BLACK LIVES MATTER

kid: complete?

me: do you see a P in that word?

kid: uh.... compare?

me: where are you getting a P??? sound it out.

kid: com... complete?

me: is that a P after the M? sound it out.

kid: *stares blankly*

Which is a fucking insane approach to reading, by the way, and I could rant about this forever because this makes absolutely no sense and I cannot figure out how the entire educational field was duped into thinking that this makes a lick of sense.

The word was "disagreement."

He made a couple of guesses - some nonsensical, but after pushing him to sound out the word, he got closer. He kept saying "dis-age-ment" and "dis-argue-ment."

And I said okay, let's break this word down. Is there anything in here you recognize?

"The beginning is 'dis' and the end is 'ment' like argument, but I don't know the middle."

Great! Let's pull the middle out. I wrote the word "agree" on the page. Do you know this word?

"Age? Argue?"

SOUND. IT. OUT.

"Ag... agriculture?"

Jason the love of god. I drew a line in the middle. Ag/ree. Sound out each part.

"I don't know."

JASON. I wrote them out on opposite sides of the paper. Ag...........ree. What sound does ag make?

"Ag?"

YES GREAT FANTASTIC. Now come all the way over here. Ree. Sound it out.

"Are?"

JASON. R. E. E.

"Rey? Ree?"

Yes, thank you, it's Ree. Put it together.

"Ag...ree? Oh! It's disagreement!"