Author: Larry Sanger
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Reviews of three classic children’s novels
Recently I finished reading three classic children’s novels to H. We’ve been on a roll, reading quite a bit every night. I don’t know if there’s much point to a non-literature guy pretending to write reviews of classic children’s literature, but I did so on Amazon. Of course, you’ll learn more about me than you…
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Plans for WatchKnow Reader
All, finally I thought I’d tell you about my plans for what I’m tentatively calling WatchKnow Reader, and ask for your input. I might ramble on — apologies in advance. As many readers of this blog know, I taught H. how to read largely by using a series of about 1,000 flashcards arranged into sets…
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4-year-old reading philosophy textbook (and Elkind’s “Miseducation”)
Here’s H. reading a random page from Jones’ History of Western Philosophy. Recorded last Nov. when he was 4 years, 5 months. A few comments about this. First, obviously, he must understand very little of this text. He seems intrigued by books he can’t understand, like the philosophy books on the shelves in my office,…
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The Today Show’s takedown of Your Baby Can Read ridiculously biased
This is a review of a review. Last November 1, the Today Show did a segment about Your Baby Can Read, and that segment is now one of the top results for the Google searches for “your baby can read”. Unlike most of the Today Show’s viewers, and apparently unlike Matt Lauer and his team,…
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Kindle Store version of essay available (for those who need it)
At least one person said she wanted to read my essay on her Kindle, but could not figure out how to get it. I’m pretty sure she could download it from her desktop and email it to her Kindle, but for those who want it on their handheld devices and can’t be bothered to figure…
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Does reading count as direct instruction?
I have a provocative question for the teachers and educational theorists out there: does reading count as direct instruction? I ask because, if it does, then there is surely nothing wrong with direct instruction, per se. I think it is plausible to call it instruction, anyway. The basic difference between reading a book, for example,…
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Review: “Your Baby Can Read”
Here is my review of the Your Baby Can Read videos, as posted on Amazon.com. Many people have found that Your Baby Can Read works, especially if it is used as part of a larger literacy program that includes plenty of reading to the child. I found that it helped quite a bit with my…
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Advice for the Wikimedia Foundation (not for Wikipedia!)
Since before I left Wikipedia, even before I proposed the old Sifter project in 2002, Wikipedians have talked about a method of using experts to rate, or approve, or review versions of Wikipedia articles (cf. this Slate interview). Similarly, some of the cooler heads both inside and outside Wikipedia have wished that Wikipedians would tag their copious…
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Update about the boys
Here is a “brain dump” about what I’ve been doing with my little boys, ages 4.5 and 2 months. I will refer to them as H. (the older) and E. (the younger). H’s biggest accomplishment, recently, has been finally to learn to write not only all of his numbers, but all of his capital letters…
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Wikipedia’s ancient history unearthed
Wikipedia programmer Tim Starling has discovered some ancient backup files from the earliest months of Wikipedia. The files themselves (which I haven’t downloaded yet, if I ever will) are here (8.4 MB) and cover some of the earliest history of Wikipedia. This should be very interesting indeed, if anyone decides to study what happened in those, um,…