thing as English hieroglyphics. There are Egyptian
hieroglyphics, Sumerian hieroglyphics, maybe some
others. But English? No way.
Yeah, you know that. But does a six-year-old kid know
that? Not hardly.
You know what this means? The school system can pull a
fast one. Teachers point to a word-– “house” -– and
say, “This design is pronounced ‘house.’ Memorize it.”
Presto, that English phonetic word is now English
hieroglyphics, simply by saying it is. That’s what
American public schools did circa 1930; they changed
all English phonetic words into English hieroglyphics.
It was so easy. What do first graders know? They’ve
got VICTIM written all over them.
If children learn the alphabet, they are memorizing the
shapes of individual letters. But a single letter is
not so great a challenge; plus, there are only 26 of
them.
But what about five of these easy shapes stuck together
to make a much more complicated shape like “house”? Or,
worse still, something like “business.” What about
this complex shape makes you think of business
activity? Basically, that’s how you learn
hieroglyphics, one at a time, with as many memory aids
as possible.
If you don’t happen to have a photographic memory, you
will have to be clever and creative with your mnemonic
tricks. Let’s say the word is “face.” Both the “a” and
the “e” have a closed shape that could very well be
eyes. That’s how you do it.
The problem with hieroglyphics is that each design is
hard work and takes up lots of memory. Even very smart
people have trouble memorizing 2000 hieroglyphics with
instant recall. More ordinary memories might have
trouble going past 200 hieroglyphics.
Treating English word as hieroglyphics has few benefits
and many obvious limitations. The English language is
huge. College graduates routinely know more than
100,000 English words. Nobody knows 100,000
hieroglyphics. Furthermore, having memorized “face,”
would you be able to read FACE? The eyes, where are the
eyes?
Historically speaking, it was as though a strange and
deadly virus struck our Education Establishment around
1930. They insisted-–absolutely, hysterically
insisted--that memorizing English words as
hieroglyphics was the best way to go. In fact, it’s the
worst way.
English hieroglyphics, that’s what most little children
studied and memorized across the United States for a
long time. This method never made any sense. It caused
huge damage. It’s the reason we have 50 million
functional illiterates.
Virtually all readers of English hieroglyphics are
damaged readers. Their eyes tend to flit randomly over
the complex designs. Instead of relentless left-to-
right movements, their eyes zigzag and jump backwards.
Soon these readers are diagnosed as dyslexic. They are
said to have ADHD; and must be given Ritalin.
No, what they need to be given is a lesson in phonics.
They memorize the letter names. They learn the sounds
(i.e., the phonics) represented by the letters. They
learn the blends of these sounds. When children can
combine two or more sounds into one sound, they are
reading!
That’s how it works. That’s how simple it is, in every
phonetic language all around the world. Once you know
the letters and the sounds, there is no limit to the
number of words you can read. That’s why English can
have 1 million words, some of them long and bizarre
like “ibuprofen” and “verisimilitude,” but readers have
no trouble.
Conversely, children trying to memorize English as
hieroglyphics might stumble over “See Dick and Jane.”
They might stumble over “house.” After all, when you
think of it as a design, house looks a lot like louse,
hoist, horse, dowse, souse, mouse, host, hoses, worse,
hurts, etc. Really, that is the primary problem with
English hieroglyphics. Every one of them resembles 50
others. A kid could get dyslexia, never learn to read,
drop out of school, and end up stealing a car belonging
to a literacy professor. Well, at least that would be
poetic justice.
========
“Sight Words--The Big Stupid”
http://www.improve-education.org/id66.html
“America, you’ve been punked.”
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2013091333189/life-and-
science/health-and-education/america-you-have-been-
punked.html
“Reading is Easy.” (a short video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JV0tPGn-Ws
Bruce Deitrick Price explains educational theory and
methods on his site Improve-Education.org
Article Source:
http://www.edarticle.com/articles/42808/english-
hieroglyphics-are-fun-and-easy-to-read.php
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