T H E O P I N I O N P A P E R glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Spoofing “Liberalism”
Letter to the editor;
LIBERAL: We need a giant government program to make war on illiteracy.
ME: “War . . . ”?!
LIBERAL: Certainly. We can put a tax on books and newspapers and use the money to fund a National Literacy Agency with local headquarters in each . . .
ME: How about just teaching children the sounds of letters and lending them interesting reading material?
LIBERAL: “Sounds”?! Phonics?! You troglodyte! Phonics has been discredited in a thousand studies. Why, California outlawed phonics forty years ago! Whole-word recognition is the modern way to go.
ME: We all read by whole-word recognition – after we get to recognize a word. A few hours’ study of the sounds of letters and letter-combinations gives a child the ability to “sound-out” an unfamiliar word. English is not all that phonetic, but most words can be sounded out, and even a child can learn the sounds and the principles.
LIBERAL (changing the subject): And you probably carry a gun, too.
ME: Certainly. Does that disqualify me from the human race?
LIBERAL: Uncivilized! Uncouth! Murderer! Do you think this is the Wild West?
ME: None of the above. What’s your point?
LIBERAL: People in a proper civilized society shouldn’t have to worry about guns.
ME: People in a proper civilized society shouldn’t have to worry about kitchen fires, either, but I see that you keep a fire extinguisher by each door.
LIBERAL (changing the subject again): And you’re a Sunday-school teacher!
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Friday, June 20, 2008
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