Loved your appearance on Bad Faith. I loved it so much I subscribed. May I perhaps bring to your attention an aspect of the culture war that doesn't get a lot of talk?
As a linguistics alumnus & a retired teacher with a post-grad diploma in learning disabilities in 2 languages, I'm a whistleblower. I was diagnosed as dyslexic in French. I was so bad, they made me do my grade 1 a second time. I was a young Grade 1 (5.8 months) & I was never read to. My parents got me dyslexic help, started to read heaps of novels, & I got to be top of my class. Then, I moved to Western Canada at 15 & had to fight again with no English under my belt. Got in a 3rd-tier university & got a double major in English linguistics & French lit. (I had to find a way to get by.) I shouldn't have become whom I became. It made me keenly aware to challenge precinceived notions & have a weakness for the disadvantaged.
The culture & class war intersects in a sharp way when learning to read & write (spell) matters, but in special egregious ways in English. The UNSYSTEMATIC nature of the English spelling SYSTEM sets up lower classes for failure in an odd way. Are you familiar with the 30 million word gap theory (https://youtu.be/fOLzEUmXV5s?si=o5zX2ra3RnybcnBU or https://www.educationnext.org/dont-dismiss-30-million-word-gap-quite-fast/#:~:text=), which helps privileged kids get primed to get an edge in learning to read bc they can guess at weirdly spelled words better gvquicker? Tbs, ALL kids are harmed as Seymour's research attested (https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1348/000712603321661859) by TWO years of reading acquisition delays at best, no matter what the phonics method-du-jour is. Still, privileged kids (p) get to the top of their classroom bc of that edge, which they get rewarded, receive positive attention for & feel superior. The lower class kids (l) think the alphabet will be enough to master learning to read. The effect that p. have helps them memorize words faster & quicker. They can use 2 ways of learning to read. They sound smarter. They read more. They write better. They learn more. It's a snowball effect. Still, they had to make a pact with the devil: conform to the insane system. Imagine a child learning that "a" makes the "a" sound, but told that words like "are, as, awe,..." don't. Think of "s" in "is, as, his, has, was,...". One must stay confused or 1 can just accept & memorize the irregularities. There are 200 ways of spelling 44 sounds in the system. There should be 44. 1/2 of the lexicon has at least one error like this. Kids are told this is black, but then are told this is white, red, green, ... Some spellings have 13 different sounds (the schwa). This confuses kids & forces many to just accept lies, conform to absurd spellings. It predictably causes 2 YEARS of learning delays, but also high conformity by a lot of low IQ & EQ kids who are promoted to go to top universities eventually. The others fall by the way side or become politicians or engineers (with or without nepotism or tutoring).
Dyk that Orwell declared the system to be tormenting, preposterous, & irrational & Einstein, treacherous. research shows it is. Research (Seymour, 2003) also showed that all anglophones reading acquisition is 65% lower from high transparent systems like Italian, Finnish or Spanish and more for p. The anglosphere has unusually high illiteracy & surface dyslexia* rates (and costs). Prisons are full of illiterate inmates as well. The system is highly toxic.
The 2nd part of this is how to reform it. Traditionally, despotic means were used (some not intentionally, but by naiveté or lack of creativity). The Frenc recently hadxa genius idea to reform their system, but NOT force current users to relearn or use the new spellings. This would totally remove the issue of multiple dialects that is used to present a reform as impossible. I cannot explainthis fully here, but my x account (peterdmayr) has a pinned top post with more info & a comprehensive explanation of the French reform & solutions.
I hope you found this interesting & perhaps inspirational of a future article?
Please acknowledge.
*Bogus condition created to blame kids not the system
This is a must read, must examine, must think about, must do something, and do something about immediately post. Please read. https://open.substack.com/pub/heininger/p/tipping-point-how-middle-eastern?r=16lm0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Edit 2: intersect
Loved your appearance on Bad Faith. I loved it so much I subscribed. May I perhaps bring to your attention an aspect of the culture war that doesn't get a lot of talk?
As a linguistics alumnus & a retired teacher with a post-grad diploma in learning disabilities in 2 languages, I'm a whistleblower. I was diagnosed as dyslexic in French. I was so bad, they made me do my grade 1 a second time. I was a young Grade 1 (5.8 months) & I was never read to. My parents got me dyslexic help, started to read heaps of novels, & I got to be top of my class. Then, I moved to Western Canada at 15 & had to fight again with no English under my belt. Got in a 3rd-tier university & got a double major in English linguistics & French lit. (I had to find a way to get by.) I shouldn't have become whom I became. It made me keenly aware to challenge precinceived notions & have a weakness for the disadvantaged.
The culture & class war intersects in a sharp way when learning to read & write (spell) matters, but in special egregious ways in English. The UNSYSTEMATIC nature of the English spelling SYSTEM sets up lower classes for failure in an odd way. Are you familiar with the 30 million word gap theory (https://youtu.be/fOLzEUmXV5s?si=o5zX2ra3RnybcnBU or https://www.educationnext.org/dont-dismiss-30-million-word-gap-quite-fast/#:~:text=), which helps privileged kids get primed to get an edge in learning to read bc they can guess at weirdly spelled words better gvquicker? Tbs, ALL kids are harmed as Seymour's research attested (https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1348/000712603321661859) by TWO years of reading acquisition delays at best, no matter what the phonics method-du-jour is. Still, privileged kids (p) get to the top of their classroom bc of that edge, which they get rewarded, receive positive attention for & feel superior. The lower class kids (l) think the alphabet will be enough to master learning to read. The effect that p. have helps them memorize words faster & quicker. They can use 2 ways of learning to read. They sound smarter. They read more. They write better. They learn more. It's a snowball effect. Still, they had to make a pact with the devil: conform to the insane system. Imagine a child learning that "a" makes the "a" sound, but told that words like "are, as, awe,..." don't. Think of "s" in "is, as, his, has, was,...". One must stay confused or 1 can just accept & memorize the irregularities. There are 200 ways of spelling 44 sounds in the system. There should be 44. 1/2 of the lexicon has at least one error like this. Kids are told this is black, but then are told this is white, red, green, ... Some spellings have 13 different sounds (the schwa). This confuses kids & forces many to just accept lies, conform to absurd spellings. It predictably causes 2 YEARS of learning delays, but also high conformity by a lot of low IQ & EQ kids who are promoted to go to top universities eventually. The others fall by the way side or become politicians or engineers (with or without nepotism or tutoring).
Dyk that Orwell declared the system to be tormenting, preposterous, & irrational & Einstein, treacherous. research shows it is. Research (Seymour, 2003) also showed that all anglophones reading acquisition is 65% lower from high transparent systems like Italian, Finnish or Spanish and more for p. The anglosphere has unusually high illiteracy & surface dyslexia* rates (and costs). Prisons are full of illiterate inmates as well. The system is highly toxic.
The 2nd part of this is how to reform it. Traditionally, despotic means were used (some not intentionally, but by naiveté or lack of creativity). The Frenc recently hadxa genius idea to reform their system, but NOT force current users to relearn or use the new spellings. This would totally remove the issue of multiple dialects that is used to present a reform as impossible. I cannot explainthis fully here, but my x account (peterdmayr) has a pinned top post with more info & a comprehensive explanation of the French reform & solutions.
I hope you found this interesting & perhaps inspirational of a future article?
Please acknowledge.
*Bogus condition created to blame kids not the system
Edit: pre-conceived
This seems interesting. I will look into it. Thanks.