Quora asked people to name the biggest scams and cons in American history. A lot of entertaining answers are given.

I think the obvious answer is: using reading instruction that you know won't work. That is, any reading instruction that is non-phonetic and requires children to memorize words as graphic designs.

 I write about this stuff all the time. So I get a chance to see how completely inertial the society is. All the big shots, the movers and shakers, Bill Gates and Jeb Bush, all of them seem to agree on keeping the society dumb. Their kids are going to be well-educated, why worry about anybody else? I don't know how else to explain the idiotic situation we are in.

 Maybe there are people reading this who never really thought about the Reading Wars. I tell you that if you spend 10 minutes looking at it, you will realize that you have entered a lunatic asylum. The sight-word con is roughly equivalent to telling children that in order to learn math  they must always be standing on their heads, or whistling "I can't get no satisfaction." Memorizing sight-words, this is the bottom line,  is tremendously difficult and does NOT in fact lead to literacy.

Do you realize that the official goals in many public schools are 100 sight-words by the end of first grade, 200 sight-words or so by the end of second grade, etc?  Look up Dolch words grade 1, grade 2, for yourself. This amount of words is pathetic and inadequate. But the news gets worse. Many children actually cannot master 100 sight-words in the first year. MEANWHILE, the kids learning  phonics can read books!  So you see how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. My God how the money rolls in.

The Quota question inspired me to write an article-length answer. Here is the link:

http://religion.rantrave.com/Rant/Fake-Reading-Instruction-is-Bigge...

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