Society/Culture To what extent are Universities to blame for the current children's literacy crisis?

[Gethelred]

Uni? Blame society and its fixation with ICT's...the single most overrated educational trend in my time in the profession. We have this notion that ICT's are the future, when the future actually requires the good old ways and technology is only there to make it look pretty...

Literacy involves understanding of the linguistic aspects and practice. The first is given the full treatment in school, and contrary to the Sky News bullshit they amongst others push out about "whole language killing our kids' literacy in favour of good old phonics and R and R", a good approach involves all of these techniques. It gets pushed in school...

The practice is the problem. This not only involves reading books, it also involves writing, and getting good with writing requires the in-depth exploration of letters and symbols that handwriting promotes. I do not allow my kids to type an assignment unless I am specifically directed to in the syllabus - and even then all drafts are scrawled (literally - many times it's a test...to willingly wade through generational handwriting that has deteriorated over time to that extent is a true challenge!). That manipulation of letters aids in recognition to a superior degree than the mechanical motion of the virtually identical motion of pressing keys. Words are recognised via the shape of the entire word, but a greater understanding is achieved when you physically have to articulate all letters of a 7-letter word, as opposed to tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.You also don't need to practice ICT's within subjects to the extent that ICT use is actually graded...a destructive and needless distraction to what the real aim should be...

Short videos have become the staple for kids' attention, and that of greater society. We don't read the paper, let alone books, cover to cover anymore because the volume of our reading content is greatly customised and reduced...

So what is Uni's negative contribution to this dilemma? Not much, actually, unless the above theory, which is being backed up with study from, yup, Universities, is tackled in current English teacher training...!

Recently graduated from a masters of teaching, English and Hums specialisations.

They throw theory at you, but the prevailing attitude is to get you using them as tools rather than individual theories being 'best' or 'best practice'. Granted I'm secondary, so I didn't get much if any early childhood education as a component of my course; there might be some of this in primary ed, but due to the more generalist nature of primary education I don't know how they could've fit a whole heap of it into a two year course.