ALL PHONICS IS GOOD

For the first time in the history of the world, there has been a commercial focus on phonics for young children. There is money to be made in text books. It is a move being made to repair the damage done to the education of students over 40 years ago.

Who knows what was the cause of the destruction of the traditional curriculum? Was it the anti-Vietnam teachers seeking to destroy all authority over children who were now to be free.

There was to be no more enforced study. Focus was to be on the intellect not the memory claimed a large gaggle of half-educated educators. 

Was it the communist teachers seeking to destroy the US capacity to overtake the Soviets in the technological race? Perhaps the anti-communist senators in the US should have looked for communists among teachers not actors and film producers. 

The US education system may have suffered extensive sabotage at the hands of communist teachers which extended around the world. 

The US senators helped the success of sabotage by throwing out literacy. Now the sabotage has moved to gay and lesbian sexuality in school curriculum. The US curriculum is being dumbed down and overtaken by Asian education systems.

The Soviets had put a satellite Sputnik into space in 1957 that resulted in massive trauma in the corridors of power of the USA and questioning of the education standards of the US nation.  

Students were not to chant their multiplication tables. Today there would be large numbers of teachers who do not know their tables having never learned as children when their minds were blank slates waiting to be written upon.

There would be no more memorization of facts. Students were to intellectualize not memorize. Incorrect spelling was not to require writing out the words 50 times. Students were not to learn and chant poetry.

It became even worse in Papua New Guinea when a group of fool expatriate so-called educators decreed that for the first two years of school, the children were to learn only their vernacular tongue. 

Students and teachers learned in a language separate from English leaving many students illiterate. 

Even today, we have only to visit church drop-out school centres in Papua New Guinea to hear the view expressed that many students did not make it because they did not understand English written or spoken. 

I have visited Catholic and Lutheran centres in Lae. Many students may well sit in class and think in Tok Pisin then translate into English. That is why they can not pass their Written Expression exams in grade 10.

But now we are back to teaching English in elementary school. But many elementary teachers do not understand English well enough to teach the basics to children. First we have to teach phonics to teachers before they can teach the children.

But all phonics is good in that it is an improvement on teaching Tok Pisin or other vernacular. Teachers are to teach words to students starting off with the alphabet. Students learn the symbols of language, then the language.

They learn words which opens the door to reading charts and then books. Many students in Papua New Guinea never read anything not even newspapers. How can they do that if they do not even know words?

But many students have no desire to know anything. How can they learn if they do not ever want to open a newspaper or read any document? Many just want to leave school and drink beer or home brew.

All phonics is good if it helps the students to read words, sentences, thoughts, plans and ideas. It does not stop in elementary school but takes the students through life. 

They master the skills of complex writing. How do they pass exams if they can not understand the English of school textbooks and even the exam papers? 

In early time, students learned hundreds of words based on Latin and Greek roots. Students have to learn English to the standard written in the media by journalists. Those who can will have a chance. Those who can not will drop by the wayside.

Today the technological race is being won in mathematics and science in schools by the Asian nations like Singapore and South Korea. 

Let us hope that the advanced nations do not throw out literacy again. It all comes down to discipline in learning in all subjects. If we are illiterate, we can not read books on mathematics and science. 

But then who cares what the dummos can not do? It is the top students who need to go far, say the experts.