Imagine teaching methods are food...

Imagine that you are eating some good old home cooked food (like my Granny used to make on the farm).  It's nourishing, local and it meets all nutritional needs.

Now imagine that there is a new way to prepare food. 
It's fast, cheap, it tastes good and for some people it meets their nutritional needs (or at least it seems to).  But mostly it's fast and goes down easily for most folks and that seems good.

Now imagine that the cheap fast food is not good for everyone.  For some people it's actually a slow working poison.  They don't notice it at first but as time goes on it becomes more and more obvious that it doesn't meet their nutritional needs.

Pretty soon there are so many complications with that fast, cheap food that they don't even really realize it was a problem with the food in the first place.

To my thinking this is what has happened with teaching children to read.  It used to be there were phonics, you know, sound-out-the-word, even Sesame Street had lots of phonics. But somewhere along the line someone realized that site words worked faster for most kids. Never mind that it didn't work for everyone there were always going to be some slow-pokes in any pack right? 

The whole teaching world was abuzz, faster, better.  Just teach site words- terrific, they all said to each other.  So Kindergarten became more like first grade, get rid of all those toys and wasted play time, we know how to teach these kids to READ. First grade was more like second grade and if you wanted a break into a school-like setting you'd better go to a Preschool and/or Pre-Kindergarten class (which was really more like what Kindergarten used to be like).

Faster. Cheaper. Easier.

Only for 20% of the population that sort of teaching is a slow working poison.  It doesn't teach them to read. It doesn't meet their mind's nutritional needs. 

So those people are the victims of this great new technology and they are left to fend for themselves and let me tell you that is what this blog is all about, a mother seeing her daughter already starting to starve.  I will help her gather the food she needs and in the process maybe someone will read this and it will help them not to starve also.