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Subject:Re: Friday Fun: What Pet Peeve makes you puke? From:elefino <kevinmcl -at- magma -dot- ca> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Sun, 23 Apr 2006 19:02:54 -0400
On Friday 21 April 2006 18:36, Gene Kim-Eng wrote (about epidemic of
homonym substitutions):
> It's actually worse than that. During the 70's many schools
> latched onto a harebrained education theory that it was *only*
> necessary to teach the sounds and that somehow the students
> would eventually notice the difference in spelling themselves.
> Do a search on "whole language" reading instruction.
Around here, it wasn't so much the schools, per se, that latched
onto "whole language" and other harebrained schemes, it was
the government, that did the latching and the schools that were
compelled (at least, the government-run ones) to go along.
The horror, the horror!
Certainly some private schools fell for those pedagogical nightmares,
but they were quick to see what wasn't working and move on
(or back) to something more practical. Their customers wouldn't
let them retain ineffective or damaging methods.
Government schools, ruled by bureaucrats, burned through entire
generations of kids before getting their fiefdoms turned in new
directions. Sorta like turning an ocean liner, when the other guy is
driving a speedboat.
Kevin
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