Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Synthetic phonics again

Tim Worstall writes on the government's decree that reading must be taught by synthetic phonics in every school in the country:

My objection is that it's made into the law of the land. Whether to use it or not as a method. If we are to still regard teachers as professionalss then we should actually employ them as such. Fine, you're a qualified professional person. We trust you. Get on with it. This sort of level of detailed instruction is simply insanely prescriptive, to insist, by law, on a specific method of tuition from the centre.
He might have added that the more things are prescribed from the centre, the less new recruits to the profession can even imagine making such decisions for themselves. The result is the demoralised and rather immature teaching profession we see today.

There: an opinion.

One of the odd effects of the virus I have had for the past couple of weeks has been that I have not been able to form an opinion about anything. I must be on the mend.

2 comments:

Iain said...

It does strike me that someone is going to make a mint out of the text book deal. I wonder who?

Isaac Eiland-Hall said...

It occurs to me that while synthetic phonics might be very good, the best method to teach depends on both the teacher and the child. A teacher might have a knack for teaching a particular technique, and a child might 'get' one method more than another. It is odd that the government thinks it can micro-manage such a subtle decision all the way from Westminster.,