Finally, all of “A Tribute to Rudolph Flesch” is on Improve-Education.org. Part I is mainly about PHONICS versus LOOK-SAY. I worked hard to make the fundamental issues as clear as possible. (Alternate title: Why Frank Smith Is Wrong)

Parts II and III broaden out to be, for their fairly short length, a very good history of how American education got off track. It covers all the early people, the weird ideological matrix, and the Communist “double whammy.” All this craziness is still reverberating 100 years after John Dewey fired the first shots….Here are two of the concluding remarks:
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“I’m always struck by the moral aspects here. It’s not all right to kill your neighbor’s child. Surely it can’t be all right to kill that child’s prospects. What sort of person would want to? Here’s the thing I find the most repellent: our educators actually appear to share an indifference to children, not to mention the more obvious contempt for country. These educators have their agenda, and if children are in the way, too bad for the children…

Let me close with my vision of what education should be concerned with. Simple: pushing and cajoling each child as far as each child can go. It seems to me this approach is better for the child; they’re more likely to be happy, self-fulfilled, and earn a higher income. This approach is better for the society, because our human resources are our most important asset. There is no way to know what talent or skill or contribution lies within each child. Why foreclose anything? Why not nurture and encourage all that is there?”
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If you want to understand why John Dewey and Company took us away fom this sensible philosophy, please check out #21 on Improve-Education.org.