Bruce Deitrick Price
Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, a lively intellectual site with articles on Latin, birds, Pavlov, phonics, sophistry, 1984, the assault on math, design, Taoism, teaching science, why our educators do a bad job, and much more.
Articles by Bruce Deitrick Price
October 13, 2009
Why does the US have 50,000,000 functional illiterates and 1,000,000 dyslexics? In this short but comprehensive article, nine of the world´s foremost reading experts analyze our illiteracy crisis. Each expert writes from a different perspective. Read what these experts have to say, and you will understand how a misguided Education Establishment caused a completely unnecessary tragedy. Next step: spread the word, save the country from more educational malpractice.
September 29, 2009
Parents need help defending their children against the ideology and incompetence so common in public schools. But US newspapers hardly bother to explain education to their readers. When kids aren´t learning, you can bet there is a scandal to investigate. Where´s investigative journalism when we need it?
September 21, 2009
Many experts believe dyslexia is a mythical illness. Wrong-headed reading methods cause undesirable symptoms, which public schools then label "dyslexic." This diagnosis absolves teachers and schools of responsibility. Parents should not be too quick to accept a school's vision of reality, given that the school might be wrong or covering up.
September 09, 2009
How do we explain the decline of the public schools? Obviously, our top educators are doing a bad job and should be held accountable. That's the conclusion of "41: Educators, O. J. Simpson, and Guilt" on Improve-Education.org...USA dumb. Educators guilty. That's the story. Please report it.
August 20, 2009
Sort of literary but cute, and sad too. You´ll like it! What Price is saying is, the schools have gotten REALLY DUMB, so dumb nobody knows jack anymore. We´re all separate lonely atoms now, because educators have stolen the icing off our cake. You know exactly what he means.
July 20, 2009
For 75 years, our Education Establishment has pushed an unworkable reading pedagogy based on the myth that children can learn to read by memorizing thousands of English words as SHAPES. Mastering even 2,000 sight-words is a huge task. But college-level literacy requires 100,000 words. Clearly, the whole scheme is silly, as this short article shows. (Bruce Price also has many graphic videos on YouTube explaining this subject; titles are in article.)
July 08, 2009
A friendly suggestion to Bill Gates and all education reformers: you have to be realistic about the people who created the mess you are trying to fix. The Educational Establishment has been dumbing down the public schools for many decades. Will they now change their stripes and welcome your suggestions? No, I think they will delay and obfuscate; they will wait for you to go away. This memo suggests a more pragmatic approach: first, understand what motivates these people; second, systematically eliminate all the bad ideas they introduced over the years (for example, Reform Math, Whole Word, Self Esteem, Constructivism, Cooperative Learning, Multiculturalism, and many more). Only then can we improve education.
June 23, 2009
Bruce Price´s new book dazzles ed school professors. They are gaga over "THE EDUCATION ENIGMA--What Happened To American Education," a dramatic romp on education´s new frontier. Price is a leading advocate of teaching basics and academics. His slogan is: "Facts are fun. Knowledge is power." Just a few years ago, ed school professors snickered at these notions. But Bruce Price has transformed education theory in America. Professors of education are now his biggest fans!!!! Satire? You decide.
June 11, 2009
American education is sabotaged by a weird array of impressive-sounding gimmicks that don't work. Today, the best of the worst is Critical Thinking, which is basically the process by which students are encouraged to discuss subjects, but never master them. The phrase "thinking critically about X" is often a guarantee that nobody knows any X. In this article, X just happens to be baseball. To illustrate a serious point in a somewhat humorous way,
May 18, 2009
Please, somebody WAKE UP the Republicans and tell them the good news: Democrats are guilty of educational malfeasance, and most people know it. Who else but liberal Democrats have created the dumbed-down public schools that now waste so much money and damage the country at every level? Liberal educators believe in collectivism; so they emphasize group activities at the expense of academic progress. In short, the party of "defining deviance down" is also the party of defining dumbness down. Why do this? Obviously, Democrats believe ignorant people are more likely to vote Democrat...If by "education" you mean what virtually all Americans mean--that is, reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.--then no one is more anti-education than liberal Democrats. This should be shouted from the rooftops.
May 07, 2009
Bernie Madoff's swindle depended on clever, sophistical words. Ditto, the educational frauds and fads so common in public schools. Whole Language, Sight Words, Look-Say, Constructivism, and many other gimmicks sound just great, don't they? Problem is, they don't work. And here's one cynic who says they were never intended to.
April 28, 2009
Education reform is difficult because our elite educators became obsessed with social engineering, and lost their focus on academics. So we first have to eliminate the many counterproductive ideas fostered by this obsession. Only then can we try better policies.
April 06, 2009
Massive new spending on education may not be the best policy for the Obama Administration. Our major need is for a better vision of what public schools are intended to accomplish. Our concern, as educators, must be to ensure that all children are encouraged to develop their abilities to the maximum possible extent, no matter whether those abilities are great or small.
March 28, 2009
Why is American education so inept? Why are our elite educators so devoted to ideas that never seem to work as promised? (Gimmicks such as Whole Word, New Math, Constructivism, Cooperative Learning and many others actually undermine education.)
THE EDUCATION ENIGMA--What Happened To American Education, a new book by education activist Bruce Deitrick Price, explains the crisis in the public schools and how we can improve.
January 27, 2009
Phonics is essential if children are to become fluent readers. But many public schools continue to use an unworkable pedagogy called Sight Words, Dolch Words, or Whole Word, which require that children memorize the shapes of words. These methods have created 50,000,000 functional illiterates.
January 08, 2009
Education's big claim for the past decade is that students are learning to "think critically" and to engage in "creative thinking." Cynics suspect this is all window-dressing designed to cover up the fact that students haven't been taught anything to think about.
November 17, 2008
We can´t understand the malaise in the public schools until we grasp that the people in charge have little interest in learning, facts, knowledge or even literacy.
April 17, 2008
Public schools are dysfunctional and a threat to America's future. Educators won't give up all their bad ideas. Who will provide the reform we desperately need? Education activist Bruce Deitrick Price calls on business leaders, teachers and taxpayers--start the revolution!
March 12, 2008
Ed site announces the big news in education: our elite educators have lost their way. Outsiders like Jay Leno show us what is really going on. Three cheers for Jaywalking.
January 08, 2008
How shall children be taught to read--Phonics or Whole Word? That’s the central debate behind the feud known as the Reading Wars.
What’s not debatable is that literacy has taken thunderous hits over the past 80 years. Everyone knows the scary stats, mainly, that this country has 50 million functi...
November 24, 2007
I read, cover to cover, an issue of a fine new business magazine, Portfolio, and sent off a letter to the editor making this point: no matter what biz topic you write about, “the real story” is that our public schools are so dysfunctional they are undermining both American civilization and American...
October 25, 2007
I’ve often read Rolling Stone cover to cover, and always enjoyed the trip, especially so in the case of the “The Fortieth Anniversary” (May 3, 2007). This celebratory issue contains interviews with 20 of our geniuses and icons, Tom Wolfe to Patti Smith, Steven Spielberg to Paul McCartney.
What I ...
September 06, 2007
The Vatican recently announced a return to the Latin Mass for congregations that wish to use it. Much of the world was bewildered or bemused. Oh great, old-fashioned religionists will be listening to sonorous noise that nobody understands.
Ah, but what if they did!
I believe the Pope’s deci...
July 10, 2007
Experts say there are tens of millions of functional illiterates. What are the schools doing to our children? Kim Latta runs reading clinics named Exceeding Reading in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She wrote me a note about her experiences with dyslexic children; and I thought, "This is the perfect person t...
March 19, 2007
Most major American newspapers are scoring a painful trifecta: losing readers, waving goodbye to advertisers, and firing journalists. Why is this happening?
Sure, the internet is a problem. But I can mention two other reasons which the embattled newspapers don’t like to mention. The first is real s...
February 14, 2007
Yes, they’re connected--this terrible trio of American culture--all connected. Permit me to be your guide to the dark side:
My encounter with John Dewey (America’s most famous educator) began in the trenches of the reading wars. There the big question is: why did our educators discredit phonics, ...
January 09, 2007
Summary: It’s a shocking story. Our educators betrayed everything they should have defended. Who would imagine that so-called educators would undermine education? Why, and how, did they do it?
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Symptoms of educational malfeasance are everywhere in America: rising illiteracy, high dropout r...
October 30, 2006
The following is the first part of “A Tribute to Rudolph Flesch” (on Improve-Education.org). This is the must-read part for most people. It explains why whole word, also called look-say, is a dangerous hoax:
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Rudolph Flesch was a graduate of Teachers College and an authority on both ...
October 18, 2006
Today, Shakespeare would recommend: “First, let’s kill all the sophists!”
The simplest definition of sophistry is: arguing to win. Saying anything to make the other person seem foolish and yourself wise. Saying anything to persuade or deceive.
Lawyers in court, unfortunately, are too often a...
October 11, 2006
One of my more exotic projects is celebrating a birthday. Twenty years ago I published “Latin Lives On--333 common words letter-for-letter identical in Latin and English.” This list is widely used by Latin teachers, English teachers, History teachers, all sorts of teachers, and is readily available ...
September 27, 2006
Or: How I Created "The Quizz" And Saved American Education!
Maybe there was a long-ago time when students had to memorize too much. But anyone who has watched Jay Leno go “Jaywalking” knows that many adults today, even ones who attended college, are remarkably unacquainted with even rudimentary k...
September 11, 2006
Warning: rant ahead.
The 20th century produced a number of stupendously evil dictators and one stupendously annoying cliché. That would be this bit of alliteration: form follows function. Thousands--nay, millions--of intelligent people have fallen all over themselves in a grotesque rush to hail t...
September 04, 2006
Quick, name a famous living poet. I bet that 99.99% of Americans can’t do this. When I was a boy, they actually interrupted pop music on the radio to say that T. S. Eliot had died. Can you imagine this today? Once the lusty Queen of the arts, Poetry now seems dithering and irrelevant. What happened?...
August 29, 2006
Will we make robots that are really like people? Not for a long time. On the other hand, robotics will give us a lively and unsettling ride. Here’s what to expect:
1) Robot manufacturers will make an aggressive play for the pet market. And for the doll and toy markets.
2) “Robots” that help ar...