was one of the most effective reading teachers in her district (her district eventually eliminated remedial reading altogether).

I'm all for flexibility, for teachers being able to use whatever works best in a given scenario, for tailoring their approach to children's needs. What gets me is the politics - the right claiming ownership of one method, the left claiming the other, and attacking those methods based on supposed political alignment - and the academic dogmatism of decrying the other method because it doesn't fit your well-wrought theory. Christ, it should be simple - just teach kids to read.

My older brother, who was 7, taught me to read when I was 5, so that I would leave him alone. Worked pretty well, I think.

Rik A friesian I met during the war, he had escaped from holland, told me that the local dialect was very close to his language, and he understood it better than standard english. The angles north of the border still give the "gh", more of the throatal noise than south of the border."Its a braw Bricght moonlicght nicght the nicght.

And why the racial predjudice against the mexican dog?

Will there be English as a second language teaching available for my Norwegian Elkhound? Norway was part of the coalition of the willing, you know, but my large doggie stayed home (we are keeping secret that his command to say is "ne bouge pas").

One fine winter's day when Piglet was brushing away the snow in front of his house, he happened to look up, and there was Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh was walking round and round in a circle, thinking of something else, and when Piglet called to him, he just went on walking.

"Hallo!" said Piglet, "what are you doing?"

"Hunting," said Pooh.

"Hunting what?"

"Tracking something," said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.

"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer

"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?"

"What do you think you'll answer?"

"I shall have to wait until I catch up with it," said Winnie-the-Pooh. "Now, look there." He pointed to the ground in front of him. "What do you see there?"

"Tracks," said Piglet. "Paw-marks." He gave a little squeak of excitement. "Oh, Pooh! Do you think it's a -- a -- a
Woozle?"

"It may be," said Pooh. "Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. You never can tell with paw-marks."

"Difficulties in English are the 'fault' of priests who put Latin spelling over the language of the day."

Er...I know it's _de rigueur_ mindlessly to blame priests for everything, but Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary probably had a much greater influence on English orthography than overzealous Latin-loving clerics.

& 9T9 % uv this duz knot aplie 2day inn sIbrspase.

c u L8tr

Oops, misspelled the last word, should have been "L8r". :)

I think Anne got it right: repetition, repetition, repetition. Who cares the method.

OK fine for dogs and seperate but equal cats, but what about flying attack monkeys ?

I am amazed that phonics is now right wing. I was taught by phonics in a very left wing alternative school. I definitely think phonics is progressive, because one works from a few simple rules to deduce the pronunciation rather than accepting the consensus (these letters are the same word as these sounds) without analysis.

I have to say that my deep sense left = phonics left and right = whatever they hell they call it has been passionate since I can remember reading gastroenteritis as gastroeenteritis for my mom when I was about 7. Believe me, I am not joking, I am shocked that phonics is viewed as right wing.

I generally agree with Orwell but disagree with his attack on "nu speling". I personally refused to learn unfonetic spellingas a matter of principle (the school was so alternative progressive that I was still a teacher's pet). I stil need a spel checker to avode spellling errors and I am ashamed of myself for being such a cowardly conformist that I use one.

I personally have made the comment that English spelling is about as easy as chinese spelling.

Oh by the way anyone notice how odd it is the
fillis shlafly spelled Phyllis Schlafly is a phan of fonics ?

Wouldn't be that she is trying to compensate for anything is it

And to hell with making kids learn how to spell. Some time in the past 27 years, I reluctantly admitted that standardized spelling is necessary at some time in the past 37 years (I think it was while reading a high school American history book and trying to figure out what the hell Increase Mather was trying to say).

Still it is very hard *not* to learn how to spell, if you word process with Word which underlines incorrectly spelled words in red and is my 6 year olds favorite computer program. Hell, I learned how to spell and all I had was word perfect.

Robert Waldmann (that's Waldmann not Waldman

Suddenly Winnie-the-Pooh stopped, and pointed excitedly in front of him. "Look!"

"What?" said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn't been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an exercising sort of way.

"The tracks!" said Pooh. "A third animal has joined the other two!" "Pooh!" cried Piglet "Do you think it is another Woozle?"

"No," said Pooh, "because it makes different marks. It is either Two Woozles and one, as it might be, Wizzle, or Two, as it might be, Wizzles and one, if so it is, Woozle. Let us continue to follow them."

I have to disagree with the statement that the irregularities of English are overstressed. Besides silent letters and borrowed spellings from Greek, French, and Latin, you have the enormous problem of the poor fit between the English alphabet and the English sounds.

What you end up with is a few reliable, learnable phonetic rules, plus large numbers of exceptions. "Phonics" is n't really phonetic -- it just teaches the exceptions in groups (words with ph=f, words with a silent gh, etc.)

Whole-word requires the learner to do his own abstracting, generalizing, and grouping of exceptions, whereas "phonics" does it for you. In the end, though, single exceptions are still taught by whole-word method by phonics people (E.G. "Worcester".)

Winston (Chihuahua, 4 lb., Rottweiler coloring) has asked me to tell you that your humor is over his head. (Empirically, that implies an altitude of at least nine inches.)

Ah, but the alphabetical fit problem is not limited to English -- it affects many languages with the Latin alphabet, since most of them have more than 26 different sounds. (Italian is extremely regular; but consider French and German). Even Latin itself had irregularities derived from naturalizing Greek words, and Greek had irregularities derived from pronunciation drift (partially addressed by a series of alphabetical reforms).

English would be a little clearer if it had kept the thorn, eth, and yogh, and used them consistently.

It is still basically true that, once the most common dipthongs and two-letter representations of phonemes are taken into account, most English words are "regular" in terms of a pronunciation mapping -- at least regular enough that sounding out a word will tell the reader what it is if it is in his or her spoken vocabulary (vowel values can be a pain, admittedly, but that's common to just about all languages without accents). And in most cases -- this is true of most words in this paragraph, for example -- a guess will be accurate on the first try.

The real irregularities are the small subset of words where pronunciation changes have been significant since the sixteenth century in standard English (e.g. the disappearance of the back spirant), and in words adopted directly from dialect; and incompletely naturalized words or phrases (mainly from French) which retain some level of foreign colouration.

One place where English is quite good in predictability is in word transformation on adoption. Aeneas, Elysium, Julius Caesar are clearer in English than (pardon the lack of accents) Enee, Elysee, Jules Cesar in French; and we don't read in the stem in adapting Greek names (thus Plato, not Platon).

I grant that the initial learning curve can be steep, but with a little dogged determination a great deal can be done ...

The issue of phonetics vs. whole word is not left vs. right, but right vs. reality. Experience shows that different methods work best for different students and different teachers. The right insists that only the phonetic method should be used.

How about scripted teaching everyone.

Self-taught reader here, by the age of 2.5-4 (Depending on who you ask). I'm guessing through the whole language method, considering that I learned just by getting a small vocabulary then filling it in as I would by asking my parents.

Phonics is good for verbal reading and recognition. However, kids are taught whole language methods whenever. Just not how to read.

Vocabulary skills are by necessity whole language. There are no rules..ok..a few..on what a word means.

So a mix of both is good. Only going by phonics results in kids that can read everything but can't comprehend what they are reading. Looks over content, so to speak.

I actually advocate a mixed phonics/whole-word approach, which is really the only one possible.

Phonics teaching may teach people how to pronounce new words they read, but will not teach people to spell new words they hear. So spelling is still whole-word. The most fanatical English teachers don't seem to be aware of the dilemma. Because of the spelling peculiarities, teaching people to sound out written words is a completely different thing than teaching people to write down new words from dictation. Seeing an exceptional spelling, it's often possible to guess the pronunciation, but hearing a new word, it's not necessarily possible to guess which alternative spelling is to be used. Even if every written form had only one pronunciation, the reverse would not be true.

In light of all of the early readers responding to this thread, let me admit that I was a resister. If I could not read, my dad and grandfather would read to me. I liked that a lot. That was a powerful motivation not to learn how to read, or at least not admit it, I forget.

First grade was the real world, so I learned to read right away.

I was the "brainy" older sister and taught myself to read by age 3.

My younger sister memorised her books and developed such atrocious handwriting nobody could tell whether she knew how to spell "dog."

Who was "brainy"?

I'n not that sure

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