Columbia quietly closes down Teachers College project that ruined countless lives

[Kamaji]

Columbia quietly closes down Teachers College project that ruined countless lives

By NY Post Editorial Board
Published Sep. 17, 2023

Columbia University is trying to quietly walk away from a disaster it imposed on generations of American children.

The least we can do is call out the damage done.

Just before the Labor Day weekend, Columbia announced that it’s “dissolving” the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and sending its creator, Lucy Calkins, off on indefinite sabbatical.

For decades, Calkins and her colleagues pushed “literacy” programs based on ideology, not science, programs that failed the children who most needed help.

Her “balanced literacy” approach gave short shrift to phonics — by teaching children to look at pictures and guess words, for example, instead of sounding them out — and failed to foster the building of knowledge and vocabulary vital to learning the love of reading.

Columbia’s decision comes months after Chancellor David Banks pulled the plug on the Calkins-friendly approach once used by nearly half of NYC public schools.

Indeed, the drive toward “evidence-based” instruction has seen districts across the nation reject the Teachers College approach.

So Columbia’s move is essentially just recognizing reality.

But it doesn’t recognize the school’s guilt.

If Columbia University could be held liable for the harm done to generations of American kids, it would lose its entire $13 billion endowment and more. The least it could do is offer an abject apology.

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/09/17/columbia-quietly-closes-down-teachers-college-project-that-ruined-countless-lives/

[PeteS in CA]

It'll get re-euphemized and resurrected. Phonic instruction works well for most children, but "educators" rebel against it because it's boring. The Look-Say (and a couple more generations of euphemistic names) fraud has been sabotaging reading in the US longer than I've been alive, sadly. Why Johnny Can't Read is, sadly, a classic that is still true.

[DefiantMassRINO]

In retrospect, I have greater appreciation for the way I was taught.

The nuns had us write math tables and spelling words ad infinitum.  When I was younger, I thought this was torture.

Now, I relealize, that when you repetitively write something, it makes an imprint in a different part of the brain, than speaking, talking, or thinking.

The nuns had me using more parts of my brain to learn the building blocks of mathematics and literacy.  A solid foundation of these building blocks, set me up for later academic success.

[PeteS in CA]

I attended a Lutheran parochial school for Grades 1-3. The phonics drills soon bored the snot out of me, because I "got" reading quickly. But the teacher had to teach to the less quick kids as well. Ditto Math flashcards and so on. Basic tools like phonics and Math flashcards simply have to be memorized. Starting out memorizing whole words cannot work as well, especially when seeing a word for the first time.

[Smokin Joe]

In retrospect, I have greater appreciation for the way I was taught.

The nuns had us write math tables and spelling words ad infinitum.  When I was younger, I thought this was torture.

Now, I relealize, that when you repetitively write something, it makes an imprint in a different part of the brain, than speaking, talking, or thinking.

The nuns had me using more parts of my brain to learn the building blocks of mathematics and literacy.  A solid foundation of these building blocks, set me up for later academic success.

Ditto, and the same systems were used in those days in the Public schools (in the pre-calculator era).