It's super weird to believe auditing a normal person and auditing "the uber rich" is in any way comparable. In both cases the thing being done can be referred to as an "audit," but that's it.
This is not really accurate. There was a vary long running debate about phonics which is 1 piece of a larger system (alphabetic coding, phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and comprehension) vs Whole language which became popular int he UK and US in the 1980s and 1990s. Whole language is junk pedagogy and doesn't work but was the preferred method taught to teachers for nearly 30 years in the US.
The NYT Daily podcast did an ok episode on this[1].
I'll certainly review the podcast when I have time. Thanks!
I read Pournelle's column in Byte in the late eighties and at times he bemoaned the lack of phonics in modern reading curriculum while also pumping his wife's expensive phonics-based reading software. I ran this by teachers I knew and the general response I got was a confirmation that teachers use phonics all the time, along with some frustration about the rather common misunderstanding, which is at times promoted by people with their own agendas.
As someone who knows teachers but doesn't have kids and has not been motivated to learn a lot about this stuff, I've found that the above pattern often holds. Teachers baffled and annoyed by the misunderstanding of what they're doing with regard to phonics, a somewhat political origin of the critique of reading education from people who are inclined to criticize public education more broadly, sometimes there's a product to sell...
Dealing with "phonics parents" who have bought into this is probably a bit surreal and frustrating. "You've spent time working with your child on lessons outside the classroom and they've displayed improvement? What an important and forgotten education principle you've discovered."
I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words. None of the kids whose parents didn't read to them could read well by 3rd or 4th grade.
Moreover it is factual that universities instructing teachers were for decades only teaching the whole language approach. Implementation varied state to state, but you can literally look at curriculum material used in various states over time and see the shift.
The problem was in fact the reverse of what you're claiming, whole language was brought in by consultants selling a curriculum. This is also easily confirmed.
I also know some teachers, but that's just anecdote and fairly parochial.
> I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words.
I mean... would you remember? Pretty much the only thing I remember about the relevant early years of kindergarten and elementary school is the time I went to school sick and threw up on my desk. (then again, I'm old)
> The problem was in fact the reverse of what you're claiming, whole language was brought in by consultants selling a curriculum. This is also easily confirmed.
I actually have no idea how to confirm that, but I'm sort of willing to take your word for it. By contrast, it's easy to find the phonics lesson products that are sold to parents, like the one I mentioned in my post. Such products used to be pumped on the ads during AM hate radio shows, among other things. Those products were complimentary to the "educators are terrible and public education is terrible and everything done by experts is terrible" message those shows pushed.
To be clear, I don't think those lessons are necessarily useless. Time spent with kids outside class on their education is a positive thing.
> Implementation varied state to state
I'm sure that accounts for a lot of the difference in lesson plans we're talking about, and some states emphasize strong local control as well.
Yes. I distinctly remember sitting through a whole year of other kids struggling to guess what a word was based on context clues in some rabbit related reading book written for whole language instruction. It was painfully slow and boring. I distinctly remember having been taught by my mother to sound out letters, so I didn't have to guess and the teachers telling me not to do it.
> I actually have no idea how to confirm that
Marie Clay is the name you want to google.
> easy to find the phonics lesson products that are sold to parents
The reason there was a market for this is because what schools were doing was not working.
> Such products used to be pumped on the ads during AM hate radio shows, among other things. Those products were complimentary to the "educators are terrible and public education is terrible and everything done by experts is terrible" message those shows pushed.
It's important to step away form the culture war aspect of the "reading wars". There is simply put an evidence based and scientific way to teach reading, and one based on wacky theories fro mt he 1960s that don't work but were popularized by hucksters. The excellent podcast series sold a story has great coverage. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ (I wish they published long for text, and its ironic I know, but here we are).
> I'm sure that accounts for a lot of the difference in lesson plans we're talking about, and some states emphasize strong local control as well.
This is to an extent true, but teachers have to get trained on instruction in literacy and for many years colleges were all teaching utter nonsense.
That said, it's important not to over focus on the mechanical part of reading, phonics, because background knowledge and vocabulary are key to using phonics well.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply - thanks! There are some things here to follow up on eventually.
I'm very skeptical that the aforementioned "consultants" made money off of the phonics controversy in a way that was comparable to those selling home lessons, but that's my main quibble at this stage.
> for many years colleges were all teaching utter nonsense.
That must be an exaggeration. It made me realize I actually have no idea how many different streams of methodology there are in education, outside of what we define as the mainstream. Certainly phonics is a part of Montessori education. Ah well, another thing to read about someday.
The way primary teachers are taught is indeed an interesting topic, and its bizarrely not interdisciplinary. You have teaching colleges 100 yards from world class psychology or developmental neuroscience programs and they just don't talk.
People just lived through a crisis in which public health officials were telling them to avoid a deadly virus by using glory holes[0]. Skepticism of institutions is at an all time high for good reason.
Thanks for that reminder of some cultural differences (!) between us and our friends across the pond. Hopefully it goes without saying, that rather colorful example is a few steps removed from the replication crisis, although the point about governing institutions spending their credibility in poor ways is taken.
The US had a version of this as well. At the height of lockdowns and social distancing a lot of health officials were saying protesting racial injustice was more important than Covid 19, which we closed a lot of businesses for.
> Based on the story line alone, I quit when, for no apparent reason, during a tense moment in the story, the lead sales guy has a kissing session with another guy. The lead guy isn't gay. I don't think the guy he kissed was gay.
1. "Kissing session," "kissed," etc. Funny stuff. I hope you don't really think they were just looking for wine when they were off camera.
2. He's bi. We meet an ex boyfriend in a later episode, although the fact of his ahem "kissing session" would seem to be evidence enough.
3. The reason is obvious enough if you watch through the end of the dinner.
They'll respond to a loss of business or reputational damage.
Reputational damage is a less useful tool today, when so many of the people in power at CBS have personal reasons for wanting to curry favor with the administration. So, loss of business: simply boycotting or changing the channel can help.
> how do you crash an ETF? I'm talking about broad index funds. Not stuff like ARKK
Any ETF's share value can "crash" if there are not enough buyers to purchase shares when they are trading below NAV (net asset value). It's worth a quick google to see what "market makers" or "authorized participants" do, but the thing to keep in mind is: if the market is kind of exploding in some major ways (think 2008) an ETF might not have a lot of buyers, even if its market price is well below its net asset value.
But why would that happen? Let's say an ETF normally trades at 99% of it's NAV. Suddenly it "crashes" and only trades at 97.2% after some bad news. Bob in accounting embezzled millions. It's gone, Bob spent it all at the strip club. Wouldn't some investor decide to just net the approximately ~1.8% by increasing demand and buying it up? After all, Bob embezzled millions. Not the billions that larger ETFs control.
Unless you're proposing some weird industry wide boycott of Vanguard or something. In that case the only thing stock traders are going to accomplish is destruction of every publicly traded asset they hold as market confidence in retail traders slowly slips downwards.
> Wouldn't some investor decide to just net the approximately ~1.8% by increasing demand and buying it up?
When it comes to individual investors, sure, in a situation where everything is going crazy in the markets some will buy and some will be happy to sell, provided the exchange doesn't halt trading temporarily in response to an extreme drop in share prices. The problem comes when the large market makers who are meant to really be on the ball and buy large blocks of shares quickly are suddenly worried about their own survival, or at least that's the way I remember a few of the chaotic days of 2008.
I knew a few people who made money buying bond ETFs at a discount to NAV.
A corporation can hold t-bills and cash equivalents instead of relying on a bank account where the $250K FDIC limit will bite them.
This notion that the $250K FDIC insurance limit is an acceptable part of our system, except in cases where a bank fails and the depositors are... sympathetic? It's incredibly silly.
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