‘You can't polish a turd’: why is one education department still pushing balanced literacy?

Alison Clarke

By Alison Clarke
Community contribution / March 9, 2022

It's 2022, and every child starting school in Victoria has just been given a 'Prep bag' including a literacy and numeracy brochure advising parents to help children work out difficult words by saying, “Look at the picture. What word makes sense?”

This bad advice dates back to the 1960s Whole Language nonsense that literacy is ‘caught not taught’ through exposure to ...

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