How much proof is enough? For example, is a non-phonetic way of "teaching" reading proof that evil-doers are at work to destroy our society?
My little brother is three. I am teaching him to read. His first word, as I remember it, is: Kuh. That is the German word for cow. It’s easy teaching him to read. I take the first letter, 3 simple straight lines, K, write it, show it to him, and sound it out. He also sounds it out. He can also, even at 3, write K. Okay, soon the first letter is firmly in place. I move on to the second letter, and then the third. Teaching him to read that word takes maybe 10 minutes.
I cannot imagine trying to teach him to remember the “shape” - Kuh.
It makes no sense.
From sounding out one word, it’s so easy to go to sounding out other words starting with K - Kind, Katze, Kuchen, Kugel, Kaka.
I can’t imagine trying to get my brother to memorize those different shapes.
Anyhow, I was taught the advantages of alphabet literacy over image literacy. Alphabet literacy means you can learn to read in a few hours - though of course practice is needed. Image literacy - like with the Chinese and ancient Egyptian systems - takes years. In fact, not surprisingly, an alphabet system has been adopted (if I’m remembering right) in Japan and China.
Alphabets - those were quickly created for many of the non-literate societies that were encountered, for example in North America and Africa. No one tried to create an image system for any of those societies! Of course not. It would have been imbecility.
Yet in the West, non-phonetic ways of “teaching” “reading” have been adopted in many places.
For me - because I cannot believe that anyone could have been so stupid as to believe there are actually benefits to a non-phonetic way of teaching literacy - this proves that some very malevolent force is at work, a force intent on the destruction of Western societies.
I am not blaming the poor teachers forced to “teach” - instil - such a stupid way to “reading.”
I just cannot believe anyone with any authority could actually have believed a non-phonetic way of decoding words - seeing them as images - could be beneficial, better even than a phonetic way.
I know there is lots more proof that some very destructive force is at work against our societies. For me, this is proof enough.
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Here’s another story on the power inherent in phonetic reading. The first language I learned to read was English. I could speak German, but wasn’t taught how to read it. But I became so intrigued by the cover of a book my parents had, that I started sounding out the words. I got caught by the story, came to read faster and faster. In other words, by sounding out the words, I taught myself to read German. There is no way I could have done that if I didn’t know the sound of each letter.
German is much more phonetic than English, by the way (likewise, so is Spanish). In fact, my father told me that, when he was a boy in Austria, learning to read took maybe a couple of weeks. No spelling tests. It was all obvious. If you could say it, you could spell it.
Moving to anything non-phonetic. It’s worse than imbecilic, I would say. It’s criminal. The word evil comes to mind.
Last comment. George Bernard Shaw, a famous British playwright, left his considerable fortune (in 1950) to implementing a phonetic spelling of English. A few years ago, it finally became 100% obvious that this would not happen. Note: he certainly did not envision going from English, largely phonetic, to English, 100,000 images!!
Posted April 20, 2023
Thank you, a very good and important article. I will share this.
Thanks Elsa. Hard to put a date to the subversion/corruption of the teaching profession. The new teaching reading thing, was followed by new mathematics in UK. Date of that a bit hazy +- 2008. I do recall my darling daughter in law attending the new maths classes for parents at the granddaughters school. She shook her head & was seriously confused as to why a new way was even required.