This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Yes, it is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk,
educated educators talking education.
Yeah, if you're watching the YouTube version of the Swarthed Johnny,
well, Jess, we can announce that he's admitted science is real.
Yes, he has.
Yeah, and said that he did have the flu.
No flu today, just the reality of...
Now that he doesn't have the flu,
he has to go up and, you know, he has to work during the day sometimes.
Yeah, so we're gonna give Johnny a pass today,
but Jess, how are you doing today, my friend?
Well, you know, I'm a little tired.
I'm a...
Oh, man, Tim, it has been a couple of weeks here.
Just trying to navigate through the fire hose of nonsense and hurtful actions.
But I'm doing my best here to be present and to be grateful for all of the wonderful opportunities that we have.
And to be present with some educated educators,
that is a fantastic thing.
How are you doing, Tim?
You know, I was thinking it's just like every show,
whether it's, you know, the broadcasts show on, you know, that we're doing now,
whether it's the podcast we're dropping,
I'm getting tired of kind of coming in with the,
oh, you know, this is how I'm dealing with it.
And I'm, I don't know if Johnny's rubbing out off on me,
but I'm kind of saying, okay, we're gonna sing in dark times.
And so, you know, I'm gonna put a little bit of forward going like,
hey, we got this, we got this.
I appreciate that.
You know, that's all we do here, though.
We bust all kinds of pencils.
And in fact, you know, today really happy.
Got a great guest.
Just though, too, just a recap, you know,
go back and listen to the podcast that dropped last Wednesday
with Dr. Nancy Carlson.
Page, you know, looking at the whole, quote,
science of reading the lawsuit and Massachusetts.
Lots going on there, the, the whole movement.
And he said, you know what?
We need to spend a Saturday show really digging into this.
So, you know, he's been on the show before.
He's been on the podcast.
He's been on the radio show.
He is a professor of education at Furman University.
It's taught high school English and World South Carolina
before moving on to teacher education.
He's also a former column editor
for the English Journal Council of Teachers of English.
He's got all kinds of books.
Check out his website.
Go to radicalscholarship.com
and you will meet our guest, Dr. Paul Thomas.
Paul, how you doing, my friend?
Oh, I think the same as Y'all are.
The best of them in the circumstances.
Down here in South Carolina.
Oh, you're down there.
I forgot about that.
You know what, though, Paul, I gotta say this.
So, you know, being in Ohio right now,
I'm not so sure that it's a whole lot different in Ohio
than it is in South Carolina or Mississippi anymore.
Yeah, sadly, that's a trend.
Yes, there are some pockets, though,
where it is a little better to be.
Yeah, but, you know, right now,
in fact, this week, you know, big debate in Columbus right now,
Senate Bill 1, which again is a revamp
of the controversial issues type of deal,
no diversity, equity, inclusion, critical race theory.
And for college faculty, too, specifically,
we need to keep those college faculty members
under control before they indoctrinate
the entire population of Ohio to believe in,
I don't even know what to believe in,
but hey, you know here in Ohio,
we're making sure then that we continue
to be patriotic, but Paul,
science of reading, you are all over this.
In fact, again, remind everybody,
go to radicalscholarship.com.
If you'll want to understand all of the ins and outs
of science of reading,
Paul is the person to turn to Paul.
Here we are, science of reading.
Why don't you maybe, dude, just give our listener
kind of 101, what's happening, science of reading?
What's Paul Thomas,
when you hear science of reading, Paul, educate us.
Well, I'd say it's just the newest version
of the reading wars that we've seen for a century,
but it's kind of exploded pretty much since 2018.
And the reality of it is that it has morphed
from being sort of a media movement
and now it is legislation.
And the thing that's facing us as educators is,
while I still spend a little bit of time trying to challenge
and debunk the movement,
we've got to figure out how to manage the reality
of really bad reading legislation.
And it has cycled back up
because the release of nape scores.
And miraculously, we don't care about Mississippi
that much anymore, which became the poster child
for the science of reading in 2019.
The new cycle is it's gonna be Louisiana,
which is, it's just one thing I'm focusing,
I've got an upper level reading and writing course right now.
And I warned them when they're doing a media analysis project
and I said that the media is obsessed with outliers.
And that's really contradictory to being scientific
because anybody who understands statistics and sciences,
outliers kind of ruin the information.
It ruins the data and in many cases,
you want to ignore the outliers
or at least put it in context,
but in education journalism, we focus on outliers.
And that's what we're going through another.
It's kind of interesting because Florida
is just getting hammered.
They've got their lowest nape scores in 23 years
or something like that.
And they already were struggling
because people had called on.
Florida and Mississippi are essentially the same.
You get these outlandish grade four scores,
but they drop from the top 25% in grade four
to the bottom 25% of grade eight
because the scores are a mirage.
They're manipulated by grade retention.
And I think that's what Louisiana is doing also.
You know, and on that too,
just reminded the nape scores.
We were talking about this also.
We've kind of gone over that.
The national assessment of educational progress,
typically sometimes referred to as the nation's report card
and particularly since, well, actually Paul,
I know this for the last 30-plus years,
there's been some form of using the nape
to point out how awful public schools are in America.
A constant story, as you say, Paul, constant crisis.
Never any good news.
And occasionally when there is good news,
yeah, some form of an outlier,
somebody likes to grab onto.
But those scores, you know, reading in math
and we hear about them fourth and eighth grade scores,
particularly on Busted Pencil,
you know, when we came back from COVID,
oh my goodness, learning loss.
Learning loss as indicated by nape scores and state test scores.
Everybody was just, you know, all beside themselves.
But Paul, you know, you point something out though too here.
And you and I know that it's kind of like,
okay, there's probably not a cause and effects
science relationship here.
But the reality is, is that for this point though too,
as you said, Florida's horrible, the drop.
And so this new release of nape scores shows a drop.
And for some reason,
we don't think the science of reading caused the drop,
even though it's been utilized now for 10 years
in some places, at least five wholeheartedly.
But, you know, when people said,
I guess the science of reading isn't working,
the first response out of the science of reading people was,
hey, that's all due to out of school factors
has nothing to do with the science of reading.
Paul, riff on that a little bit.
Yeah, that's, there's two things going on here.
One for 30 years, nape data was flat.
And according to the science of reading people,
that's a crisis and it's because of balance literacy.
Since 2019, we've had two consecutive rounds
of dropping scores when almost every state
has some form of science of reading.
And like you mentioned, Mississippi goes back to 2014.
This has been, you know, a decade of this,
which has not impacted the later grades.
And then you see the drop in states like Mississippi and Florida.
But miraculously, when we said that the flat scores
for 30 years was connected to poverty,
we were told that was just an excuse.
But now, when we say, wait, the scores are dropping.
It's, you know, the only thing you can blame
or in school practices, the science of reading people are like,
no, no, no, no, it's the COVID learning loss.
Which honestly, the truth is both are true.
Right.
Poverty and COVID learning, or COVID impact,
I don't like saying learning loss, are real.
It's just that they want to play, you know, two different games.
And that's my big problem.
Science of reading people don't use science
for what they choose to implement.
They implement practices that are not supported by science.
They're just as ideological.
They're picking and choosing too.
So I think they deserve being told
that this is a failure of science of reading
because we're using their logic.
And, you know, what's fair for, you know,
what's fair for the goose is good for the gander.
It's it, you know, and we want to put that out there.
You know, hey, the nape scores that just came out, they dropped.
And, you know, when we're always looking for the cause,
the boogie man, the crisis, you know,
maybe here on busted pencils,
we're pointing out that maybe the crisis
is the science of reading that, again, not science,
but a marketing term largely using sciences,
the marketing term to sell, to sell.
That's really what we're talking about here, to sell curriculum.
Our guest is Dr. Paul Thomas,
check out his blog, radicalscholarship.com.
We're in here breaking it down, science of reading,
you know, and Paul, we're getting ready to come up on a break,
but I want to kind of set this up.
We had on Wednesday on the podcast,
we had Dr. Nancy Carlson Page, yes, that is Matt Damon's mom,
you know, early childhood, literacy person.
She put in a, you know, an op-ed in the Boston Globe,
where I related what's happening in Massachusetts
where parents are suing the makers
of balanced literacy, curriculum, and materials,
and essentially saying, you use faulty materials
and my kids can't read, somebody has to pay.
Why wasn't the science of reading being out there?
We got a whole bunch right there.
It's busted pencils, fully-ledged, Paul.
You had to come back, man.
What do we do?
Should we be suing people when our kids can't learn?
It's busted pencils.
We'll be back right after the break.
We grow, we grow, we grow, we grow, we're over here.
We so cease to see us through
our days on questions and so feel real.
We probably have to do.
But if you're this sky, no longer blue,
we're bringing up to a lot of old ideals.
We grow, we grow, we grow, we grow, we grow.
Follow me, yeah.
You got to come back.
A little bit of black flag.
Yes, it's busted pencils, fully-ledged education target.
Educated educators, talking education.
Man, if black flag would have done a Super Bowl show,
what that would have looked like.
That would have rocked.
I mean, that's what we do.
Hey, our guest is Dr. Paul Thomas.
We're here breaking it down.
Again, check out his blog, RadicalSchoolership.com.
Science of reading.
You want to understand the complexity here.
The reality of all of the kind of craziness that's happening.
Paul is my go-to person to really get a sense
of really trying to deeply understand this.
Paul, we were talking about this so in Massachusetts.
Parents, and again, I always question whether parents
are truly behind this.
But parents are suing balanced literacy curriculum providers
and even a couple of the creators of this.
And simplicity is they're saying these
theoreticians in literacy and this curriculum
caused their kids to not learn how to read.
And we should have known that because the science
of reading was fully available.
But Massachusetts chose to use a faulty curriculum
that caused horrible damages to these students.
And so we're going to sue for using balanced literacy.
Help me understand, Paul.
Yeah, I think there's several things here
that are really important to think about.
One is that, you know, the Nate data,
we're saying over 30 years right now in the United States
over that 30 years, dozens of reading programs,
hundreds of different approaches to teaching were done.
The United States is not a unified curriculum sort of country
where a patchwork.
Yeah, I mean, you think about that.
The patchwork part there.
Yeah, people go, where'd Paul go?
Hey, you know, got a dog back there working.
And there you go, Paul, you're back.
It might be calm down now.
Sorry.
And the other thing is there's zero, zero studies
linking a causal relationship between reading programs
and reading outcomes by students.
This is purely an ideological rhetorical claim
that somehow balanced literacy has failed.
We did the same thing with whole language in the 90s.
There simply is no evidence for this claim.
The other thing I think is really important to point out
is about a year ago, there was a survey of parents
about reading.
And when they were asked, you know, how do you feel about
reading instruction for your children?
Parents were positive.
It was very positive.
Then those same parents were told that
nape scores were terrible on reading
and parents changed their minds.
So even if parents are upset,
and I'm sure there are parents who are upset,
they are victims too.
They're victims of the propaganda.
They're victims of people don't understand what
nape proficiency means.
We haven't mentioned this, but nape proficiency
is set at the 70th percentile.
It's way above grade level.
Virtually every state in the United States uses
the term proficiency equal to nape basic.
So when journalists say that two-thirds of students
aren't proficient technically on nape, that's true.
But it doesn't really mean anything.
It means that two-thirds of students aren't way
above grade level.
So I don't even know, you know, are we upset by that?
I'm not sure.
I think it's really important for people to understand too.
The United States has no standard definition
for grade level, no standard definition for proficiency.
And I think that's a huge problem.
And I really think nape does that on purpose.
It helps create this idea that are this belief
that there's crisis.
Well, in that part there too, I can't read,
you know, emphasize and re-emphasize that again.
Proficient.
And, you know, the kind of language, you know,
distortion that people use when, you know,
proficient for my neighbor sounds like, you know,
grade level.
Sounds like it's what we should be, you know,
well, I want everybody to be proficient.
And so when you hear that, quote,
two-thirds of students aren't proficient,
we need to really have a public relations education camp
campaign that says what does proficient really stand for
because proficient by nape scores is kind of like this.
Yeah, like above grade level sort of gifted,
a kind of standard that is aspirational maybe is the thing.
But it's not a measurement of reading, you know,
fluency or maybe not the right word,
but the ability to read because if we were going to do that,
we might be interested in again,
this isn't without its flaws, but grade level.
So our fourth graders reading at the fourth grade level
and how many of them are reading at the fourth grade level
and combine that with the ones that are, quote, proficient,
all of a sudden, you're going to probably get that,
guess what, over two-thirds of students are at grade level
or at proficient.
Crisis disappears.
Right, and I think too, we don't talk about,
but human behavior, you're never going to have 100%.
So I think we need to really talk about these terms,
and I think if we had a unified term for states
and for national testing, I think that would be a good idea.
But I also think we have to have a national discussion
about what is our threshold.
I don't think we can ever expect 100% of students,
but there has to be a reasonable number.
There has to be, you know, two-thirds aren't at grade level.
I mean, two-thirds are at grade level or above.
That means about a third's below grade level.
We probably can't tolerate that.
And also we certainly can't tolerate that there are subgroups
that are way, way worse off than that.
You know, black and brown students,
and special needs students, and multilingual learners,
are way, you know, that percentage is way higher.
So I have absolutely no problem with that sort of statistical conversation,
but we don't have it.
We're using the numbers to misrepresent.
We're certainly not using the numbers to help those children, particularly.
And yeah, that's the part here, too, is, you know,
again, listening to Paul and I,
this is not a conversation about, hey,
whatever kids don't learn to read, you know, not our problem.
We just need to represent the statistics right away.
Yes, we need to represent the statistics right away.
And yes, any student below grade level or struggling,
what are we doing to help them?
The reality is, is that what's happened in this kind of sleight of hand,
using marketing terms instead of truly science,
is that we've taken and created a crisis of almost nobody in America learns how to read.
And that the only way to fix that is by changing the curriculum.
Hey, and you know, if you happen to be one of those people that sells that curriculum,
and you're in Ohio, good deal, man,
because Ohio just mandated that you're the only person that teachers can buy a curriculum off of.
Oh, that's a whole other kennel worms that we're going with.
Our guest is Dr. Paul Thomas, his blog radical scholarship.com,
science of reading, Dr. Nancy Carlson Page,
our guest last Wednesday.
Give us something to think about.
Come back, though, Paul, too.
Besides this, I want to hit on what Nancy said,
is this a right wing movement?
Busted pencils back after the break.
Yeah, that's just on the boards.
We know it.
Hellstorm there.
Loving it.
Busted pencils fully let it.
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Hey.
Sorry about our guest is Dr. Paul Thomas,
radical scholarship.com,
looking at Massachusetts,
the lawsuit, science of reading.
You know, Paul, too, though,
you, you know, you're bio,
you're a teacher, teacher, educator.
It's almost a little bit about the journey that gets you to this point.
You know,
you know,
you're bio,
you're a teacher, teacher, educator.
It's almost a little bit about the journey that gets you to this point.
Where we would be able to say,
hey, Paul, we need you on the show to help us understand this.
Sure.
Coincidentally,
I started teaching in 1984,
which in South Carolina was the beginning of the,
you know, the accountability era.
That's, you know,
we had the governor, Dick Riley,
which is kind of, you know,
one of the first governors to really commit to education reform.
And even though I'm a strong critic of education reform,
Dick Riley was, is a great guy.
And he was, he did a really good job for South Carolina.
And I don't think he envisioned that education reform would become
the sort of crisis cycle that it's become.
And I've been doing this now 41 years.
So I've been a literacy educator for 41 years.
But the last since 2018,
I've been doing almost exclusively my,
my writing,
you know, my blogging and my public speaking has almost exclusively
been directed at, you know,
the science or reading movement and the legislation around.
I did a policy brief or any PC and Boulder, Colorado,
which I think is a really important thing that I did.
And I've got a book on the science or reading that's in its second edition.
And then I,
I would say maybe regretfully,
but I, you know,
a blog on this probably once or twice a week, if not more.
Absolutely.
If I said check it out, you know,
to the blog radical scholarship dot com.
All right.
So Paul, you know,
crisis rhetoric nonsense,
you know, mythology,
nape scores,
they're dropping science of reading,
you know,
and.
But when we, you know,
we had Nancy on,
I said on Wednesday,
you know,
she took a moment though and said,
you know what though Tim,
I want to make sure though that we remind everybody
that this isn't also just like a discussion about what's the better curriculum.
Understand the movement that is putting forth science of reading
is part of a larger right wing kind of,
you know,
disinfecting the curriculum from critical race theory, banning books.
You know,
you know,
people hear science of reading.
It's not a separate kind of thing that's out there.
This is just one more,
I guess arrow in the quiver of the right wing attempt to dominate public education in America.
Right.
Go ahead.
I think it's really important to,
you know,
I was talking about the science of reading as a multiverse.
My,
my comic book background coming through there.
But,
you know,
there's a media and a political science of reading movement.
And I think that's the dominant one.
And then the other one is the marketing that you mentioned a minute ago.
And the media and political and the marketing really strongly work together.
And the smaller part of that multiverse is the actual reading science,
which is a thing we have a body of science,
but it almost doesn't even matter.
Of course, marketing the capitalism.
You can't ignore that as a very conservative strain of this.
But if people pay attention.
Moms for liberty are constantly,
you know, promoting science of reading on social media.
George W. Bush and his wife gave Emily Hanford an award for her work on the science of reading.
George W. Bush,
with his organization in Florida, Excel and Ed.
They are huge and kind of a shadow.
Part of this because they have a,
they have a template for a science of reading legislation on their block on their website.
That states are just.
Taking and just plugging in state specific things and passing legislation.
And, and I think it's really important you mentioned this,
but people don't tend to pay attention to it.
The science of reading movement and the censorship movements are strongly overlapping.
Historically in the United States,
the pro phonics and the censorship agendas have been linked together for decades and decades.
I emphasize, you know, there's,
there was a, there was a whole article in the 80s on a, on a family.
Are you talking about the gaiblers?
Exactly.
I knew that's where you're going.
They spent their whole lives,
saying we need to teach more phonics and,
and then banning and,
and censoring and saying that schools were indoctrinating.
And this is,
it's kind of creepy to read that now.
But I mean, it's,
this was in the 80s.
Yeah.
So there's a very strong overlap that,
that connects the science of reading with the censorship movements that are going on,
because these are essentially conservative ideologies.
Yeah.
And, and that's the part, too,
is this to recognize, you know,
so what is being mandated to be taught?
Also, then you should be asking the question,
what is leaving that used to be taught?
And you might be surprised,
listener, or if you want to talk to your neighbor,
to ask him this question,
ask about the books they read,
or that were read to them when they were in school,
and then do a kind of quick look and go
and see how many of those books that they grew up with
are now truly on banned book lists.
And I think that's how you start to wake people up to go,
well, wait a minute.
That was one of my most favorite books growing up.
You mean to tell me it's banned?
Yes, it's banned.
Why?
Because this isn't really about creating proficient readers.
This is about sanitizing a curriculum
that there's a belief behind that, you know,
the American public education system,
particularly, has been responsible for this socialist,
crazy liberal indoctrination that I've always contended
is really bad at doing that job,
because we're the most ultra-capitalistic company,
or company country in the world.
So for so much for the indoctrination,
it's just not working if that was the case,
but understanding that this is,
you know, this is a sanitation movement,
as much as it,
to the extent that it has nothing to do
with increasing the number of students
who struggle reading,
helping them become better readers.
That isn't me saying this to those teachers out there
that are saying,
I use science of reading,
and it really helps a lot of my kids,
and that's what matters to me.
We know you teachers out there,
that we know what matters to you
is helping those young readers learn to read,
helping struggling older students learn to read,
creating that,
and so having the tool of phonics,
and things like that,
we want you to continue to have those.
What else is missing from your toolbox,
and this is what Dr. Nancy Carlson-Patrick was saying,
is that we're ripping away from the toolbox
of literacy instructors,
lots of different ways
the kids come to learn to read, Paul.
Right, and as we mentioned in earlier segment,
the science of reading now has been around 10 years
in many places,
at least five years in a lot of places,
and schools are being forced to adopt scripted curriculum.
It's called structured literacy,
but it's scripted curriculum.
The early research on scripted curriculum
is that it's whitewashing the curriculum.
Two things that are happening
is the mandated and included text
in these structured literacy programs
are very white, very endemic,
and they focus on things like decoding
as opposed to what's in the content of the actual text,
but also students are being asked less and less
to stay engaged with longer text.
So they're just reading what I would call textbook reading.
They're reading things that are written for a textbook,
which absolutely no human wants to read,
as opposed to what I would call authentic texts,
like picture books.
And picture books are some of the books
being attacked the most in the censorship movement.
That's why I was saying there's a strong overlap of the two.
The approved curriculum is very much whitewashed,
and it's very, you know, it's very endemic,
and it's very mechanical,
but also kids don't have access to books
in their school libraries,
and the classroom libraries have been decimated.
Most teachers have had all the books taken out of their classroom,
classrooms because of one or two parents,
and then, you know, there's been studies on this.
Some of the huge censorship in states like Florida
have been linked to one in two people.
And I think we've got to start asking what about parental rights
when the parent wants the books accessible.
We don't listen to parents who say,
I want these books to be in the library in case
there are, you know, my kids or other kids won't access to them.
So it really offends me when we talk about, you know, parental rights,
because we're only,
we're only privileging some parents' rights,
not all parents' rights.
Yeah, think about that.
It's just like, you know what?
In fact, your whatever your parent's right is,
it's not your right to tell me what my kids can't learn, you know.
And even that, it kind of sets up these, you know,
enemies, protagonists, all these ways that really separate people
when I said, I think most of the time,
you go up and down the street here and talk to most of my neighbors
and you point out some, you know, books and they'd say,
oh, yeah, we read that and you say, hey, it's banned.
They're like, what do you mean it's banned?
There would be a more coming together of going,
well, that doesn't make sense.
And it truly doesn't make sense.
I want to point out, as you said, Paul,
the policy aspect of this, how deep it's gotten.
And I know that Ohio is not the only state that does this.
But Ohio colleges across the state,
private and public,
had to submit documentation to the state department
of education, higher education to the governor's office,
curriculum materials that demonstrated
that the science of reading was the only technique or theory
that was being taught to future teachers.
And if those institutions, colleges, universities,
private and public were found to be using balance litters
or anything like that, they would have one year to fix it
or lose their ability to grant a teaching license.
And I just look at that and I'm like, you know what,
whatever you think about it, I'm sorry,
but that is absolutely an assault on academic freedom.
Yes, this is a subset of the kind of Trump bullying
that we're seeing going on right now.
The science of reading movement has become a bullying movement.
There's a lot of threat for funding.
There's a lot of, you know, a lot of threats.
You know, for allowing states and colleges to be able to certify,
I've witnessed it in multiple places.
And there's, there's just way too strong a relationship.
Even in Arkansas, you know, Arkansas way back several years ago,
banned balance literacy, three queuing and guessing in legislation,
and specifically banned like units of study.
And we did, we should have mentioned this in the segment earlier,
but at its peak, Lucy Balkan's units of study was in only about one
out of every, about 20% of schools.
Now, now how you can sue someone for causing a national rating crisis
when 80% of the schools use some other program is beyond me.
You know, it defies any kind of logic to try to blame any of them,
especially because the definitions they use for balance literacy
and three queuing especially isn't even accurate.
I'm not sure they would know if they saw a balance literacy.
They wouldn't see it.
They wouldn't know it.
We've had great discussion, our guest, Dr. Paul Thomas.
Paul, too, just to remind the book you were mentioning.
What's the title?
Where can people get it?
If not, let's go to my blog.
It's, it's how to end the, the, the reading more.
How to end the reading more.
Yeah, yeah.
We'll make sure that we, yeah, we're going to make sure that it's linked to
and into the podcast so people can get that.
You know what?
Hey, Jess and Tim are going to break it down when we get back.
But Paul, man, as always, thanks for busting pencils, man.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
Thank you.
Yeah, we're back.
Pusted pencils.
Holy, let it education talk.
Educated educators.
Talking education.
Great guest.
Dr. Paul Thomas, sitting with us for three segments.
Science of reading.
Dr. Nancy Carlson, page last Wednesday on the podcast.
Massachusetts parents suing curriculum makers for not using the science of reading.
Had to bring it a little bit more depth.
Again, for, for you out there listening to make sure that, you know, you can understand there's,
there's a complexity here.
And then within the complexity, Jess, the thing about this, there's also a simplicity.
Right.
Right.
There's also the simplicity of if you want your child to be best served by teachers, if
you want your child regardless of their strengths in a reading or where they struggle
to be successful, their teachers need access to a huge toolbox.
Their teachers need the flexibility, the agility to be able to say this tool works wonderfully
for this student.
And this student over here needs a different tool.
That's not a problem.
That's not a failure on the part of student A or student B.
That's just kids.
Those darn kids, they, they require so many different ways to help them learn darn it.
I wish they'd all be easy.
No, you don't.
No, I don't.
And in fact, Jess, though, you just pointed that out.
And you know, anybody who's been listening to busted pencils for the longest time knows I always
point out my, my daughter's issue with that is, you know, yeah, by, by first grade, guess what?
She was already reading books, but because the curriculum kind of a precursor to the science
of reading called the dibbles.
In fact, dibbles is still now very much a part of the science of reading.
You know, her first grade teacher was very learned that her fluency, that is how fast she could read nonsense words.
Was lagging because, you know, because it was nonsense words.
Reading nonsense words quickly is definitely the sign of catastrophe.
But, but, but again, though, this is what happens because that teacher was only really allowed to use that.
You can see then, though, too, that they were saying, well, the indicators here, Tim and, you know, my wife, Michelle,
is that Lacey struggling.
And, you know, kind of had to kind of come back in and go, but she's already reading real words in real books and her fluency.
And again, I'm always cautioning people that speed in how quickly people can do math quickly, people can read isn't really an indicator of excellence.
And being slow isn't an indicator of failure.
Right.
We are, we are each individuals and there are some things that come to us very quickly.
And there are some things that take time and yet we will understand them much deeper.
So speed is one thing, but depth of understanding and enjoyment of learning and igniting that spark in someone that goes, hey, this is incredibly fulfilling to me.
And I want to take my time in it. I want to make sure that I have real mastery of it. That's a different thing than speed.
Exactly. And in fact, you know, pointing that out and think of how many students then very early on when we're quote speed timing them, whether it's math facts start to get the message that speed is an indicator if I'm smart or not.
And if I'm not fast, I'm not smart.
And how that then kicks in to the point where actually some students because they're not quick, they just stop.
Right.
So they don't, they stop reading, they stop because I'm not quick like my friends and my teacher wants me, I'm, you know, and so the incentive to continue to dig deep to potentially slowly read.
Oh, we do away with that when you pointed out, then just in fact, we should be really concentrating on helping kids slow down and make sense of and understand and ask questions so much on the science of reading just again, you're on it, on it, on it.
So let's take a moment to slow down for our moment of sin.
Civil disobedience, that's not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity and war and cruelty.
Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and all the while the grand thieves are running the country.
That's our problem.
Man, thanks everybody for busting pencils. We love that you get to spend Saturday with us or, you know, if you're downloading.
I just think of that moment of sin though, Jess, who knew that Howard's in was going to quote the reality that we're existing in in 2025.
Well, you know what they say, Tim, history may not repeat, but it definitely rhymes.
It definitely rhymes saying if you love those moments of sin, make sure that you are out there doing your best downloading, subscribing, whether you get your podcast on Apple Spotify, however you get them, subscribe that way you'll never miss a busted pencils.
And also if you're doing the Saturday show, the easiest way, the civic media app, you can download that civic media app.
Therefore, you know, not only busted pencils, you can get all of the great civic media program.
Indeed. There's a lot of good stuff there. There's a ton of good stuff. Lots of great people, you know, and that's what we like to do here is just continue to, you know, democracy.
Hey, democracy is a reality that we need to hold on to very tightly as we point out to these moments, you know, we are feeling the pressure to really try to understand and come to a reality of how do we hold our democracy together.
Well, one of the ways you can do that is listening to busted pencils, everybody. Thanks for having a great day and keep busting pencils.
Thank you very much.