"Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Learn Sight-Words" by Bruce Price
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Like me, Bruce Price is not fond of teaching children "sight words." As schools begin, I am reminded that thousands of children across the nation are going to be subjected to them and their parents will be forced to use the "drill and dry method" of teaching them: drill them until they cry and then dry their tears.
In his article, "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Learn Sight-Words," Mr. Price describes what this process is like to a child learning to read.
"Here's a quick way to feel the pain of sight-words. The teacher points to a cluster such as
“dpx rsjk tmzc hfgl.”
(That’s how they look to your kid— weird and very unfriendly.) The teacher says these words are pronounced:
“run house blue play.”
But how does the child connect the pronunciations to the shapes? There is no way to make sense of it."
Time spent memorizing them could be put to better use by teaching students the code so they can READ those words and thousands more.