LITERACY: ELEMENTARY TO GRADE 12

I am in an interesting position of being involved in curriculum that takes students from elementary levels of literacy to grade 12. 

There are problems that have arisen over the last 50 years with the disemboweling of modern literacy and the removal of all forms of memorization. 

Students have spent their time in silent classrooms where no chanting was accepted. Noisy classrooms were the hallmark of weak discipline. There was to be no reciting of poetry or chanting of spelling and multiplication tables. 

Classrooms went silent. So much of education involved memorization. That is one reason why Asian nations are now ahead in teaching of mathematics and science. Foolish western nations opted for intellectualization rather than memorization and ended up with low standards. 

Students have to be literate to read books in mathematics and science. In both areas, literacy combines with logical reasoning.

But now it has all changed across the world. Fifty years ago, Dr Benjamin Bloom introduced the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and Mastery Learning to rescue Education from the idiots. 

But Mastery Learning was rejected as it did not train the US rocket scientists fast enough to beat the Soviet Union in the space race. 

It was replaced by Outcome Based Education that side-stepped the basics to fast track the education and training in technology and science. The average students missed out in the basics. 

Now Mastery Learning is back in strength. Average students are to be back in the race with focus on the basics. Open Google and type in Mastery Learning. There are now over 30 pages of reports.

Mastery Learning has come to Papua New Guinea education. The focus is now on phonics in elementary school. But the system has not got it right yet, except perhaps Morobe provincial education.

There is a danger that the modern approach to phonics with its focus on words is leading the schools up the garden path. Students have to master phonic symbols to sound and blend words and then start to read without the symbols on reaching grade 2. Where to from there?

The students go to primary schools where teachers do not know the phonics of elementary school. Children have learned words but not sentences. They have no idea of how to move from simple to complex sentences. They have hundreds of words to learn with no phonic symbols.

We have taken the strategy after elementary school to new levels with derivation of words from Greek and Latin roots and Mastery Writing. Please click:

latin for png students - family positive living - aids holistics

familypositiveliving.blogspot.com/2011/09/latin-for-png-students.html

Sep 4, 2011 - In the years up to the 1960s, Australian students were educated in word 

building through Latin and Greek roots. Then with the change

FAMILY POSITIVE LIVING - AIDS HOLISTICS: WRITE SWEET ENGLISH

familypositiveliving.blogspot.com/2011/06/write-sweet-english.ht

Jun 29, 2011 - WRITE SWEET ENGLISH ... stop baby talk. In Papua New Guinea schools,

Teachers at the recent in-services state they would like to see the derivation of words from Latin and Greek from grades 5 or 6. Students will learn to spell complex words if they know the prefixes-roots-suffixes.

pro-ced-ure, in-ject-ion, mob-ile, ex-press-ion, re-pell-ent, com-pul-sor-y, pro-cess-ion, pul-sate, re-cog-nize, im-prove-ment, manu-script, pro-ject-ile, dec-im-ate, su-preme and terr-es-tri-al, 

At a recent in-service, a teacher told of a movie of a young girl who entered a spelling bee. She was coached in Latin based words by her teacher and learned to break words down to prefixes-roots - suffixes. 

At the spelling bee, she beat the rhythm of the word on her thigh. That has now come to Morobe urban schools. Teachers are beating rhythm in poetry, songs, spelling and multiplication tables.