Political Forums - Reading and Public Schools in Georgia

The suspense is over. The contest for Most Revealing Newspaper Headline of the Year has already been won. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on September 4th, knocked out all the competition with this gem:

"Reading climbs priority ladder”

One of the nation’s great liberal newspapers reveals in no uncertain terms that reading has been nothing special in the state of Georgia for many decades. And even now, after an extraordinary effort by the new governor, it is going to be promoted only PARTWAY to where it belongs.

This is an astonishing admission, and helps explain why one-third of public school students can’t read at grade level, and why Georgia ranks among the dozen most illiterate states.

Reading is without question the most important skill that children can learn. Probably it is more important than the others combined. It should have always been the #1 priority. That it was allowed to drift down to fourth, seventh or whatever could happen only if incompetent and irresponsible people were in charge. (These faux-experts might appropriately be charged with educational malpractice.)

Typically, the media work to protect the Education Establishment; our education commissars are allowed to claim they adore literacy. But now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has ripped away the veil and revealed to the world that the people in charge don’t value reading very highly at all. And as reading goes, so go all the other subjects. A child who cannot read can’t learn history, geography, science, literature, current events, or very much else.

Another amazing thing about the story is that the governor is said to be exploring all kinds of complex, expensive fixes to reverse the decline that should never have been allowed to happen, for example: “the idea of a pay differential for topnotch teachers willing to work with some of the state’s youngest students.”

Otherwise, the article wants to be very clear that reading is oh-so-important in Georgia; and if this governor has his way, reading will most assuredly move a few notches higher on the priority ladder.

Here’s a wild idea. What if Governor Deal endorsed a phonics program and started making sure Georgia’s kids can read in the first grade. Then he could bring about the improvement he says he wants without administrative maneuvers or extra expense. Easy as A-B-C. Tell him.

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In fairness to Georgia, reading is a disaster all across the country. Flawed methods are commonly used, in particular, variations of Whole Word, Sight Words, Dolch Words, Balanced Literacy and the like. (All of these are pernicious because they force children to memorize phonetic words as graphic designs.) Use of these bogus techniques has resulted in 50 million functional illiterates. Indeed, the assault on reading is one of the most intriguing stories of the 20th century. A good case can be made that this assault is, in fact, the crime of the century. The crime continues to unfold in Georgia and the other 49 states.

(For a 3-minute graphic video explaining what happened to reading, see: “The Biggest Crime in American History” -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfzo02gWqF0 )

Original article in AJC: http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-poli...r-1156769.html

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