Its A Me

Robin: “I want to wrap my legs around a Woman

Lucas: *at Mike* “you can not compare racism to putting ketchup on Mac and cheese”

Robin (again): “snapping is just pizzicato clapping”

Will: “ I don’t need a girl friend cuz god fucks me daily”

Dustin: “That’s one thicc ass duck, that’s a goose”

Nancy: “Jonathan, you would tell me if you’re a little spoon right?

Steve: “Have fun in Canada where the beavers run free I just realized that made it seem like America has put all beavers in prison”

Eleven: “everything has been moved my life is in disarray”

Billy: “I hate myself but not enough to take initiative”

Hopper: “don’t worry I’ve already lowered expectations for the rest of my life”

Will (again): “I’m only gonna talk about rainbows wait that’s too gay”

Joyce: you know what we should get

Hopper: wine

Joyce: Mac and Cheese

Mike: “that’s what good pussy sounds like”

Max: “how would you know”

Mike (again) : “I felt something on my shirt and I assumed it was food so I bit it and it was actually a stick”

Johnathan: “I wish for true happiness in the next 5 months” *flips coins and completely misses the fountain*

Murray: “I don’t want to do this I would rather eat my own shoe than do this”

Max: “it’s Wednesday I’m feeling shit today and when I feel this way it makes me wanna say AAAAAAAAH”

Billy (again) : “oh us? I’m bitch Man”

Robin and Steve while drugged: “ooooh science juice”

Erica: “fun prank idea scalp em”

The Mind Flayer: “I’m activating my child”

Lucas: “blood is thicker than water but wood is thicker than blood know what I’m saying”

Will and El (again): “I’m not sleeping I’m curling into the fetal position and wishing it were over”

Dustin: “what if instead of cats we had bricks”

@thedisablednaturalist @fagtabulous

One of my personal big takeways from listening to this was the danger of turning facets of education policy into politicized issues along left/right lines–according to this podcast one of the reasons for why phonics didn’t catch on earlier is because it was being promoted by the second Bush administration, which led to teachers unions and other left-of-center people to be suspicious of it. I think that’s really unfortunate and sadly we saw that same dynamic play out during the pandemic, when in so many school districts how to handle public education became a culture war battle more than anything else.

In the rest of the English-speaking world, children are taught to read phonically. There are multiple systems for this, from “winging it based on usage” to structured, tiered systems like Jolly Phonics. They’re taught the sounds that letters make, then the sounds that dipthongs and unusual combinations (like “magic E vowels”) make, and they are taught how to string the sounds together to sound out the words. Common words with unusual spellings/rules (or just really common words that the kid needs to know before they know the relevant rules, like “the” and “should”) are taught as “sight words” and expected to be memorised rote (although research suggests that children don’t memorise these words, but memorise whatever the tricky part is as an exception and read them normally, by phonically sounding them out in their head). This is so that children can get to reading common sentences and simple stories as quickly as possible, providing them with valuable practice and motivation.

As children get practice reading over many years, the most common words get memorised via repetition, and new words are sounded out and memorised if they come up enough. (This is why it’s common for people who read more than they watch tv/converse to mispronounce words for many years – I was over 20 before I knew the correct pronunciation of ‘misled’ or ‘rendezvous’.)

My mother, however, taught both my sister and I how to read at home with Phonics because she doesn’t fuck with whole word recognition.

I assure you: Phonics is better. It encourages kids to sound it out if it’s a new word, then realise they might have heard it before. It’s not perfect, English being a shit language, but it’s better than vibes and whole word.