I’m glad you found this piece useful, Nick. In my view, the hallmark of a scientist is a reluctance to proselytize. Scientists seek understanding, not ideological commitment. SoR is an attempt to gain adherents to pressure policymakers to make laws regarding what other scientists MUST believe. It’s an overthrow of evidence and an authorizing of conclusion.
My son is right in the middle of it. Teachers have little freedom to adapt their approaches to how he is learning and engaging. Challenging times ahead.
I empathize with you. As a reading person, I clocked my own daughter on an informal reading inventory at a sixth grade oral reading level when she was four years old. Fortunately, she wasn’t required to sit through phonics lessons in kindergarten and first grade. As a reading person, thirty odd years ago when she was a kid, I understood the significance of phonics as a teaching strategy when appropriate, even for precocious readers when it came to spelling. Laws mandating phonics are insidious because many young teachers are getting the message that all we need is phonics. The effects on their teaching will live on after the nonsense is gone.
Every time "science" is evoked in discourse, you have to start digging, am I right?
I appreciate your deep reading here. The social sciences seem to always want to dissolve the "social" designation and convert into a "hard" science.
I’m glad you found this piece useful, Nick. In my view, the hallmark of a scientist is a reluctance to proselytize. Scientists seek understanding, not ideological commitment. SoR is an attempt to gain adherents to pressure policymakers to make laws regarding what other scientists MUST believe. It’s an overthrow of evidence and an authorizing of conclusion.
My son is right in the middle of it. Teachers have little freedom to adapt their approaches to how he is learning and engaging. Challenging times ahead.
I empathize with you. As a reading person, I clocked my own daughter on an informal reading inventory at a sixth grade oral reading level when she was four years old. Fortunately, she wasn’t required to sit through phonics lessons in kindergarten and first grade. As a reading person, thirty odd years ago when she was a kid, I understood the significance of phonics as a teaching strategy when appropriate, even for precocious readers when it came to spelling. Laws mandating phonics are insidious because many young teachers are getting the message that all we need is phonics. The effects on their teaching will live on after the nonsense is gone.