The world has just come through an intellectual desert that started in the 1960s and 1970s at the hands of young teachers who had grown up in families with discipline of World War 2 fathers. They were anti-discipline, anti-Vietnam and wanted to make love not war.
Discipline was to be removed from schools particularly the discipline of learning. There was to be no memorization of any kind. Students were not even to memorize their multiplication tables. Spelling was to be caught not taught. That became the catch cry.
The result was that the standards of education dropped slowly in the law of diminishing returns. Children were not trained with discipline and became teachers who did not train with discipline. And it went on.
On the other hand there was another stream of teachers who obeyed the dictates of the US Government and threw out all that would not support the US catching up to the USSR in the space race. The Soviet launching of the satellite Sputnik in 1957 caused trauma in the US corridors of power.
So mathematics and science were in. Literacy, poetry, literature were out. So too the skills of reading and writing disappeared not to resurface again for 40 years.
But at last the world has come to understand that Outcome Based Education was destined to failure because it ignored the basics of all studies.
Now in the new milleneum, there has been a new broom to sweep out all the educational rubbish that has dropped standards over 40 years. But the teachers do not have the knowledge to achieve this. They are still tied up with the dictate of the past that memorization was an inferior way of learning.
Children could not memorize poetry, multiplication tables, spelling and facts from a history book. It had to be caught not taught. Many students learned nothing. They caught nothing.
It was even worse in the developing world like Papua New Guinea where fool expatriates 20 years ago decided that students were to learn vernacular in elementary school. Please click:
expatriate idiots spoil png education - family positive living - aids ...
who is still alive. It is about expatriate idiots of PNG Linguistic Society ...
So Papua New Guinea children came to high school many of whom were illiterate. They had learned vernacular when they should have been learning English as the foundation for study. They were taught nothing and learned very little.
So now the Papua New Guinea education has gone back half way to old times. Phonics is to be taught in elementary school by a generation of teachers with no academic background in learning language. The older teachers remember the days of memorization and sadly recall how it has all died even now.
But there is an expatriate teacher in the country whose memory goes back to school in the 1960s. Tis I, I humbly reply. I have been teaching writing skills to high school students in ways unknown in this country. Please click:
WRITE SWEET ENGLISH
Students master the basics by mastery learning of pattern after pattern after pattern. This has captured the interest of several high schools in Papua New Guinea.
But then I came to Lae a few months ago and was asked to promote phonics to elementary schools. I was amazed to find that I was the most experienced teacher of phonics in this country having spent 14 years at the RAAF School of Languages near Melbourne teaching Tok Pisin to over 4000 soldiers on posting to Papua New Guinea.
There was 100% carry over to teaching phonics in English. The Catholic Education Department in Lae has taken on the rhythm and rhyme approach and I now find myself conducting workshops in Catholic Schools around Lae and taking demonstration classes.
In the last month, I have conducted workshops at Christ the King school on the Markham Road and St Martins in the Papuan Compound. I conducted a session for Catholic headmasters.
I help a family of Catholic friends in a school in Eriku. The walls of classrooms are covered in phonics charts. Every morning the school rings to the sound of chanting of 6 classes. It is like being in a large cage of cockatoos.
But that is OK. It is better than silence. Kids love screaming out the sentence patterns. Teachers say that many students have taken only a week to memorize all charts. They scream patterns without reading the charts. They are learning the music of sentence structure that is being implanted on their rhythm memory forever.
There are large flip top charts available at a stationary store Theodist in Lae for K16.50. I will start to make charts for classes to be chanted in rhythm every morning: Many of these students in elementary school and been learning English for only 18 months. They are doing well.
We go
We go
We go with you
We go with you
We go to town with him
We go to town with him
Don't go
Don't go
Don't go into the house
Don't go into the house
I would like to go with you
I would like to go with you
Would you like to go?
Would you like to go?
Would you like to come with me?
Would you like to come with me?
Would you like to go to town with him?
Would you like to go to town with him?
I would like to come
I would like to come
I will come
I will come
I will come with you
I will come with you.
There has been 100% acceptance and enthusiasm among teachers, particularly the older teachers who still remember early days. There is an American phonics program being used in this country too. But it is quite limited and leaves too much to the teachers to fill in the gaps.
Phonics is about teaching words in sentences designed to open up the panorama of the English language structure. That is what our program does. There is no need for focus on phonic symbols and blending.
The basic program focuses on simple words. Complex words come later as the children mature into complex discussion in reading and writing. Teachers in the workshops state that poetry, rhyming, rhythm and singing have to go back into the curriculum.
So mathematics and science were in. Literacy, poetry, literature were out. So too the skills of reading and writing disappeared not to resurface again for 40 years.
But at last the world has come to understand that Outcome Based Education was destined to failure because it ignored the basics of all studies.
Now in the new milleneum, there has been a new broom to sweep out all the educational rubbish that has dropped standards over 40 years. But the teachers do not have the knowledge to achieve this. They are still tied up with the dictate of the past that memorization was an inferior way of learning.
Children could not memorize poetry, multiplication tables, spelling and facts from a history book. It had to be caught not taught. Many students learned nothing. They caught nothing.
It was even worse in the developing world like Papua New Guinea where fool expatriates 20 years ago decided that students were to learn vernacular in elementary school. Please click:
expatriate idiots spoil png education - family positive living - aids ...
familypositiveliving.blogspot.com/2016/04/academic-idiots-spoil-png-education.html
Apr 17, 2016 - I have a story to tell as the only person involved who is still alive. It is about expatriate idiots of PNG Linguistic Society ...
So Papua New Guinea children came to high school many of whom were illiterate. They had learned vernacular when they should have been learning English as the foundation for study. They were taught nothing and learned very little.
So now the Papua New Guinea education has gone back half way to old times. Phonics is to be taught in elementary school by a generation of teachers with no academic background in learning language. The older teachers remember the days of memorization and sadly recall how it has all died even now.
But there is an expatriate teacher in the country whose memory goes back to school in the 1960s. Tis I, I humbly reply. I have been teaching writing skills to high school students in ways unknown in this country. Please click:
WRITE SWEET ENGLISH
Students master the basics by mastery learning of pattern after pattern after pattern. This has captured the interest of several high schools in Papua New Guinea.
But then I came to Lae a few months ago and was asked to promote phonics to elementary schools. I was amazed to find that I was the most experienced teacher of phonics in this country having spent 14 years at the RAAF School of Languages near Melbourne teaching Tok Pisin to over 4000 soldiers on posting to Papua New Guinea.
There was 100% carry over to teaching phonics in English. The Catholic Education Department in Lae has taken on the rhythm and rhyme approach and I now find myself conducting workshops in Catholic Schools around Lae and taking demonstration classes.
In the last month, I have conducted workshops at Christ the King school on the Markham Road and St Martins in the Papuan Compound. I conducted a session for Catholic headmasters.
I help a family of Catholic friends in a school in Eriku. The walls of classrooms are covered in phonics charts. Every morning the school rings to the sound of chanting of 6 classes. It is like being in a large cage of cockatoos.
But that is OK. It is better than silence. Kids love screaming out the sentence patterns. Teachers say that many students have taken only a week to memorize all charts. They scream patterns without reading the charts. They are learning the music of sentence structure that is being implanted on their rhythm memory forever.
There are large flip top charts available at a stationary store Theodist in Lae for K16.50. I will start to make charts for classes to be chanted in rhythm every morning: Many of these students in elementary school and been learning English for only 18 months. They are doing well.
We go
We go
We go with you
We go with you
We go to town with him
We go to town with him
Don't go
Don't go
Don't go into the house
Don't go into the house
I would like to go with you
I would like to go with you
Would you like to go?
Would you like to go?
Would you like to come with me?
Would you like to come with me?
Would you like to go to town with him?
Would you like to go to town with him?
I would like to come
I would like to come
I will come
I will come
I will come with you
I will come with you.
There has been 100% acceptance and enthusiasm among teachers, particularly the older teachers who still remember early days. There is an American phonics program being used in this country too. But it is quite limited and leaves too much to the teachers to fill in the gaps.
Phonics is about teaching words in sentences designed to open up the panorama of the English language structure. That is what our program does. There is no need for focus on phonic symbols and blending.
The basic program focuses on simple words. Complex words come later as the children mature into complex discussion in reading and writing. Teachers in the workshops state that poetry, rhyming, rhythm and singing have to go back into the curriculum.
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