Are You Smarter Than A West Point Graduate?

A surprise summer television hit has been the show “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader.” Recently a West Point Graduate found out that, though he wasn’t smarter than the fifth graders in the cast, he was just as ignorant as the majority of them.

The question that he and the majority of the fifth grade participants failed was this: “In the following sentence, which word is a common noun?”

The sentence read: “I like the city of Baltimore.”

The West Pointer had already had trouble with another question and this was only, as I recall, his third question. The most objective of viewers could tell that he was stunned by the question and agonizing over his answer.

Additionally, his fifth grade ‘team member’ also looked quite concerned.

[One must know that a contestant on the show chooses one of the fifth grade participants as a partner for a few questions at a time. If the contestant answers incorrectly or is worried about his answer, he can ‘peek’ at his partners paper, ‘cheat’ by copying if he has no answer, or be ‘saved’ if the fifth grade partner has the correct answer.]

In any event, back to our West Pointer. As mentioned, his fifth grade partner for the ‘common noun’ question looked very puzzled. Of course, one can never take the facial expressions of puzzlement shown by the children as real. The kids have obviously been coached to act worried about their answers

But then the axe fell.

Foxworthy demanded that the West Pointer answer the question.

His answer?

The word ‘I’ was the common noun in the sentence.

“Wrong!” Foxworthy exclaimed.

Immediately the West Pointer blurted out, “Oh! It’s ‘Baltimore.’”

Uh – wrong again. That, of course, is a proper noun.

So – to stay in the game and redeem the ghosts of Grant, Sherman, Lee and Patton, the West Pointer had to be ‘saved’ by his fifth grade partner.

Her answer? “The common noun in the sentence is the word ‘the.’”

Huh?

The disaster and humiliation does not end there.

The remaining four fifth graders then had to reveal their answers to the question. Only two, that is to say, only two out of the five fifth graders had the correct answer: ‘city.’

Thus, of these five very bright kids who are one year away from middle school, only two could identify the common noun in the simply sentence, “I like the city of Baltimore.”

But the implications of this West Pointers humiliation go way beyond this funny little game show. The implications are an indictment of the teaching of English in our public schools.

Ever since the curricular cancer known as “Whole Language Curriculum” was introduced in American during the 70’s and 80’s, more than an entire generation has gone through thousands of American elementary schools with barely any instruction in the phonetic code, structure, grammar, and spelling of the English language.

Morons – idiots – ignoramuses - that is to say, elementary school teachers throughout America have been taught and in turn have taught their students that “the learning of reading and writing is a natural process like the way in which babies learn to walk and talk.”

Teacher guides have been issued in such schools that specifically command a teacher NOT to instruct children in the phonetic code that is the key to learning and speaking English. These teachers are told not to correct spelling errors.

They are not even to correct blatantly wrong answers if the child has a vague notion of the meaning of the words in a sentence.

For instance, this example came directly from a pro-whole language article aimed at so-called elementary educators. [I will paraphrase to save time.]

“Example: A child is asked to read the following sentence and tell its meaning to the class: ‘A young boy sat in the saddle as he rode the pony into town.’”

“Imagine that the child does not know the word pony. He reads the sentence, pauses at the word pony and then says ‘horse.’

“The teacher should commend the child and not point out that he or she is wrong.”

You may think I’m insane in writing this, but every word of it is true.

Whole language instructors believe that phonetic instruction is actually damaging. It interferes with [the insane idea] that people learn to read and write naturally.

If the child guesses that the word ‘pony’ is the word ‘horse,’ that’s o.k. Why? The most important thing to these moron-educators is that the child was able to guess the meaning of the word from context. [i.e. the boy ‘rode’ and was in a ‘saddle.’]

To teach the child the word is ‘horse’ would require phonetic instruction and decoding. Whole language instructors do not do that.

School systems that adopt the whole language approach also abhor the rote learning of spelling and the formal learning of the rules of grammar.

After all – these concepts – so these charlatans and frauds believe – will eventually come to the child ‘naturally.’

So, if one does not teach all these various rules and phonetic codes, there’s another item that will not be taught: “the eight parts of speech.”

In a more classical era, all children, by at least third grade, would have memorized the eight parts of speech, [noun, verb, pronoun adjective, etc.].

There’s a reason they used to memorize these parts of speech by third grade: they were needed to help explain the grammatical structure of a sentence.

Additionally – those basic concepts were, and are, never taught again after that age level. All teachers of the subsequent grades assume the child has achieved mastery of [not passing familiarity with] those concepts.

I have little doubt that the West Pointer could very well have also been a victim of whole language fraud when he was in elementary school. He is now about 29 years of age. When he was in elementary school, the whole language nonsense was spreading like wildfire through the public schools of the USA.

Further evidence in support of my contention that the show’s fifth graders are probably whole language victims: virtually none of these five bright children can spell correctly.

One of the brightest of the shows regular children recently answered the following question: “What was the state from which President Harry Truman came?”

The answer, as spelled by the child: ‘Misourie.’

Once again: rote memorization is despised by the teacher/frauds of today. Fifty years ago, every child would have not only memorized the fifty states, but would have been able to spell those names as well.

One must ask: Just when will this little child genius/actor/contestant get around to learning how to spell the names of the fifty states?

By fifth grade, all that knowledge was drilled into their little heads for permanent reference.

I know, I know – there are those of you who will say that the problem is computer spell-checkers. It may be, in part, true.

However, you cannot discount the fact that thousands of children are actually being deprived of spelling instruction and correction by the teachers hired to serve their best interests. They believe it stifles the child’s self-esteem. They also – insanely – yes, insanely, there is no other word but insanely – believe that children will just ‘naturally’ learn to spell as they get older.

I was raised by public school teachers. I was also a tenured public school teacher. If I had a child, he or she would never see the inside of a public school classroom.

After all, one doesn’t want healthy children put into a sick ward. And I would no more send a child of mine to a public school where the teachers are determined to cripple the child’s ability to read and write for the rest of his life.