Greetings Andrea and all,

My message below was global and I was fantasizing (I've been living in the U.S. since 1983, so I appreciate some of it's shall we say unique characteristics). 

As for countries that claim 99% literacy rates, I was actually pointing to what I consider to be the glaring lack of consensus of what we (globally) mean by literacy.

My fantasy is alive and well, because I believe it would be fascinating to display the maze of variables that we (as human beings) fail to take into account.

As for national standards, I shudder at the thought unless and until we reach "real" consensus on what we, as societies, wish to accomplish in education and determine to be replicable, regardless of the characteristics of individual classrooms and individual human beings within them. 

Michael

Michael A. Gyori 
Maui International Language School 
www.mauilanguage.com




________________________________
From: "andreawilder at comcast.net" <andreawilder at comcast.net>
To: The Learning Disabilities Discussion List <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Sent: Wed, November 4, 2009 10:36:54 AM
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4254] Re: What have we learned?


Michael,  we have a huge country and mostly local control of schools.  Teachers are not paid enough and are educated poorly.  But schools accept all (student) comers, speaking many different languages. We have only vague ideas of how learning skill develops--what paths learners take.  Three paths in reading I know of have been identified. 
Other countries do it differently, other countries ARE different.
-We are just beginning to talk about national standards, some way of pulling us all together. Other countries have already done this.  We simply have to keep moving with any skills we have.

Andrea

---- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Gyori" <tesolmichael at yahoo.com>
To: "The Learning Disabilities Discussion List" <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 2:30:48 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4252]  What have we learned?


Greetings everyone,

I wish we could congregate the universe of learners who struggle (for whatever reason and speculative cause).  I also wish we could congregrate the universe of teachers, tutors, counselors, parents, supportive community members, and, perhaps, neuroscientists, too.  

Once they are all congregated, I wish we could create baseline measures of everyone's skills and (affective) dispositions.  If we were able to do so in an indisputably valid manner (a scientific impossibility), the debates among scholars would be silenced.

Then, I wish we could create interim measures of both the learners and those who work with them in a longitudinal fashion, and perhaps administer a "final" measure say five or ten years later.

It would be a marvel to behold what will have become of that universe.

In the meantime, despite all the research, and despite how much of it may have had an impact on practice, I fail to discern any gains in overall literacy (and how shall we define that term in today's world?). On the contrary, some would have it that 95 million adults in the U.S. are not "functionally literate" (whatever that means).  Have we risen to the 30-40% mark? How can other countries claim 99% literacy levels?

Michael


Michael A. Gyori 
Maui International Language School 
www.mauilanguage.com




________________________________
From: Nora Chahbazi <ooprc at comcast.net>
To: Learningdisabilities at nifl.gov
Sent: Wed, November 4, 2009 7:52:39 AM
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4246] Brain research in education


I just received a brochure for a conference titled 'Smarter Brains: Using Brain Rearch to Raise IQ and Achievement' at the 25th Learning and the Brain Conference in Sanfrisco in Feb, 2001.  Some of the workshop titles are" Neurointelligence and Education: Is it Time to Require Students to have a Brain Scan?" and 'What Neuroscience can teach us about Teaching' - along with many others.   This is a perfect example of the feeling of confusion and frustration by those of us trying to teach reading or anything else!  There has just been a disdcussion on this list about how neuroscience and education are not connected and then I am exposed to this conference that has 3 days of educating educators in the power of neuroscience in education.  How does one choose who to believe?  Maybe neuroscience in education is akin to snake oil, maybe it is the best thing since sliced bread.  How would someone decipher the truth from 2 opposite camps
 proclaiming 'the truth'.  I have found this phenomena to be a source of frustration throughout my journey of learning how to teach reading.  Many research studies come to totally opposite conclusions about what is great and what is horrible amd damaging.(For example:  Whole language is the answer!  Phonics is the answer!......Teach them to memorize the words and the book to foster comprehension!  They must have significant repetition/drill in phonemic awareness and phonics before ever reading a book!,....  Look at the picture to get meaning!  Do not look at the picture; we don't read pictures! ..... Teach the phonics rules in order to read the words!  Don't teach phonics rules because they are developmentally inappropriate and slow you down!.....  You must learn the letter names to read!  You do not use the letter names in reading!....and on an on) leaving the consumer to scratch their head and get mired in the confusion of all this
 conflicting information.  Who does one believe?   In the meantime, the numbers of poor/non readers of every age continue to eacalate.  How do those on this list deal with this?!
Thanks,
Nora
 
 
Nora Chahbazi, President
EBLI Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction
Ounce of Prevention Reading Center
www.ebli.org
810.732.4810
fax 810.732.0366
  

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