California's 4th-grade children now score last in the national ranking of 39 participating states in reading according to the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (1994 NAEP READING: A First Look; 1-800-424-1616).

• Aren't the low scores due to low levels of funding? No. California falls slightly below the national average in per pupil expenditure. In 1991-2 California spent $4491 per pupil. Across the states per pupil expenditures ranged from $2960 (Utah) to $8645 (New Jersey).

• Aren't the low scores due to a large population of minorities? No. Among white children, California scored last; among children of college-educated parents, California scored second from last. Among black children, California scored fourth from last.

• Has California changed direction on whole language? Yes. A 1995 California task force on reading concluded that mandating whole language statewide was a mistake. On September 12, 1995, the California legislature passed AB170, which requires the State Board of Education to ensure that the materials it adopts for reading instruction include "systematic, explicit phonics." The vote was unanimous in both legislative chambers.   (source)

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The basics of language, and therefore the basics of communication, are sounds first, not letters, words or symbols.  It is the failure to observe this truth that has ruined the technology of teaching reading.  A baby, indeed, sees things, and, as many do, keeps pictures of what he sees.  So, first learning is undoubtedly through seeing and pictures.  But, mothers have not yet developed their skills at "seeing" the pictures of their child, and children have no way, yet, of popping their internal pictures out for mother to look at.

But, sounds are different.  Children have a simple way of hearing a sound and mimicking that sound in a way that mother can hear.   We even call it "parroting" because parrots can do something rather similar.

The most basic of all learning technology is "mimicking."  The child hears "fo fo" on some random basis, and says, "fo fo."  Some mothers might exalt that, "Our son has said his first words!"

Let's take a more likely example.  Little Johnny says, "ma ma."  Mother hears this -- and assumes, immediately, that Johnny is calling her "mother" or "ma ma."  These might well have been nothing more than random noises uttered by the kid. But, mother hears this sound and lights up, smiles (kids have learned that smiles are good) and mother then excitedly exclaims, "ma ma -- yes, ma ma!"  The kid has been acknowledged and has started a learning process -- based on voicing a sound that, now, has some great significance. Why?  Because mother mimics the sound made by Johnny.  Johnny has now experienced something very precious in life -- he has been acknowledged for his origination.
 

Incidentally, and obviously, a different language in the home would mean different sounds for common items -- like "mother."  Actually, the word "mother" in English probably first arose when one group heard "ma ma" and started converting that into "mother."

Also incidentally, and not so obviously, when Johnny says, "ma ma," and mother says, "Oh Johnny, you said 'ma ma,' and you meant me, and you meant 'mother' and I'm so proud of you.  I'm going to call daddy."  All those words were such much junk to Johnny.  The ONLY proper response, if you really want to teach your child to talk, is for mother to say, "ma ma."  She should smile.  It is the duplication of the child's sounds that helps the child realize that he has done something memorable.   The glut of other sounds does nothing but confuse the issue.

The child, initially, has no clue on any "meaning" of this sound, "ma ma," but he knows that mother has mimicked him, and has acknowledged him, and smiled.

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So, he now says "ma ma" again, and again. Every time, like pushing the button, he gets the same response from mother -- he gets the repeat, or a smile, or whatever he gets.

And, so do the skills of communication develop.  This concept is NOT unique to me, Karl Loren:

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There is no other way for normal children to learn than by mimicking sounds they hear, and getting acknowledged and led to repeat those sounds.  Let it be clear that UNDERSTANDING some meaning for these sounds is NOT a part of learning at this point.

At some point, little researched, the duplication of the sound develops over into an understanding of what that sound "means."  First is duplication, second is understanding.  They cannot go in the reverse order, as the whole language technology usually involves.  You cannot duplicate (for another) what you see.  You can duplicate what you hear -- since that can be repeated for the teacher's correction, or more importantly for the mother's acknowledgment.

Mother might point to herself, and say, "Ma ma." She would then point to Johnny, and say, "Johnny."  When the kid can master the TWO sounds of "John ny" there is another big celebration. When the kid can point to mother and say, "ma ma," and then point to his own body, and say, "John ny" mother may think there is an advanced state of learning being exhibited. There might be, but in fact what is more likely is that there is a further progression of mimicking only sounds and pointing taking place.

The kid may "understand" or may not, but at least he has duplicated the sounds and the "pointing" behavior.

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The child hears sounds.  He voices sounds, but not with any regularity -- they are random sounds.  Then, some sounds, acknowledged and repeated by a parent, become sounds-converted-to-syllables, whole words are later. To place whole words before syllables is exactly wrong.   That is what "whole word, or worse, "whole language" teaching technology" has tried to do.  It will fail, as it has failed.

At some magical moment the kid has a huge cognition.  He realizes that "ma ma" MEANS something -- it is not just a sound.  He has gone the next step -- from duplication to understanding.  There will be a growing realization that various sounds, now, also MEAN something.  Soon he will be looking for the meaning of all the sounds he hears.

At some magical moment the kid learns that "ma ma" is a short version of "mother." These are different sounds, but they mean the same thing. This is another of those huge cognitions a child has -- pretty much by himself.  I don't know that we are teaching this conversion of "ma ma" and "mother" MEANING the same thing.  If he smart (and IQ probably exists at birth??) he would then realize that two different sounds can have similar meanings, and perhaps more sounds even mean the same?  What a world to explore for a bright kid.  A dull kid might not ever "learn" this.  I don't know of any research on these matters, but it would be relatively easy to devise such research.

If you followed all the above?  You could figure out how to reinforce the baby's conversion of "ma ma" to also mean "mother."  Write and tell me how you would do this.

He then moves, as you can guess, logically, to a whole vocabulary of sounds, many of which are considered words.  He would certainly not, at this point, be exposed to LOOKING at a picture and SAYING what the picture either sounds like or means.  If the kid is extremely intelligent, and has had an unusually smart mother, he could learn most of phonics by the time he is three years old.

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"Learning" would mean that he could "recite" or speak these sounds.  The next step, via phonics, would be associate each of these sounds with some picture of letters.  It is still duplication, not understanding.  He sees "ba" and he says "ba."  He doesn't understand anything -- he simply, and remarkably, duplicates.

The first words are those "ma ma" sounds.  They ARE words.  Then words get more complex -- a couple syllables and other complexities.

Skill with words is followed by skill with word-phrases, sentences and is measured by vocabulary and understanding the proper word, and then the proper definition for that word in any usage.  I am glossing over a great deal of detail, but you see that proper teaching of reading cannot be anything other than a parallel of the natural progression of a baby learning sounds.

A very smart kid would not be ruined by the "modern teaching technologies," but some kids will be ruined if they don't get phonics in school -- not having got them at home.  Smart kids make smart adults, but those smart adults may have no notion on why they are smart, and accept the stupid technology in the teaching schools -- and go on to ruin the lives of many children.  They have the added disadvantage of thinking, "Well, if I could learn to read, using the whole language method, why can't these kids?"

With the Wundt/Rockefeller emphasis on chemicals as the source and remedy for life and with the loss of morals, we became a society of instant gratification.  With modern education we are after social control and behavior -- we are NOT after developing the mind.

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Whole Language technology gives quicker gratification because the student duplicates whole words without understanding the sounds of syllables within those words, often without understanding the words themselves.  Without understanding the syllables, he is destined to have to learn thousands of words, separately, rather than the 50 different sounds that make up our language.

Once a student has learned to duplicate any word, by sounding out its syllables, he can pronounce that word -- even though he may not yet understand it.  But he then starts to see that "teach" and "teacher" have similarities, and he learns that "-er" is a syllable that is often added to verbs in order to make nouns (although, of course, this level of understanding may be a bit further on).

As long as "teach" and "teacher" are two completely unrelated words he will have a much more difficult time of understanding the words.

Incidentally, the final step in education is to learn how to exercise judgment.  Can YOU duplicate the sentence:

Most cows eat glass!

A student should be able to duplicate this line -- either say it or write it.  Duplication does NOT include understanding or using judgment.  This is a critical factor not understood by teachers' schools.

A student should also be able to understand this line.  He should be able to explain to you that, "This lines mean that most cows eat glass, and the word 'glass' means like what is in the picture to the right."  Understanding is different from using judgment.  He must understand before he can exercise judgment.

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Only when the student is working at the level of "judgment" can he say, "This line seems to present false information."  His judgment would be right.

All too often people make judgments before they understand.  The man may read, "Most cows eat glass." and he understands, "Most cows eat grass."  He did not duplicate the line, so he understood HIS line, but not THE line.  In logic he cannot exercise judgment on a line that does not exist.  He might, foolishly, AGREE with the line.  He is actually agreeing with HIS line, but you might think he is agreeing with THE line, so you think he is dumb.  Yes, he is dumb, but there is an explanation for this, and a solution.  If you think his problem is a "lack of reasoning power" you are wrong.  He has a lack of skill at duplicating the line.  That is remedied, usually, by feeding him SOUNDS, and asking him to duplicate those.

You say, "ma ma" to him, and invite him to say, "ma ma" back to you.  You acknowledge his success or correct his error.  You continue, progressing up to your feeding him words, or phrases or sentences, and asking him to repeat them back.  You through in lines that are not "logical" to see if he is willing to duplicate something that is "wrong."  He must if he is to differentiate the parts of the learning process.

When you think of it most frauds in the area of marketing are associated with promotional claims where the words are not understood, but a judgment is made, often "to buy."

"People have found that marine calcium is the superior form of calcium."

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A person read this statement, does not understand what "marine calcium" is, and thus does not understand the sentence.  But, in violation of the sequence of learning, he exercises judgment, buys the fraudulent stuff, and never does know that he has suffering from a lack of reading skill.

Here is another example.

Most cows eat dinglehurst.

You might disagree with this -- in other words exercise judgment, but the truth is that you cannot possibly understand that line, since I made-up the word, "dinglehurst" and it has no meaning.  If you cannot understand the line, you cannot, in logic, say that you disagree with it.  You can say, "I don't understand the word 'dingloehurst.'"  That is what you can say.  You can, of course, repeat that line even though you do not understand it.

The only proper action by the student would be to recognize that he does not have a definition for 'dinglehurst' and look in a good dictionary for that definition.  Not finding any definition, he could look further, but at some point he is going to want to ignore this meaningless line, or query the author as to what is the meaning.  If her were to render an opinion on this, without understanding it, he has some remedial learning to do -- as do the great majority of our people, not just kids.

The use of "reason" comes in with math, very intensely.  You can duplicate "two plus two equals four" without understanding it.  You begin to understand that phrase when you put some apples or oranges on the table -- two apples in one part and two more apples in another, and then you count them, "one, two, three, four," and discover that the four you counted are the same as the "four" you memorized during the duplication step.

But the word "equals" is the door to an immense new area of learning.  Does the word "equal" mean "the same" or "similar" or something else. There is no rote answer here.

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One correct answer would be that one apple is NEVER the same as any other apple, so you could not, in logic, say "one apple plus one apple is equal to two apples" because the very word "apple" does not have the same exact definition in each of the usages.  The apples, in fact, are "different" from one another.  As a child starts to grapple with the meaning of "is" or "equal" he is into higher levels of learning, needing logic and reasoning.

In fact you could say that intelligence is nothing more than the ability to detect exactnesses, similarities and differences.
 

The symbol, "x" which has no more meaning than a symbol, and does NOT stand for an apple, for instance, can be manipulated.  You can say that "one x plus one x equals two x."  That's exact.  But, "one John and one John's brother" now have to be equaled to "people" or "family members."  So the single word, "is," meaning "to exist" or "to equal" or any of many other meanings, is the single word that has so many meanings, and so much usage that it, alone, is worthy of much teaching time.  I could go on with this, but I bring it up briefly because, as far as I know there is no known technology of teaching reading that gets into the concepts which I have presented here.

Fundamentally the word "is" relates to and means "truth."  "Truth" is a subject more vast than the teaching of reading and covered HERE.

And so the learning of reading is a science, but not used much in our schools.

Some of these concepts are unique with me, Karl Loren.  However, the basic concepts here on teaching of reading that are NOT original with me.  There is only one source for this reading technology.  If you write to me, I'll give you more information on the actual origin.

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When you look more carefully at the above text you realize that the teaching being described here is of objects in the physical universe.  "Mother" and "cows" are items you find in the physical universe that can be "seen."

But, how about "sad" or "angry?"  Emotions are certainly found in the physical universe, but it is not straightforward to "see" them.

(You can make a mental PICTURE of a tree, and recall it.  You cannot easily make a mental picture of SAD.)

There IS technology to help you use objective observations of all the emotional tone levels, and even of other words, like "God" or "love," but you would certainly be into a different strata of teaching when you get into these words.  I can help you understand that also.

What does the word, "God" mean?  In logic it can only "mean" what some man has decided is the definition.  One man might say "God is omnipotent."  That tells us something -- that God is "all powerful."  But only a fool would say that "God is Caucasian."  Yet, HERE is a page that does just that.  Here is a claimed image of Mary, mother of Jesus, so God must be white!!!  Obviously people who have political agendas will often create their own definitions.  The word, "liberal" used to have one meaning, 100 years ago, and it has a very different meaning today.

So, the teaching of the reading of mental or spiritual phenomenon, or emotions, or moral issues? These are matters of "belief." They are no less specific, but the student should realize that the meanings of many of the words in this category mean what some author says they mean -- not much else.  You can agree, if you wish, but you are free to have a different meaning also.

When an author comes along and writes a story with some sadness in it, we rather all agree that if he writes, "Mary was crying," that he is depicting sadness. There are some easy agreements on these words, but there are, still, many words for which little or no definition of meaning has evolved.  Consider the two words, "angry" and "antagonistic."

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Dictionary Information: Definition Angry
Thesaurus: Anger
Description and Meaning: Anger

Surely you can see differences in the definitions of these two words.  But, you could also see "great literature" depicting some characters and using descriptions that show "anger" or "antagonism" and you may then further find that the descriptions are not as easy to JUDGE.  Is the boy on the left "sad" or "depressed" or "in despair" or some other state?

You understand the words, but your judgment may indicate to you that the character is angry?  Or that he is antagonistic?  Or?  How will you decide?

This too can be a matter of the teaching technology, but it could also be a matter of the author not using the standard definitions for these words, or being vague. So, we get "professors" whose "opinions" on the emotional characteristics of characters are considered "wise," or some such.

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The teaching of great literature, and the "hidden meanings" within that literature -- sounds to me like a thicket into which I do not care to venture.  But, you cannot deny that many people read stories and are impacted by the emotional message they get, and since this is true, there will be teachers telling you what you should understand in these stories.

Good enough when the student is sober and free of drugs.

What does the teacher do, wanting to "teach" about the emotional content of some text, when the student has a 4th grade reading level and/or is on drugs?

He teaches "fuzzy literature!"  This is the teaching of literature where YOU are the only judge of what emotion is contained within the story.  So, because it is hard to get "standards" of judgment on emotional content, today's professors (usually this is done in college) throw away the standards and allow every student to find ANY emotion they wish in the text.

Freedom!

Crazy!!

These toxins are very unlike the toxic metals that cause heart disease.  Toxic metals do not change the personality.  However, these chemical pollutants seem to produce what could be called a "chemical personality."  These toxins can actually change your personality from whatever it is, naturally, to one of being more hostile toward others -- yet this hostility usually does not show in the outward appearance.  Another factor of this chemical personality is dishonesty and a loss of morality. 

The person's hostility is hidden and covert.  From this personality change you can trace the increase in crime, divorce, poor schooling and the whole gamut of social turmoil we can now see so plainly -- if not see so plainly its origin in chemical pollutants.  It is fruitless to try to teach a child who is chemically polluted.  Child delinquency can easily be traced back to chemically-polluted parents, friends and the child himself.

It is not unlikely that sexual perversions and promiscuity have their bases in the chemical residues which so flood our bodies.

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Since authors have become increasingly dumb, because of drugs, and because there are fewer and fewer good students, because of student drug histories, who are skilled with language skills (vocabulary and grammar) the educational system had to evolve a technique by which drug-headed students could get high emotional inspirations from lousy literature, written by other drug-heads.  We have achieved the ultimate of this in current television where DUMBER is always better.
 

This is the reason that so much of American culture seems so dumb, and is getting dumber. Certainly in the old days movies or music were sold into the mass market, too. "Casablanca" was mass market, and so was Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. But those discrete markets aren't big or broad enough now to support the massive quarter-over-quarter revenue needs of a "cross-market" media giant. So they've created a world of hypermass. It's a formula alright: Hypermass=dumber2. By definition, you target the lowest common denominator -- then think lower. Thus we get the "reality" TV show "Joe Millionaire" now on FOX, which makes the original "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" on ABC look like Masterpiece Theater. The hit "Analyze This" degrades into the bomb "Analyze That." (source)

Thus, we now have teaching, even in college, which asks the student to describe the emotion they "feel" from literature, and would never teach them what to look for, but how to feel.  If one student "feels" sadness, and another "feels" anger, so be it. All are correct.  There is no standard -- fuzzy literature!

It is like getting drugged up.  You can feel emotions easily then.  Since many students are drugged up the teachers might as well validate the drugged condition by asking them for what emotion they feel when they read some prose or poetry.

The emotion they "feel" is drug-based, but this new teaching technology can't admit that, so the teacher then validates ANY emotion that the drugged student "feels."
 

Ms. Savoy (the principal) insisted that my grades [for students] were "too low" and informed me that the law obliged me to pass a certain percentage of my students. I paid no attention, and she cited me for insubordination.  (source)

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John feels the "anger" in the prose.  Jane feels the "sadness," while Mary gets off on the mysterious "joy."  They are all reading the same material, each finding some "deep" emotion, based on their drugged state, and furthered by drugged teachers who, themselves, FEEL the emotions so easily in that state.

All the while the prose need not use language with any skill.  In fact the skill would get in the way of the wide variety of emotions that different people can get out of the same piece.

So, literature is now "appreciated" on the basis of a drugged haze.  And universities now praise their professors for dumbing down their teaching to the drugged level of the students' abilities.  Here is a champion “professor” at a University in Texas.

Dr. Betty Sue Flowers looks drugged to me, and the "class" looks like what has become far too common in society -- a class of dud-heads who "feel" the emotions, but who suffer from tiny vocabularies and no sense of grammar.  This professor says:

"Literature is quite good for helping us see how it is that we feel and how we think about feeling and how feeling is connected to our thought.  (source)"

Another important part of this dead-head technology is that you cannot possibly flunk in this type of course.  All you have to do is express your emotions.  If you can't write, we'll have the professor listen to your ramblings.  We'll find a way to validate your drugged emotions.  Not feeling expressive?  Add Prozac to your presentation -- feel the emotion.

Her classes include a number of classroom exercises and assignments, including what she refers to as "thought assignments" to prepare them for class discussions. For example, she asks students to spend ten minutes thinking about their own deaths, or to imagine what they would write if they were to produce a personal Genesis myth for their own lives.  (source)

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Need you look further for the Godless nature of this approach.  Consider "Genesis" a myth, and create your own.  Make "god" a homosexual, if you wish, or a dog.  It is all myth, anyway, so just do your thing!

As a parent, even 47wanting to attend, dutifully, your local PTA meetings, you hardly ever see the insidious inroads being made in YOUR school, but the Wundt promoters.   Another concept, loved by the Wundt people, is that it is bad to fail any student.  Give them good marks for trying.  That doesn’t work in the real world, but they force it into the schooling.

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Take “fuzzy math” as an example more dumbed down teaching, in an article for the Wall Street Journal by Lynn V. Cheney.

Kids are writing about "What We Can Do to Save the Earth," and inventing their own strategies for multiplying. They're learning that getting the right answer to a math problem can be much less important than having a good rationale for a wrong one.

Sometimes called "whole math" or "fuzzy math," this latest project of the nation's colleges of education has some formidable opponents. In California, where the school system embraced whole math in 1992, parents and dissident teachers have set up a World Wide Web site called Mathematically Correct to point out the follies of whole-math instruction.  (source)

Are math scores bad?  Read this Wall Street Journal article:
 

In the year 2000's standardized NAEP test for math achievement, this is the percentage of black eighth graders who passed respectively in some famous states: New York, 8%; California, 6%; Michigan, 6%; Tennessee, 6%; Texas, 7%; Arkansas, 2%. Indeed the national average for black eighth graders is 6% compared to 40% for white students, a 34% achievement gap.  (source)

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The Politically Correct People use fuzzy math.  The Mathematically Correct people have a simple motto:

As you can guess President Bill Clinton was pushing changes in education that would have accelerated "whole math" and the dumbing down of education generally.

It is hard to corrupt the teaching of engineering.  After all if you are an engineer, with the task of building a tunnel through the mountain, then the two ends of the tunnel must connect inside the mountain – anything else is not acceptable.  Even here, fuzzy math guarantees that many students from the public schools will have a hard time if they DO want to go into engineering.

Perhaps the greatest travesty in American education is related to the teaching of reading -- certainly the most basic of all social skills.  Without reading man is little more than the very animal which Dr. Wundt called him.  I covered the PROPER way to teach reading above, but let me delve into the wrong ways in more detail now.

There are many different, miserably failed, technologies in the field of reading education.  The bad ones trace back to Dr. Wundt and John D. Rockefeller.

Here is an excerpt from a readable explanation, by Robert Wilson,  of reading teaching:

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This paper was first written in the 1970s in an attempt to clarify the ongoing debate about the best method of teaching reading. While I am not a reading specialist, I do have some knowledge of the history of education and I knew that this debate was not new. I hoped that an historical view would assist those in the debate to be clearer and more accurate in their arguments. It has been somewhat updated but the substance has not changed. It should also be noted that the work suffers from the inaccuracy that inevitably comes with such a brief overview of a large topic. (source)

I can understand that.  This seems like plain English to me.

Here is an excerpt from the official State of  California "Policy" on the teaching of reading:

It was determined that a balanced and comprehensive approach to reading must have:

1. a strong literature, language, and comprehension program that includes a balance of oral and written language;

2. an organized, explicit skills program that includes phonemic awareness (sounds in words), phonics, and decoding skills to address the needs of the emergent reader;

3. ongoing diagnosis that informs teaching and assessment that ensures accountability; and

4. a powerful early intervention program that provides individual tutoring for children at risk of reading failure."  (Source)

Maybe I'm just prejudiced?  I haven't the slightest idea of what these words mean.  Perhaps they have "special meanings" to those "experts" who deal with the teaching of reading?  Actually a new word has come into our vocabulary:  "psychobabble" meaning  some text where you can recognize individual words, but the combination and sequence of them renders them unintelligible.  It was invented after psychiatrists invented diseases with very vague and illogical definitions, and ultimately they were termed "psychobabble."

Let me take my hand to a bit of creative psychobabble:

The pituitary hormone is not a well-known aperture of the toe!  Unlike other bones of the toe, this hormone has a function usually during rice and menopause.  Study of it should be delayed until, thirdly, the former principles of hypertavia are well understood!  (Source:  Karl Loren)

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Then Mr. Wilson's summary makes very clear sense to me:

One of the problems encountered when discussing this topic is what does it mean when we say a person can read?

At first sight it means that someone can recognize marks and translate them into spoken words.

But usually what is meant is that the person understands what he or she reads, or is "functionally literate."

Beyond the recognition of the letters and words is the knowledge and understanding that the reader must bring to the written words to be able to make sense of them.

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[Karl Note:  I would add, here that "understanding" cannot be "understood" in an intellectual sense, but can only be demonstrated by "applying" the data in the physical universe.  In this sense "love of God" may seem to be capable of being understood by observing a person "in prayer." But, this is obviously much too superficial, so "Love of God" is a phrase that may well be beyond "understanding," and may be only capable of experiencing personally.  Fortunately, the words and phrases being used here do have application in the physical universe.  Bob can either read, or cannot, or Bob can read  and pass a test and then apply what he read?  or not.

The same adolescent who has difficulty in reading a school history text may have no similar difficulty in deciphering the complex information in a car repair manual and the history teacher may not understand the car manual. In similar ways these days we hear about "computer literacy" and "media literacy," phrases that do not take on meaning until they are used in context.

Some definitions of literacy are so all-encompassing that they include almost everything that is taught in schools. The differences in evaluating the effectiveness of methods of teaching reading are often the result of lack of agreement on what is trying to be achieved. Tests of reading ability are far more than deciphering and understanding of letters and words.

Another complication is the terminology used by the supporters of the many different methods and sub-methods advocated. Often the same name is given to different systems, and similar systems are given different names. But this multitude can be reduced to two for teaching basic literacy which, in this paper, will be called "phonics" and "whole word".

"Phonics" (code-emphasis) requires the letters and combination of letters to be learned first, and then combined to form the word.

"Whole word" (meaning-emphasis) has the child first learn to recognize and understand the complete word or group of words in context.  (source)

OK!  I understand that section.  I don't know from this, yet, whether "whole word" learning is better or "phonic" learning is better, and I don't even know yet whether I agree that ALL of the teaching of reading is either mostly one or the other of these two techniques.  I don't even know what those different technologies are, but I've got the picture for more study.

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Now, going back to the official "guidance" about "phonics" from the Department of Education, State of California, I find:

Systematic, Explicit Phonics

This term refers to an organized program where letter-sound correspondences for letters and letter clusters are directly taught; blended; practiced in words, word lists, and word families; and practiced initially in text with a high percentage of decodable words linked to the phonics lesson. Teachers should provide prompt and explicit feedback.

Karl Note:  Here starts the psychobabble. 

The word "phonics" seemed simple to me, but what in the dickens is "explicit phonics?"  Or, is it "systematic phonics?" Or, is it "systematic, explicit phonics?"  Or what?  (These terms are defined further along, but those definitions are, themselves, vague and useless.)

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Psychobabble, as an aside, is the common language used in fraudulent scams on the web.  Click here for an MLM selling a "machine" that works miracles.  When you read through the claims for this machine you will be experiencing psychobabble in the world of commerce -- it is widespread!  The image on the right is part of that presentation which is deliberately confusing.  If you are not careful, and do NOT detect this psychobabble, you are going past a word or symbol for which you have no meaning. When that happens, as the psychologists intend, you go mentally blank, and become, for that moment, a functional illiterate, and that leads to a hypnotic condition in which you accept further, including false, data without question.  I've given you here one of the secrets of psychological manipulation, as it is used to "teach" students in schools, and thereby achieve the social control the Wundtians want!

Psychological behavioral conditioning is best done on animals, and humans, who have been drugged, or shocked, or tortured into a level of acceptance of anything that comes along.  Dr. Freud is certainly the most famous of people for using psychobabble.

Is there some other explanation of phonics? This is a typical illustration of how the suppressive people manipulate meanings -- they use words that have no agreed on meaning, deliberately cause confusion, and after that confusion you don't have enough sense left to catch further deliberate lies and misrepresentations.  Mr. Wilson has a simple explanation of "phonics."

"Phonics" (code-emphasis) requires the letters and combination of letters to be learned first, and then combined to form the word.  (Source)

I can guess at what a "blended" teaching program of phonics might be, but when you say "practiced in words, word lists, and word families" -- what does all that mean.  And, if you practice these letters in TEXT first, isn't that directly contrary to starting with sounds and letters.  The California psychobabble says there should be a "high percentage" of "decodable words!"  This sounds exactly opposite of phonics beginnings, where letters are learned, not "decodable words," whatever they might be.

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The next paragraph below is a blatant introduction of exactly the evil reading technology based on behavioral psychology developed by Dr. Wundt, and specifically contrary to true "phonic" teaching.  There is enough truth here, below, but more than enough psychobabble, that many professionals might not even catch the harmful intention.

In reading for meaning, skillful readers move their eyes through text left to right, line by line, and word by word. With the exception of short function words, such as a, on, of, and any, they almost never skip or guess. Instead, they fixate on very nearly each and every word of text. Further, during the fraction of a second that they do so, they take in--and must take in--all of its letters, translating them to speech sounds on their way to evoking the word's meaning.

Here, in the beginning of the explanation of what California thinks it will teach, emphasizing something that MIGHT be phonics, they give a true statement that is very deceptive.  "Skillful" readers, by definition, are NOT those students just learning to read.  Indeed, "skillful" readers may well read word by word by word.  But, the whole idea of phonics, it seems to me, is that a beginning student cannot "read" at all, and should be "learning" what "a" is and how it sounds.  He starts with letters and sounds, perhaps clusters of letters, such as "am-".

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Since "skillful readers" read word by word, then, per California, beginning reading learners MUST be taught, quickly as they get their "phonics" training, to recognize "words," not just letters.

California gives its game away, perhaps, when it suggests that a student will read the word, then sound it in his mind, then speak it.  We know full well that those people who read by silently mouthing the sounds of the words will always be poor readers.  Click here for the history of "silent reading."

This is deliberate sabotage of the will of the people, denying the authority of law, and persisting in the failed reading technology that has doomed so many millions of students to illiteracy.  Here is how another spotted the manipulation: