Episode 196: Education reformers agree: Sight-words are a con (Wed, April 2, 2025) Please note, this short piece runs a few seconds over 5 minutes, that's all. And then you will understand the Reading Wars, and all the nonsense of the last 100 years. (Urgent note: you might be better off reading this as TRANSCRIPT because I'm explaining the problems of sight-words by illustrating how similar most English words are to many other English words. For example, a sight-word reader would...

Episode 195: Wait. Can A Mere Boy Save The World?? (Wed, March 26, 2025) My new novel is titled The Boy Who Saves The World. Thoughtful people want to know, could such a thing actually happen??? Many experts speculate that robotics and AI can end up anywhere you can imagine.... as in this thriller. --------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. ----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------...

Episode 194: The 8000-pound Guerrilla in the Classroom?? Wed, March 19, 2025 The Comintern was all about winning. An idea could be really quite nasty and barbarous. But if it would win, they did it. Promises changed. Lenin promised: “Land, bread, peace.” The peasants got none of that. Did you notice the casual way Kamala went from hating fracking to “Sure, I like fracking.” -------------------------------------------------------------------- “I Led Three Lives” -- Give this episod...

Episode 193, Big Picture Thinking -- Wed, March 12, 2025 I want to celebrate the work of Linda Goudsmit. Her topic is understanding life in the 21st-century, the forces that are dragging it down, and how we can make it better. --------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- Word-Wise Education 757-455-5020 Bruce Deitrick ...

GREAT DOUBLE ARTICLE: a quick look at why we must have phonics. And a quick look at the career of Sue Dickson, who invented one of the best phonics programs. All of this in five minutes. -------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- For a 2-page explanation of how everyone can help, visit Education Reform ...

Episode 191: How To Teach Philosophy Every Day (Wed, Feb 26, 2025) Epoque Times, a great newspaper, presents a daily feature: great quotes from great minds. So you know that, quickly and cheaply, all schools can teach philosophy all day long. Use Epoque Times or create your own feature. --------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. ----------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------...

Episode 190: No more Department of Education?? Wonderful idea!! A silly question on the Internet: If the Department of Education is dismantled, then how are kids going to receive their education? No, the Department of Education is the repository of bad ideas and bad ambitions. Get rid of it and let more mainstream people take control of K-12. ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to ...

Episode 189: Government Tests Confirm Decline Episode 189: Government Tests Confirm Decline -- Wed, Feb. 12, 2025 (but late) (First let me mention this is the first deadline I missed in three years; my email provider stopped doing its job for two or three days.) Main news: EducationNext.org reports that we have been mired in shrinking academic outcomes for more than a decade,. And everything.continues to get worse. “We’ve always had an achievement gap. It was getting worse prior ...

Many pundits have noticed that American students almost never learn a second language. This is a tragic loss. What's the reason? --------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- For a 2-page explanation of how everyone can help, visit Education Reform When you need a smart gift, give Saving K-12 . --...

Episode 187: There’s no Mental like Experimental (Wed, Jan. 29, 2025) In general, the public schools are more dull than ever, and much too devoid of substance. So look for antidote and remedies that make students try new approaches. All those things could be called experimental and that's what this article is about. ------------------------------------------------------------------ MAX your c*r*e*a*t*i*v*i*t*y links to articles about creativity https://www.creativity-portal.com/bc/bruc...

Episode 186: What Do American Kids Learn In Grade One? (Quora question) Wed, Jan 22, 2025 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We need more learning starting in kindergarten. And a lot less blah-blah-blah. The essence of the problem, the essence of the solution, all in 5-minute podcast. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ...

Episode 185: Bullying! Cheating! Phones in class!... Everybody complains.... Nobody has answers. (Wed., Jan. 15, 2025) The Education Establishment likes to whine. You may think they are expressing a love of improvement. No, they are reinforcing an endless capacity for decline. All the big shots whine, and the public lets them get away with murder, so to speak. --------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. --------------------------------...

Episode 184: Why American Public Schools Can’t Teach Children To Read? The Secret Story (Wed, Jan 8, 2025) It was a deal signed in blood, or if not in blood, then in IQ points. Keeping Sight-Words in play was a dirty trick on all the average students who were reduced a notch or three. Frank Smith produced the sophistry required to keep nonsense in play. There is a double penalty because learning to read with phonics actually raises intelligence, according to many researchers...

Episode 183: Celebrate the New Year with my Most Popular Podcast Wed., Jan. 1, 2025 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's Fix Education has been going strong for more than three years, and during all that time one episode was far and away the crowd favorite by a factor of 100. Episode 86: Super Bowl LVII, the National Anthem, Chris Stapleton: RESPECT offered some of the most popular things in American culture, the Super Bowl, a fam...

Episode 182: How To Teach More (Wed, Dec 25, 2024 For our Education Establishment an exciting new wrinkle would be 20 ways to practice collaboration. Their gift must be called what it is, sleep-inducing. With just a bit of creativity and exploiting the information available to anyone, you can make memorable classroom instruction. Magicians these days are coming up with new ways to entertain an audience. Copy that. (For inspiration, reflect on Shin Lim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

Episode 181: My Italy Speech Revisited (Wed, Dec. 18, 2024) ————————------------------------------------------------------------— Italian is said to be the most beautiful language, the most phonetic language. Unfortunately, their Education Establishment was like ours and wanted to replace beauty with sight-words. A reform group invited me over to give a speech. It's a quick summary of what the Reading Wars were about. I say the whole thing is a con. You have to give it to these meddlers...

Episode 180: The Unrelenting Attack On Reading (Wed., Dec. 11, 2024) Starting in kindergarten, children need to read, and they need to learn basic information. Our public schools are designed to stymie BOTH goals. People with children in school have got to pay more attention. The child’s cognitive and intellectual life might be stunted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Listen to PODCAST or r...

Episode 179: Religion versus Science: where’s that go? (Wed., Dec. 4, 2024) Science or Religion, which do you prefer? Another question is, which do you hope is true? My main generalization about the universe is that it's insanely chaotic and mysterious. Science and Religion are two ways of grappling with the chaos and mystery. I recommend both. Historically speaking, Science and Religion trade places when it comes to supremacy. One is all-powerful and then the other takes over. T...

Big Pharma and Big Ed have a lot in common. Chicanery. Shenanigans. Blatant corruption. Lots of gullible victims. IMHO. There seem to be people at the top of both industries who lack the gene for shame. Anything they can get away with, they are all in. Time for the public to realize what the game is they're playing. On street corners it's called Three Card Monty. Many variations, one finale. The sucker always loses. Point is, people have learned to distrust Big Pharma. Now they should l...

Episode 177: The Scariest Shift Is The Growing Indifference To TRUTH. Wed., Nov. 20, 2024 Trump wants to get rid of the Department of Education. Here’s why that is good! Our professors of education are like a vast tumor growing over American culture. They skillfully encourage dumbing down. They must believe they are stronger if the people are weak. Isn't that a shameful thought? So let's return power to the states, and everybody stand by for opportunities to make their schools ...