Scout mindset or soldier mindset

Not long ago I heard a TED talk by Julia Galef on why scout mindset is crucial to good judgment.

I believe that both mentalities are important. I used the scout mentality to gather firsthand information from my students on why they were unable to read in English but were able to read in Malay and Hanyu Pinyin.

Email to Dr. Boulton (Part 2 of 3)

6.9.2015

Hi again Dr. David Boulton,

What you said in one of your videos is: 10 times the number of kids who have innately biologically ordered learning difficulties have learning difficulties that are a consequence of what they learned…... Until such time we can read that they are cognitively going askew relative to what they have learnt in the past then our teaching is kind of brute force against this deep core stuff that is working against us.

Andrew P. Johnson's flawed views on phonics

Andrew P Johnson is a professor from Minnesota State University, Mankota.

The following extract from Andrew Johnson’s (AJ) book is flawed.

           "The Problems with Phonics-Only Reading Programs

            Students who are struggling readers are often given programs that involve only direct instruction of phonics or other reading sub-skills (McCormick & Zutell, 2011).  There are four problems with these types of phonics-only programs:"

My comment: The above is a sweeping statement which will mislead many readers including teachers, students and parents. It is highly irresponsible for a professor to make sweeping statements which will mislead readers. Firstly, how many programmes teach only direct phonics? More importantly, it is not phonics that is the culprit but the teaching of phonemes by many teachers who do not know the letter sounds.