Word: flesches
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...notable for anything as far as the U.S. public school is concerned, it may be that it will be remembered as the Year of Rudolf Flesch. In his bestselling book Why Johnny Can't Read (TIME, March 14), Flesch baldly accused the U.S. public school of having completely abandoned phonics (the letter-by-letter, syllable-by-syllable method of teaching reading) in favor of the word recognition or look-and-say method (memorizing words as wholes...
...result, said Flesch. a free-lance writer from Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., Johnny is taught merely to guess at words, develops no way to figure out new words he has not already memorized. U.S. educators-closed ranks against Flesch, and when they were not denouncing the "Devil in the Flesch," they were damning the "Flesch peddlers." Nevertheless, though Johnny was marred by flagrant exaggerations, it stayed on the bestseller list for 39 weeks, and thousands of parents-and teachers-found in Flesch the angrily dramatic spokesman they had been waiting...
...beyond my means of comprehension." In Louisville, a mother reported on her third-grader's typewriting: "He typed the letters very easily . . . But after typing the letters B-O-W-L across the page about ten times, he called it pot." To such parents, Flesch's book touched a sensitive nerve...
...national reading problem as bad as Flesch and some parents think? The answers of the colleges are anything but consistent. Harvard and Wellesley feel that their students read as well as ever...
...whatever system is used, today's schools, committed as they are to giving every boy and girl an education, no matter what his capabilities, are up against a heavier problem than any school system has ever faced before. Out of the controversy, it seems, one thing is sure: Flesch's accusations that the public school has abandoned phonics and that before it did, the U.S. had no reading problem, are as ill-founded as his claims that other countries use only phonics and have no reading difficulties...