http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org Improving Education Thu, 28 May 2009 02:19:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I like edublogs. It's probably real good for teachers with students. But it's not so searchable as it once was. So I tried to make a new blog on WordPress, and found it somewhat confusing (if you're not a techie). So I ended up making yet another blog on Blogger. This is ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2009/05/27/visit-education-improved/ Lots of people, lots of money, lots of promises...but public schools don't seem to be do a very good job. Why not? That's THE EDUCATION ENIGMA. I have 120+ articles on the net. I took my favorite excerpts and created a powerful little book that is now available on Amazon. It covers ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2009/04/01/the-education-enigma-what-happened-to-american-education/ Wow! When you really look, our elite educators have been busy-busy-busy. At first glance, you think these people are clumsy, or misguided, or they have very bad judgment. Then you start to see patterns -- for example, everything they’re really excited about is usually a bad idea. So bad it ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2008/12/29/hostile-to-math-reading/ I spend a lot of time trying to solve one of the most interesting crime stories there is. Why, despite vast sums of money and massive concern by the public, are our educators somehow able to achieve new depths of dumb? Why?? Because they know what they want and they work ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2008/11/18/why-the-public-schools-are-a-mess/ If you are interested in the reading wars, please see a review I just put on Amazon.com for Frank Smith's "Understanding Reading," one of the most influential books of the last 50 years. To this day, I never meet anyone who understands what the reading wars are all about. The Whole ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2008/10/18/whole-word-wholly-wrong/ Please, if you know a non-reader or you are connected to a literacy program, check out what I believe is a very important new article: 33: How To Help  A Non-Reader To Read,  on Improve-Education.org. The country is said to have 50,000,000 "functional illiterates." Typically, these are people once trapped in Whole ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2008/04/30/helping-the-non-reader-the-dyslexic-the-illiterate/ I just reviewed an old book for Amazon.com called "The New Illiterates" by Samuel Blumenfeld. Published in 1973, this book is still amazingly fresh. How can that be? Because our elite educators still hang on to all their excuses and sophistries, still refuse to work for genuine academic improvement. In this ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2008/03/13/why-we-need-a-teacher-liberation-front/ I've just finished a long historical piece called "The War Against Reading" (#30 on Improve-Education.org.) The main focus is on Whole Word and why it can't possibly work. If you are confused about any of this, please check it out.  The article mentions a second, complementary war against arithmetic. This war was ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2008/01/09/what-really-happened-to-education-in-usa/ One of the big unreported stories in this country is that a whole industry has grown up around dyslexia---to excuse it, blame it on any cause but the real one, and find reasons why it's not really so bad. Dip into any of this and your head will spin. The ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2007/12/18/dyslexia-whole-words-second-shadow/ New software lets me create some very useful videos (actually they're more like animated slideshows). Here are some of the titles you can find on YouTube: Phonics vs. Whole Word The Truth About Robots John Dewey and the Burden of Ideology How To Teach Latin, Etc.   World's Easiest Test Total is now about 20. Enter any ... http://brucedeitrickprice.edublogs.org/2007/12/07/educational-videos-on-youtubecom/