In this thread Dopers are reliving their experiences with the New Math.
I experienced it, but it never bothered me.
I also was taught phonics from first grade on. Phonics is based upon the grossly flawed notion that in English words are spelled the way they sound.
In my opinion, it’s because of my learning Phonics first that I, to this day, have grave difficulties spelling simple, Germanic words. For a nice, snobby, Latinate word, I’m unlikely to misspell it. But “cough,” “caught,” and other staples of normal speech always look wrong to me when I’m writing them out, because I expect them to be spelled the way that they sound. And they aren’t.
I am a non-victim of phonics. I think it is much better than whole-language. Too a large degree, pronounciation follows a certain set of rules. If you learn that an “e” following a vowel and consonant at the end of a word makes it a “hard” sound then you can read rape, ripe, rope, etc. Makes much more sense than learning each word separately. Yes, there are exceptions. You have to learn those, but it’s less to learn than having to memorize each word individually.
See this article for a simple explanation of some of the rules governing English orthography. There are multiple ways to write many phonemes, but it is false to say there is no relationship between English orthography and phonemics.
What he said. If I were starting this thread, the title would be “Were you a victim of whole language?”. (Except, of course, the “too” should have been “to”.)
Considering the demographics of this place, it might be asked “Were you a victim of ITA?”
My first books in school were the Norton Readers - Janet and John/Dick and Jane. I don’t know if they count as “phonics”, I honestly don’t remember learning to read. I could read (according to my parents, and I have nothing in my own memory to contradict it) before I could walk properly.
I changed schools during first grade. My prior school only did memorization, and that’s what I had been learning. The new school did both memorization and phonics, with the default being phonics. Because my records were rather late in coming, I was placed in with the phonics 1st grade.
Confused the ever living hell out of me. I could read the words just fine, but would invariably get marked wrong for not being able to break up the sounds into little boxes or whatever phonics is all about, and the teacher thought (since I could read) that I wasn’t breaking up the words right just to be contrary. The grizzly old woman would not believe me when I said, on numerous occasions, that I had no idea what was going on or what the exercise was even supposed to be about (this was the first I’d ever heard of this “phonics” notion). I suffered three weeks of that before my records finally got through and I was moved to the other class.
That put me off phonics right there.
Plus, in the good class, we got cheap peanut butter and our choice of two kinds of crackers for snack break every day. See? Proof that phonics is evil.
I was shocked when I grew up and found out that some places taught reading WITHOUT phonics. Shocked the shit out of me. I believe that when you learn phonics, you automatically switch over to the whole language method as words become familiar and you integrate them into your vocabulary. The reverse does not hold tue however. Whole language seems limiting and dangerous. It would be scary if someone grew up to only understand words like they are hieroglyphic symbols.
I was very shocked to hear that many schools have dropped phonics. I grew up with it and am a superb speller. It has also helped with the pronunciation of those pesky polish names and german words that I’ve encountered.
You can take my phonics from me over my dead body.
As for New Math, I have to say that I have been in denial about any new mathematical concept since about 1976.
I think phonics is the best (practical) way to teach kids to read and spell. It worked for me.
But, in the 4th graded I switched from a Catholic school to a pretty elite private school and we had the Carden method, which involved different marks and controls you had to do on every word, kindof making it look like a dictionary pronunciation key. Once I understood it, I did well at it and now there are very few words in the English language I can’t spell.
But you have to have every teacher in the school heavily trained on how to teach this method in order for it to work, so it’s not like the local PS can just decide to try it for a semester and see how it works.
I have no clue how I learned to read. I knew how to read by the age of three, and thus ignored the teacher when she was teaching the other kids (hey, I was smart, but I was also a smart<i>ass</i>). Spelling. . .well, it was mostly memorization for me. I know that I eventually figured phonics out, though, 'cause I’m good at sounding things out.
I know, though, that my younger sister had trouble with phonics. She learned with whole language, and it doesn’t seem to have done her any harm. She used to be a very bad speller, but she’s gotten over that.
I’m a fan of phonics. It was how I learned to read and it’s served me well all my life. I’m also a good speller and it’s easy for me recall words after seeing them in print.
I’ve made a few mistakes in speaking words though…the day my grandmother laughed for hours when I pointed out an ‘indention’ in my hand…when I proudly told my 6th grade teacher I thought our extra homework was super fluous…
Any word with a lot of vowels usually gives me pause.
I grew up with phonics but not to the exclusion of “just memorize the way the damn things are spelled”, aside from which, for reasons I can’t explain, I just seemed to absorb the spelling of words as quickly as the vocabulary itself. To know of a word meant to know how to spell it.
Whatever edge I had flattened out so that by high school I wasn’t a national spelling bee candidate or anything, but back in 3rd grade I would’ve torn apart local high school competitions.
Phonics is the way spelling ought to be encoded, and that attitude made me an easy conquest for the International Phonetic Alphabet when first I ran across it.
**Carden Schools (Pre-K - 10th Grade) – Are committed to the belief that every child wants to learn and that if that child fails to learn, it is because the teacher has failed to teach. Mae Carden, creator of the Carden Method, believed that a phonetically based, well-integrated language-arts curriculum was essential to academic achievement and that the formation of a child’s character should be a primary goal of education.
With the Carden reading method, children in kindergarten start to learn the sounds associated with consonants and vowels and acquire the ability to sound out almost any word by themselves. To encourage students to develop the ability to form a mental image of the word, the pages of Carden readers do not contain pictures.
A typical Carden school is organized in “forms” of approximately 20 students, based on their level of academic skill rather than their ages. Within each form, the children are grouped again according to their skill level. The teacher then spends time with each group while the other children are working on their own
Well, we had grades, just like every other school, but each grade was broken up into classes by academic skill so as to allow the advanced to learn at a faster pace than the…uhhh…retarded (hey, it’s the opposite of advanced!)
When I first went to the school, there was well over 1000 students grades Pre-K to 8. In the early 90s after I graduated, the enrollment declined drastically and they eventually had to shut the place down. I think it got too expensive to run and parents weren’t willing to pay the $8000 a year tuition.
The school was open from the early 60s to around 1994. I’m pretty sure that the owners of the school were either personal friends of Mae Carden or maybe even relatives. The owners were an old couple…I only met them once as they retired and moved away the year I started at their school. They were both in their late 80s/early 90s then in 1982.
