Suppose you write to your child and then remember he can’t read?

Suppose you write to your child and then remember he can’t read?

by Jon Rappoport

March 5, 2018

You wouldn’t want to be that kind of parent.

But schools can preempt you. They can bring your child along, all the way to graduation from high school—and it turns out he’s illiterate.

I want to describe several levels of illiteracy that afflict the young. There are more, but I’ll focus on three.

One: At age 16, he can’t read words and understand them beyond, say, a fourth grade level. He can’t read an article. He can’t read a food label. He can’t read a sign at a pond that says swimming is dangerous.

Two: He can read a newspaper article at a 10th grade level. He knows what most of the words mean. But he doesn’t know what the author is saying—he doesn’t know and can’t explain what each paragraph is stating. He can’t articulate that.

Three: He can read the same article and tell you something about what it means. He can articulate the meaning of most paragraphs. But he doesn’t know and can’t tell you what final point the author is making. Perhaps he isn’t even aware that the author is trying to make a point. And he certainly can’t explain HOW the author is reasoning, how the author is moving through a series of inferences to arrive at a conclusion.

The number-one level of illiteracy is easy to spot. But the other two aren’t, because people (including many teachers) never make proper inquiries of the student. They don’t ask what each paragraph of an article SPECIFICALLY means. They don’t ask for the overall point the author is making. They don’t ask how the author is arriving at his conclusion. So these aspects of literacy are shrouded in darkness.

You can find estimates of the amount of illiteracy in your home country, but these assessments, gloomy as they are, don’t cover all the basic issues I’m raising here. This is called a clue. The researchers themselves don’t recognize all the aspects of a literate person.

If you had access to a high-school class, and you started asking students pointed questions about the issues I’m raising here, with respect to a particular newspaper article, you would discover a giant hole in education.

“Look, here is an article about White House foreign policy. You just read it. What the is author telling you? What basic point is he making in the article?”

Then stand back and watch what happens. Very little. Lots of blank faces.

Now, if you, as a parent, want to go even deeper, if you understand the article about foreign policy is driven by an agenda and the author is biased…what chance do you have? The students can’t even grasp what the author is SAYING.

A school teacher—or better yet, a home schooling parent—could undo all this damage. He could gradually take children through the three levels above and make sure the students emerge with a firm grasp of what it means to be literate. Not “in general,” but specifically.

When students are up to it, go over one article a dozen times (or more). Home in on each sentence, each paragraph, until the meanings become clear. Search for the conclusion the author is driving at. Finally, examine in detail HOW the author is arriving at his conclusion. Dig in. Dig in deep. Teach literacy as if you’re teaching anatomy, piece by piece.

The devil is in the details, as they say. Train students to find, appreciate, and understand details. Train them to be able to articulate the details. Don’t go for gloss and vague surface.

Over the course of a year, analyze a dozen or two dozen articles and watch what happens. Light bulbs go on. Students catch on. They begin to see through the fog. They turn into detectives. The glazed look in their eyes disappears. They move from passive to active. They show excitement. They’re alive. They’re alive to real education. Goofy transforms into sharp.

The potential ability was there. It was always there. It just needed to be brought out, step by step.

And then there is this: all the indoctrination that had been unleashed on students, all the training in “values” begins to vaporize. The students no longer accept it as a substitute for learning. They realize it was fluff and vapid generality.

They can find better values. They can find values based on the self-realization that they’re now alive and inquisitive and discerning—they’re capable, they’re not disabled. They don’t need fake learning and fake teachers and a fake system to push them along to graduation on a smooth river of pretense.

The conspiracy of pretense is gone, like a fever that the immune system demolishes.

Out of the vague and confusing mist, a literate person emerges.

Two basic cover stories permeate education these days. One, cooperative learning. In this setting, small teams of students are assigned projects. No individual student is responsible for his own work (a disaster). Two, the teacher asks students for their opinions about an article, an issue, a book. It’s assumed (by moral and cultural relativity theory) that students will have different and equally valid ideas about what they read. This skirts the fact that the students don’t truly understand what they’re reading in the first place. Therefore, what value do their opinions have?

All sorts of acrobatics are performed in the classroom to avoid the core fact of illiteracy.

This is a catastrophe. Every society and civilization has language. If the young aren’t taught that language successfully, they can’t function in many areas of life. Yes, some of them will succeed anyway, but the majority won’t. They’ll founder on the rocks of ignorance. The “culture” will concoct all sorts of reasons to support and excuse that ignorance, but the effort doesn’t wash. It merely postpones a day of reckoning.

To make true literacy come to pass, teachers and parents have to be literate themselves. This is a major issue, too. But a start needs to be made somewhere. To execute a course correction, somebody at the helm of a ship has to be able to steer. Somebody has to learn how.

Any person who has looked into the history of education in America soon learns—from authors John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Iserbyt, for example—that the system has been intentionally rigged and degraded, because who in power wants millions of independent, literate, logical minds out there questioning and analyzing what elite power is really doing?

The way back from the swamp of incompetence and futility isn’t a short journey. But it can be accomplished, one teacher and one student at a time. One class at a time.

If not in a school, then at home.


The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

12 comments on “Suppose you write to your child and then remember he can’t read?

  1. Surf Dude says:

    This is all by design by the Fabians long ago, now society is reaping the seeds that have been sowed. Today it’s called Common Core.

  2. Abe says:

    The Commies (HitLIARy, Johnny Wet Start McCain, Obama, Blabber Mouth Shultz, SPLC, Teacher’s Union Heads, Soros, and there ilk) want a bunch of brain dead, Autistic, peons to rule over. This couldn’t be more apparent than the real interview with David Hogg’s and CNN, than the cut and paste interview CNN show on the idiot tube. He (Hogg’s) isn’t even a highly trained parrot, let alone the concerned, articulate kid!

    Does anyone see what a few thought that the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida made it a false flag right from the Get Go? Like who was Marjory Stoneman Douglas? Clue, she didn’t want to “DRAIN THE SWAMP!”

    From Wikipedia.
    Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 – May 14, 1998) was an American journalist, author, women’s suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over a hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson’s influential book Silent Spring (1962). Her books, stories, and journalism career brought her influence in Miami, enabling her to advance her causes.

  3. Reblogged this on amnesiaclinic and commented:
    Very true and tragic.

  4. From Quebec says:

    A pastor married an illiterate. jealous woman.

    One day the woman was in the kitchen cooking when she overheard his husband praying in the living room,

    “Thank you Lord for bringing mercy, joy and grace into my life.” d woman ran quickly with a frying pan, whacked him on the head and said, “I knew you were a player and a fake pastor!

    You’ve just prayed for all your girlfriends, so u think I did n’t hear you!
    Who the hell are Mercy, Joy and Grace???

  5. Abe says:

    I was reading over a few “Q” posts.
    Mar 3 2018 23:48:04
    Q
    !UW.yye1fxo
    ID: 4bebe1
    545335
    Expand your thinking.
    Who leaked Vault7 to WL?
    Who returned fire?
    OP Name: Fiddler
    @Snowden
    Mission 1: Infiltrate
    Mission 2: Centralize
    Mission 3: Secure
    Mission 4: Expose to HARM
    (Date)
    (WH interference)
    (WH directive)
    Mission 5: Russia LINK
    (2013 timeline of events)
    (1/17/14)
    Think.
    Learn.
    Mission 6: Fiddler > Ghost-PRIME
    Mission 7: CLAS
    Mission 8: Whistle Blower traps – jobs C-3567k
    Mission 9: Censorship
    CLAS +relay
    Q

    Mission 7: CLAS I had a chance to check out. Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools???WTF??
    http://www.clasleaders.org/Professional-Development/

    What if it was??

    Council for Leaders in American Schools
    council for leaders in american schools in europe
    council for leaders in american schools abroad

    Or Council for Leaders in American Schools is censored?

  6. wesirvine says:

    My question is, where are the parents of these young girls? 11 year olds walking the streets these days?

  7. Theodore says:

    Chilling.

  8. Gairn says:

    Hi Jon, You will appreciate the following. If you don’t understand a word, you can’t understand the sentence. If you can’t understand the sentence do you fully get the meaning of the paragraph… ETC. Small words with 3 letters or less can have so many definitions. In the 20 volume dictionary you will see more than 20 ways to use (definitions) for the word “to”. They are listed here: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/to
    In very big dictionaries there are all the meanings of words not just 3 or 4 common use definitions.
    http://www.sgmt.at/ClearbirdE/study2004/manual/04_mudefin.htm
    First half of this page/article is the detail. The second half gives more insight read it first.
    The article gives no credit to the author who I know to be L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard created course materials to teach basic literacy. This is a small portion of that course.

  9. jim says:

    There are several reasons why children in the US are illiterate. One is testing standards must conform to the LCD, and that is definitely racially biased, but we live in a rainbow country. Another is the plethora of hand help gizmos and TVs, as long attention spans are intentionally obliterated. Still another is parents do not read themselves.

    The best way to raise literate children is to set an example of reading yourself, and discussing what you read to them. Create a daily four hour window, where gizmo and TV use is forbidden, and throw books and other reading materials at them. Inspect their homework once in a while, and ensure that it maintains solid standards.

    Depending on the public school system to educate a child is insanity.

  10. No literacy and no critical thinking skills

  11. Judy says:

    Reblogged this on judithwill56 and commented:
    Teaching our children to read, think and reason

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