Letters to the Editor | The economist

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The ABC of education

Regarding the “reading wars” in class (June 12), effective early reading classes actually include direct and explicit phonemic awareness (sound distinction) and phonics (sound-to-letter correspondence) applied to a limited vocabulary of high-frequency words become. However, these alone are not enough for the transition to fluent academic reading. This dexterity depends not only on the basics, but also on a large and deep pool of vocabulary. Vocabulary learning unfolds gradually over time and is generally under-paid in schools. While a daily newspaper requires about a ninth grade reading level (14-15 years old) The economist is minimally written at the bachelor’s level and requires a solid vocabulary in breadth and depth.

Literacy is a complex endeavor. Teaching must be explicit, programmatic, developmentally progressive, and sustained over time as children practice word study and morphology. Good word attack strategies include phonetics (pronounce the word: pol-llu-tion) and knowledge of Greek and Latin roots (transcribe, translate, transport). All of this can be exciting and fun. Children enjoy the joy of documenting and sharing their thoughts and opinions and their growing sense of self-determination when they master reading and writing.

Humans are not evolutionarily attuned to the development of literacy (literacy is a relative laggard that has only existed for about 5,000 years). This means that primitive models are repurposed for pattern recognition and categorization; Sequences, size and shape, for example in the service of letter recognition, spelling and arithmetic. From a young age, play with blocks, puzzles, loose pieces, pencils and crayons, scissors and paper to lay the foundations for literacy by activating the hand-brain complex and the neuro-circuits and muscle memory for meaning and development create. Barking at the page without meaning to the pressure does not ensure permanent reading comprehension. A balanced approach is necessary.

PROFESSOR HETTY ROESSINGH
Werklund School of Education
University of Calgary

Expand the reserves

As an American naval officer and aviator with a combination of active duty and reserve duty, your article on military reservists caught my eye (“Not Your Dad’s Army,” June 19). Efficient and operational reserve troops will remain of vital importance for national and collective defense. There is simply no suitable substitute, and any attempt to circumvent this reality is dangerously foolish.

One of the greatest challenges for military chiefs is to recruit trained and readily available personnel for the full spectrum of skills, from logistics and chaos services (an army still runs on its stomach) to stealth fighter pilots and cyber warfare.

Relatively few citizens of western countries (America and Great Britain are noteworthy here) have served. This lack of direct reference to military service will further reduce the interest of the younger population in the armed forces. It is a worrying downward spiral, although a return to conscription is unlikely. Reservists in vastly increased numbers and capacity can be a practical and necessary means of counteracting these negative trends.

JEFFREY PETIT
commander
US Marine Reserve (retired)
San Diego

Midweek special

Bartleby’s column (June 19) on Choosing the Best Days to Work from Home reminded me of my time in the Soviet Union in 1976. I bought a chess clock in a Moscow store that didn’t work. When I told my Soviet colleagues, did any of them want to know what day of the week it was done?

During this time, the devices left the factory with a ticket stating the day of the week for assembly. Knowledgeable buyers checked these tickets and knew how to avoid products made on a Monday or Friday: Friday workers thought of the weekend and Monday workers had a hangover. Quality products were likely made on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, if anything.

PHILIP RAKITA
Philadelphia

Giving up colonial ties

Your obituary for Kenneth Kaunda (June 26) was informative and fair. However, the founding president of Zambia may have found the photo you used of him wearing a tie offensive.

The house in Chilenje, Lusaka, where the Kaunda family lived during part of the independence struggle, contained an exhibition in 1968 that illustrated their story. As the director of the Zambia Monument Commission, I accompanied the then president on a tour. When he saw a photo of himself similar to the one in your obituary, he said to me, “I remember this opportunity. It was the last time I wore a tie. I have decided that once Zambia is free I would never do this again. “

As far as I know, he never did.

PROFESSOR DAVID PHILLIPSON
Skipton, North Yorkshire

Facts and fictions

Your review of Alberto Angela’s biography of Cleopatra and the phenomenon of imaginative “writing history” (“Missing pieces”, June 12) raises an exciting question of intellectual property law. Copyright protects intellectual creations, but not historical facts. So what happens when a historian presents the fruits of his imagination as facts? Are there copyrights to such creations?

The Federal Court of Justice of Canada recently examined this in a lawsuit alleging the author of a historical book had infringed the copyright on a previous book that purported to tell the “real story”. Both books were about the Black Donnellys, a notorious Irish Catholic immigrant family involved in a violent feud that resulted in the murder of five of their members by a mob in 1880. The heirs of the author of the original book argued that the later book was copied with fictional decorations in the original. The author of the later book argued that he assumed that the decorations were factual because they were presented credibly as such and that he could not be blamed for copyright infringement because he used different words to tell the same story.

The court agreed and ruled that copyright does not protect plausible factual claims, no matter how fanciful they later turn out to be. The court distinguished this from stories like “Gulliver’s Travels” or “The Blair Witch Project”, in which representations that the story is “true” are clearly just for fun.

It is a sensible decision. After all, as your review noted, all “history” ever was is what others, like Tacitus or Herodotus, say, whether it actually happened or not.

JOHN SIMPSON
principal
Shift law
Toronto

I don’t see anything wrong with writers using their imaginations to make classic stories readable. As Pliny the Younger remarked in ancient Rome: “There is no shortage of readers and listeners; it is up to us to produce something that is worth writing and hearing. “

DAVE SHINE
Fairfax, Virginia

This article appeared in the Letters section of the print edition under the heading “On Literacy, Military Reserves, Labor Days, Kenneth Kaunda, Historical Fiction”