Interesting Links for 05-10-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy

(tags:reading education epicfail USA )

2. Being vegetarian may partly be in one's genes

(tags:genetics vegetarian )

3. When game design isn't obvious

(tags:games design )

4. The 'fit but fat' research finally validates what women like me knew: being obese does not mean unhealthy

(tags:weight health women )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

1. Fascinating. Depressing that the conceptually easy helps of "eliminate poverty and racism" and "fund schools properly" will never happen. (I'm one of the "don't know how I learned to read" crew. Could read at 2.5 and write at 3. I do know my mother read out all the shop and street signs for me as an infant).

4. Caveats: https://scitechdaily.com/fat-but-fit-expert-weighs-in-on-metabolically-healthy-obesity/. (Still higher risk than non-obese, or seems)

[altamira16]

So many kids in the US cannot read because of what happened in 1, AND the whole thing became politicized with conservatives choosing the proper side of this issue. Here is an article from a few years ago on the reading wars.

I follow local school board races very closely, and the conservative anti-vaccine lady pointed out that in the first fall of the pandemic, literacy scores went up. She credited parents, who had learned literacy through phonics, teaching their kids to read at home.

[nancylebov]

#1. This isn't news, but it's worth repeating, and the angle in your article (that whole language/balanced reading works relatively well in reading-friendly homes) is one I haven't seen before.

Whole language reading is a completely unforced leftwing error. I trusted them more than that, and I shouldn't have. I believe reparation is both possible and called for-- a well-publicized apology and phonics education for those who want it.

Part of the hook for teachers was that there was a lot of involved helping for the students, but the desire to help is just another human passion, and it needs to be regulated.

[flemmings]

Two decades only? I went back to college for a certificate in 1980 with people ten years younger than me. They'd been taught by see and say, and like the little girl at the start of the essay, had no idea what came after the first letter of an unfamiliar word. Reading aloud was painful for all of us.

[haggis]

Have you heard of the ITA reading system? It was a much more logical writing system than English and the idea was that children learned ITA and then transitioned to English later. It was trialled in the 60s but didn't work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1523708.stm

[snippy]

I enjoyed the thread about game design very much. I game a lot but no FPS, nothing where my viewpoint moves a lot because I have vertigo.