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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29297 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I don’t have a defense of whole word learning. I think it’s an example of Mao’s law- given the choice between admitting mistakes and terrible real world outcomes, bureaucrats will choose terrible real world outcomes every time.

But, I do want to chime in that there’s an occasional conspiracy theory in homeschooling circles that whole word learning is intended to teach children that meaning is completely arbitrary and thus communism or gender ideology or whatever. I don’t pay attention to the details. This is a fascinating example of cultural evolution; the justification for whole word learning is almost certainly not thought out beyond whatever bullshit is in the stated reason, but whole word learning sucks and is often recommended, so believing it’s even more sinister than Mao’s law, serves a purpose by getting people to use phonics which has the benefit of actually working.

there’s an occasional conspiracy theory in homeschooling circles that whole word learning is intended to teach children that meaning is completely arbitrary and thus communism or gender ideology or whatever.

Im sure it wasnt designed explictly with that goal, but theres more reason to this belief than just "cause it sux". How do you think people got the idea for whole word learning, if it doesnt work? Theres various ideas floating around about explicit knowledge not being so important, things being more fluid and contextual, "patchwork" methods over systems, etc. Those propably contributed to the idea. You could attribute them to constructivism, or pragmatism, or poststructuralism, but all of that falls under "fake and gay".

See also a comment further below.

How do you think people got the idea for whole word learning, if it doesnt work

Same way people get other wrong ideas. They had a clever hypothesis, fell in love with it, and then they decided it's much better to attack anyone that challenges it than to verify whether it actually works. Happens literally all the time.

Well sure, the point was that it’s Alex Jones tier rambling, even if it’s possibly connected to the same philosophical impulses behind postmodernism and the like.

Also @Hoffmeister25 's comment from a few months ago, which, while it may describe a conspiracy, seems rather coherent.

Freire’s The Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, along with his somewhat lesser-known book The Politics Of Education, is one of the most influential texts in teacher education of the last century. Freire was one of the pioneers of critical education - which, like any other branch of critical theory, is explicitly Marxist, and seeks to use education as a tool to undermine and destroy the existing socio-economic system.

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