Friday 2 November 2007
Read It And Weep?
We all know the problem. The solution is synthetic phonics. It works. Insist on it, as the people who don't want you to have it do insist on it for their own children. As with so many other things, that's why they don't want yours to have it: they'd have wasted a fortune on school fees or wildly inflated house prices if they let everyone else have these things, too.
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Er, who doesn't want you to have it? Given that its prescribed govt policy to teach literacy using synthetic phonics?
ReplyDeleteWell, try getting it, then. "Prescribed govt policy", indeed...
ReplyDeleteA thousand apologies for accidentally deleting a comment as follows:
ReplyDelete"David, I'm puzzled.
A month ago you urged us to boycott all newspapers and magazines that published articles by Oliver Kamm. As a supporter of the British People's Alliance, of course I went straight down to the newsagents and cancelled my subscription to the Times.
But now here you are, linking to an article in the Times. What gives?"
You don't have to pay to read it here.
I think you and Jon may both be too old, David. Doesn't mean children can't get it.
ReplyDeleteAsk any primary school teacher David - synthetic phonics is great in reception and Year 1, but its negative effects are evident throughout the rest of their school careers as children are unable to spell unless the work is as it sounds.
ReplyDeleteGovernment policy? Like that makes a difference!
ReplyDeleteThe education Establishment is a law unto itself. It just does what it likes and then sends its own children to completely different schools from everybody else's. But we all have to pay for both sets of schools.
Synthetic phonics is barely taught in state primary schools outside that elite sector. Melanie Phillips and Peter Hitchens have been chronicling this for years, and the only answer they ever get is the one from A Primary School Teacher, not the one from Jon.
If you don't believe that government policy makes any difference, why are you so concerned to change government policy? What would make a difference?
ReplyDeleteI've known Jon since he was a student and he comes from exactly that "private state school" background, like the little Blairs. If he's teaching, then it will be somewhere like that.
ReplyDeleteI'm about David's age and in our day you could certainly still get it in the normal state sector. It seems to have been rooted out during the alleged counter-revolution of High Thatcherism, like so many other really conservative things.
But then, perhaps confining these things to the economic elite, but still letting them charge everyone else for them, really was counter-revolutionary after all. It's just that the revolution wasn't in the Sixties.
I can't speak for Anonymous 4:58 PM, but I want to change both the policy and the government itself. The former change is useless without the latter, which will not and cannot happen except by removing and replacing the present Political Class.
ReplyDeleteRemoving and replacing the political class?
ReplyDeleteWhich of the jobs which they currently do will you destroy? How will you destroy them? If you don't destroy the jobs, how will you stop them getting them, or how will you stop different people getting them and becoming a new de facto political class?
Ok, a few comments (and David, please put up my last post explaining my position, in which I didn't swear)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 4.58 - I'm sorry, but you're just wrong. You may have been right a few years ago, but then the government commissioned the Rose Review
http://tinyurl.com/2ne6p3
which specifically recommended synthetic phonics as the way to teach literacy in primary schools. The govt accepted this, and changes were made to the curriculum from this academic year onwards. Synthetic phonics is taught in every primary school across the country. All your rhetoric around "only an elite" is out of date and wrong. And Peter Hitchens and Melanie Philips says it doesn't happen? Well then, they must be right. More right than Ofsted, say. Or maybe not. Sorry - synthetic phonics is taught - fact.
T - you're an anonymous coward. And if you did know me at university, you obviously didn't do that well, otherwise you would know that I wasn't actually educated at private school. And no, for what it's worth, I'm not a teacher. I just happen to know what is and isn't current government policy and school practice, unlike certain commentators who write polemics based on half truths, assertion, and out of date anecdotes.
I seem to be the only one here who has provided facts. No one else has shown any proof that only an elite of schools teach synthetic phonics. That may be because it isn't true.
And I never said it. I only said that it could be hard to get, and I set out why.
ReplyDeleteWhat has been said about the effectiveness or otherwise of "government policy" in education is only too accurate. It depends on the government. Over the last forty years, nuff said.
The description of you as "from exactly that "private state school" background, like the little Blairs" suggests someone who does indeed know you quite well (or is a very good guesser), Jon. But that's pretty much off topic, I suppose.
Anonymous 5:47 PM, have you ever raed anything on this blog?
ReplyDeleteActually, a lot of the hanger-on "jobs" could be abolished quite easily and to tremendous public benefit. But, again, we're off topic. Although I'll certainly be returning to that one.
Actually, David, you did. You didn’t say it ‘could be hard to get’, you said
ReplyDelete“the people who don’t want you to have it”
“that’s why they don’t want yours to have it”
“if they let everyone else have these things too”
“well try getting it then”
That sounds like saying that the ‘ordinary person’ can’t get it.
Except that they can And it is taught in every primary school in the land. You somehow claim that it is not really being taught anyway, despite it being policy. Well, I was last in a school last week, and they were teaching it. And before that, I was in another school the week before that, and they were also teaching it. Please tell me the last time you were in a school, and what they were teaching instead. And what their reasoning was for not following the prescribed curriculum.
And answer this as well- if there really was a conspiracy to deny children this method, then why is it government policy? After all, this policy has only changed in the past year or so. Why bother having a change? Why not continue to insist that phonics is not the best method for teaching literacy?
You mean exactly the way A Primary School Teacher does? Read THAT and weep, all right.
ReplyDelete