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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

A Lesson for Ms. Fort

An Interview with F. Stewart Kallinger: A Lesson for Ms. Fort
Michael F. Shaughnessy –

1) Tell us about your experiences teaching reading to college students.
Teaching reading to freshmen in NYC’s community colleges has been very frustrating. For example, if I assigned a chapter in a novel for homework, the lazy responses I received during the next session were, “I didn’t get a chance to read it,” or “I forgot to read it.” And the students who said that they actually did read the chapter usually couldn’t answer any of my questions. First they looked squeamish when I called on them, then they started turning the pages of the chapter very slowly, trying to find the answer; or they reluctantly admitted that they forgot what they had read in the chapter. This happened all the time.

2) When you say “reading” are you talking about reading comprehension, reading rate or fluency?
 
About 90% of the students in my freshman remedial reading classes still did not know all the sounds of the alphabet. I knew this because I always asked each student, during a conference, to sound out all the letters, and almost no one knew all the sounds. Because of this, they could only sound out familiar-looking words, but if any of them came across a strange-looking, multi-syllabic word, that student would stop and try almost painfully to guess, then finally gave up.

3) How do, or how can high school students get thru high school with such poor reading skills? Are they all special education students, or dyslexic?......
4) How do the parents and family fit into all this?........
5) I see thousands of students either texting or listening to music all the time- very few students do I see reading. Is there anything the schools can do?.......
6) Parental involvement is crucial – but how does the average teacher or principal get those parents involved?
7) Are there really “failing schools” or is it more of a lack of administrative support?
8) Tell us about your book – Lesson for Ms Fort........

My Take - Irrespective of what's said here there's one thing abundantly clear:  America's schools are failing to teach students fundamental skills.  They can't read, they can't write, they can't work basic math.  Then it must also be clear no matter how much money we're told to keep throwing at the teachers - teachers are failing to do their jobs.  Ergo-----they're overpaid, underworked and need to be fired, starting at the administration level!   If kids never learn to read why in the world would we think they're learning how to think? The socialist goal of making sure the apple falls as far away from the tree as possible is now a leftist success story - students are now too stupid to resist any stupidity the leftists promote. 

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