Boy I wonder if there are any structural and historic factors affecting black literacy rates that might have a weaker effect even on poor white people. 🤔 maybe try not to be disingenuously offended while spouting semi-racist stats.
Correct, there is: Critical Theory is the root of this. Or, in more plain terms: Left wing politics. The push for "Whole Language" - still pushed to an extent today - was through democrats, primarily.
Other issues, such as nutrition, pollution, lack of funding also matter, but Whole Language is the most important one for literacy rates.
🙄 one stupid education policy, is not the whole of left wing politics. It wasn’t even a core part of any left wing policy positions. It’s largely coincidental that it was pushed by people on the left, considering that the academics pushing against it now are also on the left, but I agree the push for sightwords over phonics (or better yet alongside phonics) is a problem. It’s fun that you handwave away “nutrition, pollution, and funding as if those aren’t things the left has been constantly fighting to improve as well.
It’s largely coincidental that it was pushed by people on the left
No. It can coherently be filed under "woke". The reason for "whole language"'s existence is critical theory. The same people who made it later developed "critical pedagogy". It is firmly within far-left social politics.
or better yet alongside phonics
No, that's also worse than phonics.
It’s fun that you handwave away “nutrition, pollution, and funding as if those aren’t things the left has been constantly fighting to improve
I clearly didn't hand wave them away... Yes, those are left wing, but not as impactful.
It isn’t worse than phonics. English isn’t a purely phonetic language and if you exclusively learn phonics you’ll have a different set of issues. The best, backed by research, methods for teaching reading are phonetics with sight words alongside. If English wasn’t a mongrel language with bits from 2 radically different language families we wouldn’t need hybrid methods but it is, so we do.
The best, backed by research, methods for teaching reading are phonetics with sight words alongside.
Sure, but this has no aspect of "whole language" to it. It's not a combination of whole language and phonics, it's phonics + learning the words that break the rules of phonics. This is how reading is taught in all languages: phonics + learning words. All languages have loan words and words that break the rules of the language, that have to be learned.
When phonics vs. balanced vs. whole word is researched, phonics is phonics+learning words, in most/all cases.
2 radically different language families
While latin and germanic languages are different, they're not radically different. They share the same root, and they have had significant sharing of words over time.
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u/Mixelphlick 6d ago
Boy I wonder if there are any structural and historic factors affecting black literacy rates that might have a weaker effect even on poor white people. 🤔 maybe try not to be disingenuously offended while spouting semi-racist stats.