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My nonsense detector goes off every time blacks are used as an example for why X is bad. It's the typical Boasian anthropology 'cart before the horse' thinking that permeates every single mainstream explanatory theory relating to the gaps between blacks and whites. So when a person who subscribes to Boasian anthropology presents a new battleground where they can potentially excuse the drastic differences between people with innate cognitive differences with some half baked social theory my brain just shuts off. I mean, honestly, do people never tire of this ridiculous rigamarole that is repeated again and again? Do they never start questioning or doubting the hope they feel in their hearts when this sort of theory gets peddled? The differences are there. They will always(within lifetime) be there. Just like there are dumb white kids who can't into reading properly there are dumb brown kids who can't either. And the distribution of these dumb kids between the different population groups is not the same.
It's important to be able to help dumb kids function in modern society but you can't couch that concern as a universal worry for all children. Kids have been learning how to read for centuries. With time, methods and materials that are so lacking by today's standards that it's not even comparable. By the same token I've seen kids take special classes for years with specially trained teachers that ultimately amounted to very little comparatively. I am sure the extra time helped compared to not having it, but you would never blame the problem those kids were having on the method. Those were obvious cases where the kids had issues.
So whilst there might be an interesting discussion relating to the efficacy of various teaching methods on 'normal' children there simply isn't any space for it in mainstream society. We have retarded ourselves to the point of being unable to accurately categorize reality and have methodologically reduced ourselves to rely on hopeful fiction. That is leaving aside the larger problems with 'teaching' kids in a classroom regardless of their affinity or ability.
But on the actual topic, I only have anecdotal experience as a student.
As a kid I remember not liking 'phonics' since I had a much easier time reading text than doing specific exercises. Especially if I had some way to contextualize the text I was going to be reading. I would not read letters but instead look at the words as symbols. So I lagged behind in reading through first and second grade since most of the 'reading' was just exercises. But through third grade and onward I had great scores for reading since the exercises were more narrative based. Which, I found, was much more entertaining than the boring exercises that centered around individual letters or words disconnected from context. Reading a text I could contextualize two or three times with someone next to me that could tell me what a word I didn't know was helped me learn quickly comparatively.
On the whole, if you can't teach normal kids how to read when they are locked in a room with you for hours, 5 days a week for years then you have issues beyond state mandated methodology and are probably just a bad and incapable person. I remember hearing stories of my relative's teacher from their years in elementary school in the early 80's. The teacher had no qualification other than his own literacy. They had only a few 'books' and of those the only ones designed for children were handwritten by the teacher himself. Yet somehow learning how to read was not an issue in that class despite the kids spending much less time there than they would today.
I feel that illustrates just how low the bar is when we are talking about teaching normal kids how to read. And how inconsequential teaching methodologies, textbooks and all the other crap that gets brought up might be when it comes to teaching something basic like reading. That's not to say all methods or environments are equal. But after a certain point, that is set very very low, you quickly start seeing diminishing returns. So when folks start looking that way for solutions to obviously giant problems I think it's more pertinent to ask why people are looking in such an obviously wrong direction.
Then how on earth would the example of 80% illiteracy for black students be relevant to anything? If you are suggesting that the current methodology is uniquely bad for blacks then I made the point in my post to point out that such examples are not necessarily relevant for all students. If you have a methodology that is better for all students then why not lead with that? Why squeal for sympathy by winding on the blacks?
You have no idea one way or another what the literacy rate for black students should be nor do you know what the reason for the comparatively low literacy rates for blacks is. I'm sure you could raise it. But I seriously doubt you could do so to any meaningful extent by telling the teacher to focus on 'phonics' instead of something else. On top of that you don't considering turning your example around. Is the high literacy rate among Asians not an example that the method works? This rubric you employ is obviously faulty.
Again, I'm not saying 'phonics' is worse, I'm inclined to believe you could teach kids to read using 'phonics' quite quickly. At least it seemed to work for me though I have little to compare against it. What I am saying, however, is that the implication of the examples you gave is that you can produce meaningful change in the literacy of blacks by changing the methodology. I don't see that belief being warranted. I do instead recognize it as part of an endless line of argumentation that proposes that we can meaningfully impact the gaps between blacks and whites using 'this one weird trick'. I see no reason to acknowledge that line of argumentation as anything other than what it is. And hopefully dismissing it so we can talk about something that actually matters.
It would only be evidence of bad teaching for blacks though, since other groups have much better literacy rates with similar teaching methods. To that point I asserted that you have no baseline for what the literacy rates for blacks should be.
Again, if the point was not about blacks, why specifically mention blacks? If a method is bad since it can't teach blacks then would it be, by the same token, good since it can teach Asians? This rubric is obviously faulty. I don't buy the sincere proposition that we are specifically mentioning blacks because that's the best way to illustrate the problem.
I don't disagree. I just can't manage to fit all those pieces together. I mention the black white gap because of the implications that has to any methodology that assumes that you can in one way or another uniquely affect the literacy of blacks whilst assuming that blacks and whites are of equal cognitive ability. I assumed the people doing the podcast were not race realist HBD types. That was a complete guess on my part though. But for anyone that is not, I don't know how you piece that narrative together. It's not as if most kids that aren't black are born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
The reason I said you didn't lead with that is because you didn't. The point made by you was not a study controlling for relevant factors concluding that kids learned to read better using phonics and that this would greatly benefit all children. It's was: "The results, the podcast claims, are dismal. As evidence, it includes some agonizing statistics, like that 80+% of African American 8th graders do not test as proficient readers."
You're right. Those adjectives all apply. But by the same token the constant reliance on black tears to garner sympathy sickens me on a fundamental level. I mean, are the illiteracy rates of poor white kids not good enough? Do we really need to weave a narrative including the white kids that have vs the black kids that have not when talking about what methodology works best to teach kids how to read? Like, really?
In any case I explicitly responded to vitriol I felt was implied but that might not have been warranted when directed at you. My bad.
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