Bruce Deitrick Price

Interview with Siegfried Engelmann: one of America's great educators

Siegfried Engelmann is the real thing, an educator who loves to teach children and knows how to do it, both personally and in his books. As far back as the late 1960s, he told the Education Establishment: you're doing it all wrong.

Literacy Experts: Are They Ready To Apologize Yet?

The people in charge of literacy in most English-speaking countries are literacy’s worst enemies. This counterintuitive turn-about has to be one of the planet’s more bizarre stories.

K-12: Sight-Words vs. Vocabulary Words

Many people use the phrases “sight-word” and “vocabulary word” interchangeably, when they are quite different. This confusion, I believe, serves a sinister purpose for our Education Establishment.

K-12: The Schools You Deserve

K-12 is Worse Than You Think

Problems in K-12, that’s my beat. I write a lot of articles and see a lot of comments. Many are depressing. Last week I saw the saddest yet: “The kids have given up.”

K-12: Sight-Words are Hoax Words

Hundreds of websites broadcast the same misguided message: children must memorize Sight-Words.

Why is K-12 education reform so hard to achieve?

Local newspapers in the US don't cover education in any depth. Maybe they'll tell you superficial and trivial stuff (for example, that a superintendent was hired or fired, that there will be a meeting next month of the school board). But you won't find anything about the nuts and bolts that determine whether you child learns to read, or learns anything at all.

K-12: Criminal Minds At Work

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." The date is 1900. Professor John Dewey and his cadre of "Progressives" launch an ambitious scheme to transform the country. They want a more collectivist society. For convenience, let's call their goal European Socialism. However, the United States is hostile to Socialism and Communism for another hundred years. Beatrice Webb, founder of the Fabian Society in London, decrees that the word Socialism shouldn't be used in America. The recommended euphemism is "Progressive" and, later on, Liberal. Socialism, as that term is generally understood, is what Dewey plans for us but he can't say it. He and his gang must dissemble at every turn. They have to lie and, little by little, work outside the law.

Memo to American teenagers and millennials

Reflect for a few minutes on your experience in school, especially if you went to a public school. Were you taught as much as you could have been taught? Were your schools set up to increase your learning and your mastery of basic skills?

Why Kids Can't Read

In all reading theories, there is a fundamental concept known as automaticity. This means you know or can do something instantly, automatically. Reading happens fast. If you don't know something with automaticity, you might as well not know it at all.

Is Close Reading a complete fraud?

Perhaps not entirely. Any method, no matter how silly, can be used as a change of pace. Let’s stipulate that variety is often a stimulus. Here’s the chief, if ironic, benefit of this bad method. Make kids wallow for half-an-hour in something unpleasant (for example, how to prepare taxes) and many will beg for anything half-way interesting. Please, teacher, let us read a novel. Please!

Why Socialism Is A Bad Deal

Thanks to Bernie and Hillary, Socialism is on everyone’s mind. These politicians, like so many in our media and universities, claim it’s a glorious idea.

Educational decline: who is to blame?

There is endless chatter in the media about K-12 education: why are the schools so bad and what should we do?

Reading IS phonics

The last 80 years have seen one of the weirdest intellectual debates you can imagine. The Education Establishment constantly argues that phonics is wrong or unnecessary, that phonics is something you can throw away and nobody will be hurt.

Steve Jobs vs. the Education Establishment

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, was arguably more intelligent and capable than 99.9% of the population.

Bill Ayers and Social Injustice

From John Dewey circa 1915 to Bill Ayers a century later, we hear the same progressive spiel. There must be drastic change, and perhaps much destruction and death, in order to create a more just society. A dubious trade if you stop and think about it. Lenin gave the same deal to the hapless Russians.

The Purpose of Public Schools

The traditional view is simply stated: the purpose of public education is to take each child as far as each child can be taken. Who can disagree with that?

Education, politics, and lies—what’s the difference?

During the past decade, I wrote mainly about education. I decided it would be good strategy to stay away from peripheral issues, especially politics. I didn’t want to confuse my readers. I wanted them to think, oh yeah, this is that guy that writes about education.

Education: Suppose Al Capone lives in your city

So, Al Capone lives in your city. Do you talk about it? Do you mention that this Mafia guy got his mansion by breaking the law, blackmailing people, buying and selling politicians, not to mention killing people? Seriously, do you ever talk about Al Capone? Or do you look the other way and pretend that nothing is going on where you live, nothing journalistically interesting, nothing criminally interesting.

K-12 Education: why so Paralyzed and Schizophrenic?

On Quora (a discussion site) someone posed this question: “Who are the most innovative thinkers in the world of education reform?”