Reading and Public Schools in Georgia
 

A note to anyone passionate about education. Please help my gambit:

I saw a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with the title "Reading climbs priority ladder" and I saw an easy way to stir up debate.

Here's the piece I put in freerepublic--

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2777768/posts

I'm coming from a conservative or traditionalist perspective. Reading is really important. If you agree, then write/post/comment/blog/editorialize/agitate about this matter. Your Governor Deal is not aiming high enough. Georgia is settling for high illiteracy.

Bruce Deitrick Price

OMG Son, you're a card carrying member of the Free Republic???

You've just been regulated to lower than whale shit status in these parts.

I'd like to respond to your article, but I'm too tired.

Chas

Do It For The Children
 

I'm an education activist. I'm on 20 sites. I put things where i think or hope that the members will be open to new ideas. In fact, the people on FreeRepublic usually leave very smart comments. See for yourself.

Bruce Deitrick Price
Improve-Education.org

I agree that education is an extremely important undertaking. It was sufficiently important to my family that we bought a home in the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas.

I'm afraid, however, that a plea to Georgia citizens might get a feeble response here. I'm not aware of any regular posters who admit to living there.

Regards,

D-Ray

Your site is certainly colorful. I also like your prose. Welcome to Politcal Chat. I read your first article and your bio page and found both interesting. I have read some freeper stuff, but much prefer keeping an on the opponents.

Thanks
 

Keep in mind that FreeRepublic is huge and my articles there go quickly to Google. Search engines in Georgia will pick up the state name, and editors will say, what's this...? That's the plan.

All black areas suffer from what is called the "basketball syndrome": an inordinate amount of time and effort spent on sports. Everything else is affected including reading.

Emphasis on sports does not belong to any racial group. Check out the lily white suburbs in Texas and you're going to find some pretty crazy football boosters.

From studies I've seen, poor scores in primarily minority areas have much more to do with poverty than race (although poverty is more prevalent in minority neighborhoods). I was shocked to find out that half of the kids in the elementary school that my kids attended are from families eligible for low income assistance. This is a mostly white suburban neighborhood in an affluent county. The correlation between poverty and academic achievement shows there too. The reading and math scores were low, particularly for the Shawnee Mission School District.

Regards,

D-Ray

Futball, or any team sport, is probably the most important lesson taught in public skools.

You have a relatively few players who are blindly supported by the student body and community as a whole, with vast amounts of time, energy, and money being spend for the 60 minutes on Friday night.

The whole becomes as one, and develops an air of superiority which, no matter how shitty the home town town team actually is, still considers them to be the finest in the land.

It prepares one for a life of party politics, and to take his place as a tiny cog making the big wheel go around.

And any dumb ass who is stupid enough to point out that their chosen WR couldn't catch a ball even if you painted stripes on it will learn a practical lesson in the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Chas

If you are really serious about getting children proficiency in reading and writing take away their cell phones.

I caught a little of a teacher interview yesterday, she said she's got inbound children that don't know their colors let alone alphabet.

Very good Bruce. Reading is skill 1.

It appears your schools share some things with Clevelands. Perhaps instead of worrying about the buildings (Cleveland rebuilt their schools recently with 1/2 of the cost - 500 mil - paid by the state: palaces of decreptitude) they should worry more about head start.

Pete

And put a block on the cartoon channel.

Chas

Bububut Bugs Bunny exposes children to classical music!!

And crossdressing.

Pete

I didn't know Georgians could read. How else do you explain Newt Gingrich and Saxby Chambliss, much less Lester Maddox?;)

That one works fairly well. We banned the TV and video games on school nights, so they had to find something else to distract them.

Regards,

D-Ray

My dad got rid of the TV when I was 9. We did not have a tv in the house until my parents divorced when I was 16. I read three novels a week in that time. I am sure it helped me a lot in both school and in college.

In Colorado we have a program in the schools called "AR" - advanced reading. This is a program where the parents have to sign a contract and have the kids read 20 minutes a day(or more). Then the kids take a test on that book at school. They get a grade in AR just like if it was a class at school. Every kid has to achieve so many points to pass. In otherwords, the can take one test and get the points they need, or they can take 50 tests and get the points they need - this is kind of the weekness. It would have been better if they gave an acutal grade(pecent earned per test) and a minimum number of points needed. Still, it is a good idea that just needs a little more tweaking.

In New York I noticed poor Chinese, Koreans, Indians from Guyana end up in the top schools. What I noticed also that they have in common is a six day school and shorter summer holiday. Their parents sacrifice and pay for Saturday classes. The other minority kids are practicing basketball 24/7 and are left behind in the scholastic world.
There is an area in Flatbush Brooklyn which produced some fine students whose parents were the poorest on this earth....Haitian refugees!

Poverty is not an absolute barrier to academic achievement, but it is a hindrance. AA gifted hurdler can run the hurdles faster than most folks can run on a flat surface. There are kids who are going to achieve no matter what the environment.

It is a point that some communities are more committed to academic achievement than others. Unfortunately, many in our culture have come to look askance at dedication to academics. Best not stick your nose too deep into that book or you might be considered an "elite."

Regards,

D-Ray

Often a black youth (especially male) speaking "proper" English is considered suspect by his or her peers.

Down here in Bugtussell, "proper" English means you don't use over two cuss words in succession.

Chas

So, does son of a bitch count as one or four?

Regards,

D-Ray

BAM!!

But for goodness sake, don't call any hillbilly a SOB no matter how well you know him.

Pete

Don,

Sumbitch counts as one. Gawdamm sumbitch counts as two.

Pete,

You can call a hillbilly a SOB all day long, as long as you're smiling.

Hell, if I didn't know any better, I'd think that's my name.

Chas

You bring laughter to this house.
Good one!

Thank you sir. I had no doubt that you would clarify that for me. You're one useful sumbitch. :D

Regards,

D-Ray

To the OP. I apologize for what has happened to your thread. I think most of us here were the kind who sat in the back of the class and shot spit-wads. We are incorrigible, and besides that, we can't be rehabilitated.

Regards,

D-Ray

I can only speak for myself, but my teachers never woke me up when I was sleeping in class.

Not that I have anything against learning, it's just that I've always been a square peg in a world full of round holes.

Chas

MAde me think of this old cartoon I saw sometime ago.

Brilliant!

Was it Will Durant who said "Those who do not know their own history are condemned to repeat it."

Chas, West Virginny 'billies must not be as easygoing :)

Although I had a nice guy tell me 'Don'tchew know? We're not called hillbillies anymore. We's Mountian Men naow.' :D

Pete

Why Georgia Has So Much Illiteracy--TAKE 2
 

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.


-------------------------

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


.

I tried again under Politics. No mention of FreeRepublic, which is after all only a conduit for the piece. That piece is now here:

Why Georgia Has So Much Illiteracy--TAKE 2

Cell phones and texting have as much to do with illiteracy as anything.

We have to work at being hillbillies 'round here, being it's our heritage and all.

The last truly great one died 20 years ago. And Bugtussell has deteriorated to the point to we have more corporate fast food joints than likker stores!!!

It's a sad state of affairs, actually.

Chas

Who was the last great one?

Pete

Old guy whose first name was Phillip.

Lived way out in the sticks, heated with wood, his electricity consisted of one light bulb hanging from the ceiling, drove a Model A, and got more on his first Socialist Security check than he ever paid in.

He bought me a can of pink salmon once. I told him I didn't want to take it, and he told me, "You might as well, you're paying for it."

And people thought he was crazy.

Chas

That is awesome!

Pete