Friday, April 24, 2015
BX Momote Village
Comics 10¢, an unbelievably difficult decision because it means selecting the thing you're actually going to read, decode all those words in the little dialog boxes. I'd rather just study the pictures' details and ignore all the words but apparently they're deemed necessary and if it were not for comic books I'd avoid reading altogether. Decoding. It wasn't fun. With all those unnecessary tricks like silent letters and fake out pronunciations. Japanese writing is little pictures that makes more sense than sounds and so is Egyptian writing, no decoding at all, just looking at pictures. None of this sounding it out stuff with all the fake out traps. Pictures. That's the way to go when it comes to reading.
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I visit medicalwhiskey.com fairly regularly. Pr*nographic Japanese cartoon art, amateur, I think. Collaborative. Not majorly hardcore. Not nasty.
I find that anime stuff interesting in small doses and that site is about all I can take in one shot. We all get off the bus at different stops.
In other words let's go back to the look-say method, that is actually being foisted on kids by our educrats, plunging them into the dark ages.
This morning, Richard Dawkins was setting forth his evidence to support the proposition that the source of our morals is not religion.
Fine. But he lost me with his implicit claim that our diminishing bloodthirstiness is somehow synonymous with progressive politics. He talks a lot about Hitler but I have yet to hear mention of Stalin or Mao or . . . blah, blah, blah . . . you get the idea.
I don't know whether he's a "leftist" or not, nor do I care.
Perhaps there is a persuasive case to be made that the same cause animates an aversion to clubbing dodos to extinction as well as the desire for the abolishment of private ownership of property, but I don't need to go there.
I'll keep listening.
Well, on reconsideration, what Chip wants isn't the same as the look-say method, it's more like having to learn ten thousand picture-grams, like the Chinee, in order to be literate. And it took me like six months in first grade to make my reading breakthrough based on just 26 letters!
Actually, I was doing very well. Bluebird reader. That was the best. Even though the reading material was the worst possible. I did not give one single shit what Dick and Jane did.
Then schools changed. I'm in a new 3rd grade and confident about reading. It's my turn. We're having a circle jerk. I meant to say just now a reading jerk. I read my portion perfectly. To the letter. Using the method taught me.
"David rowed the boat through the waves to the island."
"Stop, Chip. That's island."
"The book says island."
"That's island."
"No it isn't. My book says island."
"That word is island.
"I've been doing this in school for two years. I know the sound it out way. My book says island. I know it's an island. You know it's an island. There is a picture right here of an island, but my book says island."
"The S is silent."
"What?
"You don't pronounce the S."
"What?"
"There are silent letters, Chip."
"What?"
I could NOT have been more disgusted. I gave it a good effort in good faith and then THIS? No. I'm not having it. It's wrong. Every child learning to read knows it's just flat wrong.
We're told it's due to etymology the history of the word it's origin, any child says, so what. That was then and this is now. If you're going to go with letters then go with letters that represent the sounds made when spoken not letters that pay homage to the words ancestry. Phuc that noiz.
I am totally for the kids coming up who by texting aren't bothering with all we learned and hold dear. They sound ignorant as h-e-double pen quills when compared with proper English but they're no less expressive and they sound brilliant to me for their compression and their sound capture.
I overheard(saw) a table of deaf guys playing a word game. One spelled "aglu" and stumped the whole table. His answer was flattened hand palm up with the other hand cupped on top of it. Still stumped. He spelled: e-s-k-i-m-o-h-o-u-s-e. The whole table nodded "ah yes, that one."
You don't learn ten thousand characters to be literate.
You learn a few hundred marks that make sense. Some marks are made at the top of a configuration, as a roof or a hat, other marks are found at the left side of a configuration such as rivers and paths. The legs and arms and branches of figures make sense within their system. They are like LEGO toys that one makes things with. Oddly the most complicated configurations can stand for the simplest things while conversely the simplest marks can represent the most complex arcane concepts, and once learned when you see these marks anywhere POW the meaning comes with them. It's very likely you end up find meaning in random marks pretty much everywhere.
No, it only takes a few and it's so easy and natural that children pick it right up, quite quickly, not to ten thousand characters but sufficient to be counted the most literate populations on Earth.
Okay, Richard Dawkins got around to Stalin. I can see where I jumped the gun. Oh well.
It's just that I've read that retort so frequently on the intertubes.
Dawkins said he hears it, constantly, and he explained why it is immaterial to his point that religion is not essential for morality.
Just so you know.
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