Home Page Hard Times Survival Hard Times Recipes Gourmet Recipes Healthy Recipes Gardening Tips Firearm Facts Economy Book Reviews
Wilderness Survival Christian Poems Bible & Prophecy Bible Truths Other Information Children Stories Product Links Search Website My Books

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Copyright © March 1, 2023 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.


Introduction

April 1 1961 In the year 2023 many public school systems are not giving actual grades to their students, such as A, B, C, D, and F.

Instead the students in many public school systems are being evaluated in one of the following three ways:
  1. Above grade level.
  2. Meets grade level.
  3. Below grade level.
This allows the public school system to avoid unpleasant arguments with the parents of students who do not want to learn anything and whose parents don't care if their child doesn't learn anything as long as their child gets a passing grade.

In the year 2023 many public school systems are promoting all the students to the next grade level at the end of a school year regardless of which of the above three "grades" the student received, and whether or not the student attended classes, and whether or not the student turned in any assignments, and whether or not the student actually took a single test. Could this be "one" of the many reasons why many public school systems are not able to hire enough "qualified" teachers?

This situation is forcing many parents to enroll their children in the private school system because they love their children and they want their children to become educated. And they do not want their children to be influenced by children who refuse to do learn anything at school but who also get promoted to the next grade at the end of every school year.

This article will take a look at a few things you can do at home to help the child that you love to actually learn the things that will be of significant benefit to your child for the rest of his or her life.


Reading

A person who knows how to read can enhance their knowledge about anything they desire by reading about that topic. A person can read different opinions about a single topic and become very knowledgeable about the subject. There is no limit to the amount of knowledge that a person can acquire if the person knows how to read.

However, a person who does not know how to read must rely on what they are told by other people. This makes it very easy to manipulate a person who does not know how to read because the person cannot easily verify what they are told by reading about the topic. The person can only understand what is presented in a video.

In the early 1900s in the USA our nation made a decision to educate all of our children in public schools that were financed by the tax revenue in each geographical area. Our nation believed that an educated society was the road to prosperity and equal opportunities.

Sadly something has gone wrong. In the year 2023 many children cannot read at their grade level. And these children are being automatically advanced to the next grade level even though they cannot read at their former grade level. And they will continue to be advanced to the next grade, and to the next grade, until they graduate from high school with a high school diploma but they will only have the ability to read at the third grade level.

There are many people who cannot see where this is leading. These people are content to allow this problem to continue because all of our children are now graduating with a high school diploma. The problem is that in the USA in the year 2023 a high school diploma doesn't mean what it meant 20 years ago. What do you think a high school diploma from most public schools will be worth in the year 2030? How do you feel about the way your school tax money is being spent to babysit children during the day instead of being used to educate those children? (Note: School taxes are paid to the county in which you live, and the county has control over how that school tax money will be spent, and the county has control over what will be taught in the public schools that are under their jurisdiction.)

If you are a parent or a grandparent, and if you truly love your children and grandchildren, then please take the time every day to help them learn how to read and how to remember and understand what they read. May I suggest that you buy an illustrated Bible that was written for the age of your child and that you sit down at your kitchen table every evening after supper and that you have your child read one story from that Bible out loud to you (beginning with the first story in the Bible). Then have the child close the Bible and tell you the story they just read. Please be patient. When they first begin reading your child may need to open the Bible several times to "refresh" his or her memory about the story the child just read. But gradually your child will be able to tell you a good summary of the entire story they just read to you without having to open the Bible and "refresh" his or her memory. (This actually happened with one of my nine year old grandchildren. He could read well but he could not remember what he had read even though it was a very short story with a picture.)

The next day the child can read the next story in the Bible. When they get to the end of their Bible have them start over at the beginning. When you can see that they have mastered the art of reading at the grade level of their current Bible then buy then an illustrated Bible for an older child and have them start reading the stories in that Bible to you. If you will invest this time with the child you love then you will be helping them to learn how to read, how to remember what they read, and how to appreciate the way that God asked us to live so we would be in harmony with one another, and how we should love one another and especially our parents.

If you have two or more children then you could buy each child their own illustrated Bible for their age group and allow each child to read a story from their Bible to everyone sitting at your kitchen table every evening. Before a child reads a story from his or her Bible he or she should show everyone at the kitchen table the picture in his or her Bible that corresponds to the story the child is getting ready to read.

The reason I recommend an illustrated Bible for each child that was written for his or her age group is because God will honor the reading of His words and He will help your child gradually improve his or her reading skill because your child is not only learning how to read but your child is also learning the things that God would like for your child to know. Wouldn't it be nice to have God join your family at your kitchen table every evening and bless your family in a way that only He can bless.

My wife and I are both in our 70s. Some of our grandchildren come to visit us two or three weekends each month. When they are here on the weekends they know that at 7:00 PM each evening we will all sit down at our kitchen table and each child will get his or her Bible that I bought just for that child, and open his or her Bible to the bookmark, and read the story out loud to all of us. We have been doing this for several years. You would be amazed at how well my grandchildren are currently doing in the public school systems compared to the other children in their classes.

Writing

Writing is a skill that we learn in grade school. And each one of us learns how to write in one of three ways:
  1. We learn to write so neatly that other people can quickly and easily read what we have written.
  2. We learn to write in a barely acceptable manner so that other people can read what we write if they take the time to look at it very closely.
  3. We learn to write so poorly that no one can read what we have written regardless of how long they stare at what we have written.
Writing is a skill that we will have for the rest of our lives.

Good neat writing is a habit that we train our hand to do correctly. In the beginning we have to think and focus on how to correctly make each letter, how to properly size each letter, how to leave the correct space between words, and how to put the correct punctuation symbol at the end of a sentence. But gradually our hand begins to write in the way we have trained our hand. And good neat writing becomes very natural for us because it has become a good habit that we have taken the time to learn.

If your handwriting is terrible then this is something you can fix. Download the correct way to print letters and numbers from some internet website and print a hard copy for you to follow. Then get some ruled paper and practice making each letter and each number correctly. Make each stroke in the direction that your instruction page shows it to be made. Lift your pencil from the paper and make the next stroke exactly where indicated. Do it exactly the way your instructions indicate and do not take shortcuts based on what you wish to call your "own personal style." Instead do it the correct way.

If you have children or grandchildren who cannot write neatly then take the time to help them learn how to write using the instructions that you printed from the internet. The time that you invest with your children will enhance their entire lives. Each time they have to write something in school then their teacher will be able to easily read your child's handwriting and this usually results in a higher grade on the assignment. After your child grows up then each time your adult child has to write something where they work they will be noticed as having superior handwriting. And people will assume that they also have a superior intellect and they will be gradually advanced to the better jobs at their place of employment.

Learning how to write neatly has lifelong benefits. It is a "habit" that anyone can acquire.

Or handwriting can be neglected and a person with poor handwriting will always be considered "less educated" and "less important" when compared to a person with good handwriting. And a person with poor handwriting will usually be ashamed to express his or her ideas in writing because they know that their handwriting is bad.

What type of future would you prefer for your children and grandchildren: excellent, average, or poor?

Your child's handwriting will have a direct impact on how their future will gradually unfold.

Math and Art

In the past math and art were "universal" languages.

Before the introduction of "modern art" a person could look at a painting and understand its message.
  1. Many of the buildings in Russia have paintings that depict Biblical events and those paintings are amazing. The artist was able to convey a deep spiritual message in a single painting that could be quickly and easy understood by any person who spoke any language. And a person who saw one of those paintings would remember the painting for the rest of his or her life.
  2. From about 1916 to the early 1960s The Saturday Evening Post frequently had covers that were painted by Normal Rockwell. His paintings usually revealed a very interesting perspective about life in a specific situation.
  3. The western paintings that were created by Frederic Remington from the 1880s through the early 1900s were able to clearly express the reality of the life of the cowboys of the wild west, and the hardship living conditions of the American Indians of the late 1800s.
There are many artists today who still have and who still use this remarkable talent. But some artists are now doing "impressionistic" paintings and no two people will see the same thing in one of those paintings. In my opinion, this was not the original purpose of "paintings" and it is not an improvement in artistic expression. Instead it is a step backwards to a more primitive era where paintings were done on the walls of caves.

Math was also once a universal language. A person who understood basic mathematical concepts could understand basic mathematical equations and mathematical solutions regardless of the country of their origin.

But in the late 1960s and the early 1970s "new math" was introduced in the public school systems in the USA. And parents could no longer help their children do their math homework because the math homework had to be done and documented in a way that the parent did not understand. Even if the parent could arrive at exactly the same answer the parent's answer was "wrong" because the parent did not arrive at the answer using the "new math method." This was the beginning of communication problems between parents and their children. Children gradually lost respect for their parents and children gradually began to believe whatever they were told in school.

Twenty years later the "new math" was abandoned and replaced with another "improved different method" of doing math. The children who had learned the "new math" when they were in school could no longer help their children do their math homework. The loss of respect for parents continued and children became openly rebellious because they believed they knew "more" than their parents and that their parents were intellectually impaired.

Twenty years later the "improved different method" of doing math was abandoned and a "revolutionary superior method" for doing math was introduced in our public schools. What long-term impact do you suspect this will have on the respect that children have for their parents?

In the USA in the year 2023 a senior citizen cannot communicate mathematically with their own children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. And nobody in the entire family can help a young child learn how to do math in the way that will allow the child to pass "math class" in school. Fortunately this destructive strategy has only been successful in the USA and a few other wealthy countries. Children in other countries of the world can still do math the same way their parents and grandparents were taught to do math, and they can all arrive at the same correct answer in the same way, and the children in those countries still have respect for their elders.

Some parents are becoming active on the school boards of their public school systems in order to try to return their schools to the "old way" of doing things.

Some private schools are teaching their students the "old way" to do math and the current "new way" to do math (whatever that happens to be) so that the student can communicate with their elders, and the student can also pass the standardized math exams that evaluate how well the school is teaching a subject. This is not a good way to use valuable school time but it has become necessary in the 21st century because our educational system is being managed in a way that is not in the best long-term interests of our society.

If any of the "new ways" to do math were actually better than the way math was taught for hundreds of years, then the students who learned how to do math the "new way" should have achieved higher academic scores on the standardized tests that were administered to them. This did not happen. Instead the academic scores of students has been steadily and systematically declining year, after year, after year. Therefore all the claims that the "new way to do math" would help students "think better" were false. The actual test results revealed that all of the different "new ways to do math" only reduced the scores of students and each "new way" reduced the performance of students even more. What does this prove? It proves that the old way to do math that was taught in 1900, and in 1925, and in 1940, and in 1955 was the best way to teach students how to do math and how to think. If we want our children to be as smart as their ancestors then our nation needs to return to the time-honored way of teaching math to students in the public school system and all the "new ways to do math" need to be abandoned.

One of the worst mistakes the USA could make as a nation would be for its citizens to believe that some "totally new way to do math" is going to fix everything and that the "new way" will help our young people to "think better."

How many times do we have to be lied to before we realize that we are being lied to?


Conclusion

Reading, writing, and arithmetic have been the foundations of successful societies for thousands of years.

The easiest way to destroy a society is to reduce the ability of its younger citizens to be able to read, write, and do arithmetic in a manner that can be understood by all the citizens of all ages in that society.

May God Bless,
Grandpappy.


Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com

Home Page Other Articles