Freedom Flyer 21

the official newsletter of the
Freedom Party of Ontario

July 1992

ONTARIO INFORMATION BULLETIN

A Public Service Provided by the

FREEDOM PARTY OF ONTARIO

Parents And Taxpayers Beware!

SCHOOLS FAILING OUR CHILDREN!

YOUR EDUCATION TAX DOLLARS
MAY BE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD...

STARTLING FACTS:: 17% of all high school graduates in Canada are illiterate (Southam Survey)
40% of Canadians can't read due lo limited or nonexistent reading skills (Statistics Canada Report,1989)
The dropout rate is approaching 30%!
Canada has a growing skills shortage and unemployment rate because Canadian schools do not target needed skills (Canadian Business. February 1991)
More parents than ever are becoming disillusioned with the lack of objective standards in the school system. More than ever are turning to remedial schools!; 40% of Canadians can't read due lo limited or nonexistent reading skills (Statistics Canada Report,1989)
The dropout rate is approaching 30%!
Canada has a growing skills shortage and unemployment rate because Canadian schools do not target needed skills (Canadian Business. February 1991)
More parents than ever are becoming disillusioned with the lack of objective standards in the school system. More than ever are turning to remedial schools!; The dropout rate is approaching 30%!
Canada has a growing skills shortage and unemployment rate because Canadian schools do not target needed skills (Canadian Business. February 1991)
More parents than ever are becoming disillusioned with the lack of objective standards in the school system. More than ever are turning to remedial schools!; Canada has a growing skills shortage and unemployment rate because Canadian schools do not target needed skills (Canadian Business. February 1991)
More parents than ever are becoming disillusioned with the lack of objective standards in the school system. More than ever are turning to remedial schools!; More parents than ever are becoming disillusioned with the lack of objective standards in the school system. More than ever are turning to remedial schools!

These alarming statistics are just a sampling of the growing list of evidence that the way many of our children are being taught to read, write, and spell within the public education system is a disastrous failure. Currently known as WHOLE LANGUAGE, this approach to teaching literacy skills is increasingly replacing the teaching of PHONICS. As a result. more and more parents are resorting to alternative methods of teaching their own children to read while school boards continue to demand more of their education tax dollars.

BE INFORMED!

Arm yourself with the facts!

JUST SAY 'KNOW' TO WHOLE LANGUAGE!

Don't be fooled by the whole language con game! Compare for yourself!

WHOLE LANGUAGE

An authoritarian conditioning process based on unnecessary memorization and guesswork (i.e., the letters c, a, and t mean 'cat' because 'teacher says so.')

PHONICS

An independent learning process which does not rely on the authority of teachers or educational 'experts' (i.e., the letters c, a and t mean 'cat' because that is the sound those letters represent phonetically.)

WHOLE LANGUAGE

Children are taught to recognize (not read) words first, then to copy (not write) them. They never learn to spell properly.

PHONICS

Children are taught to read, spell, and write at the same time.

WHOLE LANGUAGE

Children are forced to memorize words one at a time and the program has no definite end. A victim of whole Ianguage continually comes across words he or she has not memorized.

PHONICS

Children generally complete the entire program in six months, after which they can read, write, and spell any number of words, even those with which they are not familiar.

WHOLE LANGUAGE

Requires individual supervision of students, often leaving the rest of the class unsupervised. This is often used by teachers' unions as an excuse to reduce class sizes, to hire additional teachers, and to raise taxes.

PHONICS

Does not require individual supervision, smaller class sizes, or the hiring of additional teachers, making it extremely cost effective.

WHOLE LANGUAGE

Whole language is a failure. Its name has been changed ("look-say," "whole word," "'word method," "'top-down," and "whole reading," among others) each time the failure becomes obvious.

PHONICS

Phonics works. It is not new or difficult and has always been called phonics.

WHOLE LANGUAGE

Whole language has been associated with physical and emotional problems in children, including insomnia, headaches, stomach aches, defiance, and temper outbursts.

PHONICS

A rewarding experience which instills pride, self-respect, and a sense of accomplishment.

WHOLE LANGUAGE BLAMED FOR HIGH ILLITERACY RATES

Sheila Morrison, author of Unbungling the Basics and operator of Sheila Morrison Schools, has had more than her fair share of experience with victims of whole language.

"The main reason we have such huge problems with high-school graduates is not that these are dull, unintelligent. unmotivated young people, it is that they have been shortchanged by the educational systems.' says Morrison. "Kids need structure. They need to know the limits. The only way to ensure children are learning is to test them.

"Any kid should be able to read anything at all by the time he's eight," insists Morrison. All it takes is consistent, intensive teaching of phonics and repetition.

"Once you have the basics, all the other stuff takes care of itself."

To prove her case, Morrison has developed and produced a set of audio and video teaching tapes to complement her Unbungling The Basics text and workbooks. With this material, parents can do the job that the public education system is failing at - teaching their kids to read and spell.

'WHOLE' DEBATE UNNECESSARY, SAYS METZ

"If parents could choose how their children are taught to read and write," says Freedom Party leader Robert Metz, "there would be no 'whole language' debate. Unfortunately, parents who find that their children have been handicapped by whole language also discover that they must pay twice to remedy the situation - once to a government monopoly system that is doing more harm than good, and once again to remedy the damage through alternate schooling or private tutoring.

"Parents deserve, and should demand, a choice in not only where their tax dollars are being spent,'"says Metz, "but in how those dollars are being spent."

NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT WHOLE LANGUAGE,
SAYS UWO PROFESSOR

An extensive review of the scientific literature on whole language by Dr. Case Vanderwolf, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario has revealed the following:

Direct phonics-based teaching produces more accurate reading and better comprehension than the various 'top-down' (whole language) methods of teaching.
Children in whole language programs performed more poorly than phonics groups in reading a passage from a primary reader, reading comprehension, computation, mathematical concepts. and in interpreting what is happening in pictures No superiority of the whole language groups was found on any objective measure.
No evidence has been found to support the view that whole language results in either more creativity or in better development of higher level concepts than other teaching methods.
Children learn to read more accurately and with better comprehension if their instruction begins with a systematic training in phonics.