Why this Site Exists

My computer has probably over a hundred things I've written but that will probably not be published by what is laughingly called in the trade, a publisher. Also, I hate the phony rigor associated with getting something published in a "refereed" journal. I see most of the articles (possibly 85%) as people trying to write about something they have never done or never even closely observed but quoting long lists of others who are as naive as they are.

So I started cleaning up some of what I consider more worthy articles and longer pieces (correcting the myriad of spelling and punctuation mistakes and rereading them to make sure they at least made sense to me). I got a website, and put them on it along with some other published articles. All of the pieces express what has to be a minority view, but I think all issues that preempt or discredit principles of effective instruction need to be pulled out from under rocks and put out there where the sun does shine.

The longer works are the Low Performers' Manual and the log of the first formal study I did in education—Comparative Preschool Study: High and Low SES Preschoolers Learning Advanced Cognitive Skills. These are constructive. Most of the other works are constructive only in the sense that they help clarify why education has gone basically nowhere in the past 40 years. Only now are educators starting to "invent" some of the stuff we used back in the 60s.

I'm going to try to put on at least a couple of new pieces a month. For all pieces on the website, I hold the copyright. Feel free to download them, and use them. If you have a special use, or want to publish it, check it out with me.

The prologues frame the "historical context" for the article or tome, and why I think it's important. Although some of the articles critique works you may not have read, I think that I express the oppositions' positions at least fairly enough that you don't have to read these works (unless you have masochistic tendencies).
Your comments are welcome.

Contact Zig at zig@nifdi.org
(541) 485-1947

LINKS TO RELATED SITES

• Biographical Sketch
• NIFDI (National Institute for Direct Instruction)
• University of Oregon
• ADI Association for Direct Instruction
• FUNNIX Reading Programs
  
  

LINKS TO RELATED ARTICLES

• Ed Week: A Direct Challenge—Baltimore
• NIFDI Papers: Achieving a Full-School,
  Full-Immersion Implementation
  of Direct Instruction