All
of this explains why toward the end of his life, Blumenfeld summed up our national predicament this
way: "K-12 education is a criminal enterprise from top to bottom."
Isn't
it disgusting to find that our Education Establishment relied on the
"research" of psycho-sadists Pavlov and Luria? In order to
serve their Motherland, these guys would torment humans and animals until they
cracked.
Throughout our culture, dyslexia is
typically treated as a genetic defect that a child brings to the school.
If the child has this defect more or less from birth, it certainly can't
be the school's fault if he doesn't learn to read. How convenient!
The same malfeasant Education Establishment
that promotes sight-word memorization then promotes dyslexia as an all-purpose
excuse for widespread illiteracy. This is really diabolical. Raise
people in a dark cellar, and then complain when their vision is bad.
Dyslexia
organizations like to claim that dyslexics have different brain patterns, and
that's the big problem. Blumenfeld and phonics experts (such as Don Potter) claim that sight-word memorization creates
those altered brain patterns, and that is the big problem.
As Siegfried Engelmann put it, "when a respected 'educator'
indicates that a plan is based on new research into the development of the
brain, the typical parent is not in a good position to say, 'Baloney,' but odds
are pretty good that it is baloney." Engelmann coined the phrase "academic child
abuse." So-called dyslexia is a prime example of the results.
Reading
and phonics should be thought of as more or less
synonymous. That's the way it was from the time of the Hebrews and
Greeks forward. Starting around 1930, even though they already knew it wouldn't work, our education experts forced Look-say on
the country, and we have had an illiteracy crisis ever since. Cause and
effect are clear enough for anybody who can handle the truth.
Bruce
Deitrick Price explains theories and methods on his education sites Improve-Education.org.
(For info on his four new novels, see his literary site Lit4u.com.)
