12
Apr
2014
Two More Links on Bundy Standoff
==> William Grigg has a long post tracing the history of the federal government and recalcitrant occupants. He likens the current standoff to Wounded Knee. (HT2 Frank C.)
==> Ben Swann is reporting that there may be a deal between the BLM and Bundy.
Or as the Lorax would say, “I speak for the trees”.
Interesting Dr. Seuss history:
Dr. Seuss and Dyslexia
http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/10812-dr-seuss-and-dyslexia
Miller discovered that when preschoolers memorize as sight words the entire texts of such popular books as Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, they develop a block against seeing the words phonetically and thus become “dyslexic.” They become sight readers with a holistic reflex rather than phonetic readers with a phonetic reflex. A holistic reader looks at each word as a little picture, a configuration, much like a Chinese ideograph, and tries to think of the word it represents. A phonetic reader associates letters with sounds and can sound out the syllabic units that blend into an articulated word.
What this means is that parents should teach their children to read phonetically before giving them the Dr. Seuss books to read.
…
That the words in the two Dr. Seuss books were to be read and learned as sight words was confirmed by Dr. Seuss himself in an interview published in Arizona magazine in June 1981. He said:
[“]They think I did it in twenty minutes. That d — ned Cat in the Hat took nine months until I was satisfied. I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the Twenties in which they threw out phonic reading and went to word recognition, as if you’re reading Chinese pictographs instead of blending sounds of different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country. Anyway, they had it all worked out that a healthy child at the age of four can learn so many words in a week and that’s all. So there were two hundred and twenty-three words to use in this book. I read the list three times and I almost went out of my head. I said, I’ll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme that’ll be the title of my book. (That’s genius at work.) I found “cat” and “hat” and I said, “The title will be The Cat in the Hat.”[“]
Thus, even Dr. Seuss knew that “killing phonics” was a cause of illiteracy in America. But somehow that insight, made by America’s most famous writer of children’s books, has escaped our educators.
Absent a deal, or even with one, I wonder if we’ll see a petition for a writ of mandamus. There is after all a court order, and people on the anti-Bundy side.