Free Market Reading Center Puts Public Schools To Shame
In my book, "Public Schools, Public Menace," I discuss the frightening fact that public schools in this country are turning out millions of students who can barely read their own high-school diplomas. Illiteracy rates in many public schools can range from 30 percent to over 70 percent, especially in low-income minority areas.
Public schools have twelve years to teach children to read even at a basic level, yet can't seem to manage this simple task. The reason? --- the whole-language reading method (sometimes called "balanced reading instruction") used by most public schools today. Whole-language instruction forces students to "read" my memorizing words, like Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese picture-words. Instead of having students use our miraculous and convenient alphabet to sound out each letter of a word and put the sounds together, the school tells students to make believe the word is a picture. Instead of sounding-out each letter in m-o-t-h-e-r and putting the sounds together, our public-school "experts" make kids look at and say the word "mother" over and over again from dumbed-down reading books, and memorize what the word "looks" like. Sound absurd? Yes, it is, yet this is the reading method public schools inflict on your children.
The solution, of course, is to teach children using a strict phonics method. The genius of the English language (and other European languages) is the way it simplifies learning to read by using an alphabet of only 26 letters. The letters really stand for sounds. Sound out each letter or letter-combination, put the sounds together, and a child can "read" the word. In fact, once the child learns the phonics method well, he or she can sound-out and then "read" ANY word. Powerful stuff. Children whose reading ability is crippled by whole-language instruction can usually memorize only a few hundred words. A child who learns to read with phonics, can read hundreds of thousands of words.
The proof is in the pudding. Aspen Learning Systems, a subsidiary of Knowledge Universe company, recently opened Colorado's first privately-run reading center in Denver. Yes, that's right, a school that concentrates on teaching kids to read. Aspen's reading center gives kids a nine-week reading course that emphasizes heavy phonics. The result? In the first quarter of 1999, students gained an average of two years and four months in reading ability after they completed the course. Only nine weeks. Compare that to the twelve years your kids have to suffer through in public school, and still graduate with poor reading skills.
As usual, free-market, competitive schools that must prove themselves to parents who pay them directly, put public schools to shame. Parents, don't settle for public schools when there are far better alternatives available to you in the free-market.
by Joel Turtel
Read more information about "Public Schools, Public Menace."