True.
Phonics. It's important.
If the schools aren't teaching... it's up to the parents. Education is the primary responsibility of parents.

Spot on.

Whittle is actually addressing two different things: not knowing things (knowledge) and not knowing how to know things (thinking).

Not knowing what galaxy we’re in or what 30 miles per hour actually means is a lack of knowledge and is a sad commentary on the American education system.

What’s far worse, though, and much of the reason why the nation is in such a sad political and social state, is what the title is about: Why Johnny can’t think.

One course during my first year in college 53 years ago was “Applied Logic.” I still have the text for the course (and which had been published 10+ years before I got it), and still refer to it from time to time. In addition to the more well-known fallacies such as the black-or-white or argument of the beard fallacies, it included chapters on “Ideals of sound thinking,” “Need-directed thinking,” and “How we distort the evidence.” Are such things taught to anyone anywhere these days? Without teaching people how to think, and not just facts that may or may not have any relevance to their lives, they will accept anything they’re told or that pops into their heads on its own—and they do.

Sigfreund - sounds like a book that should be on my shelf - title and author please?

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
“I can’t give you brains, but I can give you a diploma.”
-- The Wizard of Oz

That pretty much sums up the public school system's philosophy.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris42:
Sigfreund - sounds like a book that should be on my shelf - title and author please?

I suspect it’s long out of print, but it might be available through used booksellers:

Winston W. Little, W. Harold Wilson, and W. Edgar Moore, Applied Logic (Cambridge, Mass: Riverside Press, 1955).

The publisher might be listed as Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by Chris42:
Sigfreund - sounds like a book that should be on my shelf - title and author please?

I suspect it’s long out of print, but it might be available through used booksellers:

Winston W. Little, W. Harold Wilson, and W. Edgar Moore, Applied Logic (Cambridge, Mass: Riverside Press, 1955).

The publisher might be listed as Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston.

As you mention still referring to it from time to time, do you feel any of it is outdated now?

My youngest grandson who's in first grade spent the last few days "learning" how cow farts are destroying the planet. And how straws and plastic bags must be banned because turtles are eating them. New Mexico had a school grading and teacher assessment system in place but the first thing our new commie governor did was eliminate it and give the teachers a raise. WTF.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
True.
Phonics. It's important.
If the schools aren't teaching... it's up to the parents. Education is the primary responsibility of parents.

And what happens when Johnny happens to belong to a baby momma with no baby daddy in site? Leftists have torn apart of basic fabric of this country, starting with the family. No parents simply means the government doesn't have to compete with anyone when it comes to indoctrinating little Johnny. And an illiterate little Johnny will fall in line and do the government's bidding while churning out more little Johnny's for the government to continue to use in destroying the remaining foundations of this country.

Little Johnny's never been the primary problem. He's just a tool. The 'problem', like virtually every problem facing this country today stems from the government and its never ending expanse into our lives in pursuit of control.

quote:

Originally posted by apprentice:
As you mention still referring to it from time to time, do you feel any of it is outdated now?

It’s been a very long time since I read through the book more or less cover to cover, so I’m relying on memory. But because the concepts it covers are so fundamental and well-established (although sometimes complex), I do not believe that it’s outdated in that regard. Some of the book’s many examples intended to illustrate its points may however be dated for today’s readers.

One that I ran across now while flipping through was based on the trial of the Lindberg baby kidnapping suspect, Bruno Hauptmann. I’m pretty certain that such an example would have had far more significance for college students in the 1950s than today.

And then there are the hypothetical statements made and responded to that illustrate various points. One example has Joe making the original statement and Jane offering an illogical response. I cannot imagine that the implied depiction of a woman’s being prey to logical fallacies would be acceptable in a college textbook today.

On the other hand, one example of diseased thinking that would be as fresh as the latest #MeToo allegation is this one:
“Concert goer: ‘I certainly cannot see how you can enjoy this piece of music. It was a favorite of Hitler’s.’”

Why can't Johnny think? Or why was Johnny not taught to think? I think he was not taught to think to render the leftward lurch to captivity we see today. Leftism is candy for the ignorant.

We encountered this look-say abandonment of phonics when our kids were in grade school. I wondered then, if someone taught that way had never seen a particular word, might as well be an ideogram like Chinese. How could the kid figure it out, if they can't sound it out? The school held some kind of parent/teacher night to explain to us the wonderfulness of no longer teaching phonics. Some teachers were mixed in with the parents, as our kid's teacher asked some questions of the audience. Seated near us was a young woman I recognized as one of the teachers. She answered one of the questions to the audience in a fashion as clueless as some of the responses seen in the video. On the way home, I mentioned this to my wife. She told me that woman could not have been a teacher. Had to convince her; Yep, that really was one of the teachers

quote:

If the schools aren't teaching... it's up to the parents. Education is the primary responsibility of parents.

Yes, but what happens when the parents can't think, either? We are now in 2nd or 3rd generation of this indoctrination system, and it will take YEAR if not decades to recover.

The book, published about 10 years ago, that is as important as Why Johnny Can't Read is The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain, by Nicholas Carr. It's all based on studies using brain imagery and very sophisticated eye-tracking. We read computer screens in a way that is different from reading printed text. The problem is that kids try to read the printed page the way they read a computer screen. It doesn't work. What they report is that they don't know what they have just read, or that "it's boring." And brain functioning is changing as a result.

I'm trying to summarize some incredibly interesting and somewhat complex findings.

I urge you to read the book. It's not just a diatribe against internet. It's a very well researched, scientific view of what the technology that we think of as "doing for us" is actually doing to us.

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
We read computer screens in a way that is different from reading printed text.

Interesting and something I’ve long wondered about. I don’t like trying to read long articles on a computer screen even without the innumerable distractions of ads, superfluous pictures, etc. On the other hand, I have no problems with my Nook e-reader.

quote:

As you mention still referring to it from time to time, do you feel any of it is outdated now?

Yep. Nobody uses logic anymore. It is a straight emotional appeal.

When I went to college I had two majors, Environmental and Education. In the Education Department we were told parents are no longer interested in what their kids are learning and are leaving it up to the schools to teach their children.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by Chris42:
Sigfreund - sounds like a book that should be on my shelf - title and author please?

I suspect it’s long out of print, but it might be available through used booksellers:

Winston W. Little, W. Harold Wilson, and W. Edgar Moore, Applied Logic (Cambridge, Mass: Riverside Press, 1955).

The publisher might be listed as Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston.

Applied Logic

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Whittle is actually addressing two different things: not knowing things (knowledge) and not knowing how to know things (thinking).

Not knowing what galaxy we’re in or what 30 miles per hour actually means is a lack of knowledge and is a sad commentary on the American education system.

What’s far worse, though, and much of the reason why the nation is in such a sad political and social state, is what the title is about: Why Johnny can’t think.

One course during my first year in college 53 years ago was “Applied Logic.” I still have the text for the course (and which had been published 10+ years before I got it), and still refer to it from time to time. In addition to the more well-known fallacies such as the black-or-white or argument of the beard fallacies, it included chapters on “Ideals of sound thinking,” “Need-directed thinking,” and “How we distort the evidence.” Are such things taught to anyone anywhere these days? Without teaching people how to think, and not just facts that may or may not have any relevance to their lives, they will accept anything they’re told or that pops into their heads on its own—and they do.

Logic was easily the most useful course I took during my college years. Philosophy has been pushed aside over the years, and that's a mistake.