Talk: Literacy
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I wanted to add some historical paragraphs on literacy through the previous 3000 years in general and in the previous 200 years in particular and make a tie-in to the history of writing and of the industrial revolution because universal literacy in industrialized countries was one of the important "late" results of the first phase of the industrial revolution and one of the major causes or facilitators of the second phase of the industrial revolution. But I do not see why I should bother adding something to an article if there is a big sign above it saying in a global way that the neutrality of the artcile is disputed. What is to be done? AlainV
- The article's supposedly been under dispute since 2 Jun 2003, but a lot of work has been done since then and I don't see a whole lot of disputing going on. So in light of comments like AlainV's above, I'd like to remove the NPOV header. Any objections before I do so? Bryan 01:35, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
None from me, but are there any procedures for such a removal? A page somewhere in the meta sections of Wikipedia where we should post the removal? AlainV 06:59, 2004 Apr 17 (UTC)
- Can't find one on a cursory exploration. However, I find that the NPOV dispute page says "Everyone can agree that marking an article as having an NPOV dispute is a temporary measure, and should be followed up by actual contributions to the article in order to put it in such a state that people agree that it has a NPOV." Since this article is approaching a full year with the dispute header, I think it's unlikely to be considered controversial to remove it now. :) Bryan 07:30, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This article is truly bizarrely non-NPOV! The most important effects of literacy are not the same as the most important effects of teaching it to illiterate adults in a predominantly literate population who do not generally desire to be educated. Politics is asserted to be an important effect of literacy, but science, philosophy, and art are not!
The mentioned effects all improve public welfare. Of course the article didn't -say- that, so I rewrote to make the emphasis explicit. Descriptions of good social effects seem NPOV to me, if they relate to universal human goods, like health, wealth and safety. Arts and sciences enrich some persons' lives, but they do not have as much practical effect on peoples' immediate welfare. Ray Van De Walker
Greetings again, NPOVers. Have some mercy on desperate parents looking for reading instruction that works. I'm a home-schooler. I have no financial interest in any program mentioned in the article. Engleman's DISTAR book is a cultural treasure widely recommended among home-schoolers: I taught all my children to read with it, including a kid who was medically-certified as ADD. In three months kids reach 2nd grade level. I doubt if Englemann is getting rich from his Distar book (I paid $15), although he deserves to. My kids are learning spelling with Orton phonograms, one of the secret weapons home-schoolers use to win national spelling bees. Orton was a researcher, not a program publisher. We found the phonograms and spelling rules on flash cards at a home-schooling convention. I haven't used Pournelle's software, but she claims to have taught reading to refractory students in L.A. for thirty years, and her methods make sense to me. These methods are all -cheap-, and they work. The really expensive methods are the see-say methods sold to public schools, that claim to teach reading over five years with several sets of hard-back books, for a cost of several hundred dollars per student- and then fail. Ray Van De Walker
