I know I'm supposed to jump on the politically correct band wagon and rail about the inherent racism of Dick and Jane. But had it been Ricardo and Clytemnestra, I still would have been interested. It just so happened it was 1951 and the little readers in those days were geared to the majority population. The important thing is I wanted to learn to read and when letters and sounds began to have meaning, there was no turning back. Once you can read, you're marked for life. You can't help but read.. from the Stop sign to the posted speed limit, to the menu at Subway, your eyes and brain work in concert to make sense of the world. You begin reading cereal boxes at breakfast, street signs, food labels everything and anything. Its evolution, the survival of the smartest. If you can read, you do read. You can't help it. Of course there are somethings not worth reading or that are difficult to read. To this day, long pages of computer data defy my reading addiction. This is what I meant when I said I read everything I get my hands on. I need the concrete feel of a book in my hands. I'm one of those 'throw backs' who think the Kindle is an electronic farce. People think that having one will make them read.. not likely. If you aren't a reader, a compulsive, down and out addicted, serial reader, a kindel is a waste of time. Better to buy a book on tape or CD than a kindel.
Reading is an unusual human acitivity. When you can read the words, you can't not read. The last sentence contains a double negative but really expresses the truth in the most succinct way. You can't not read. Certainly you can be distracted and not look at the word(s) but then you haven't truly looked at whatever was in front of you. Words thus have an existence of their own. They seem to be a mirror from which you receive an image, an image that is in your mind. I know very little about the neural firings. It occurred to me that the word Subway was not only on the sign but in my head and the best way I could describe it was to say it was as if I were looking into a mirror and the word Subway in my mind was a reflection. This will require some further consideration. About the concept that once you can read you read, you can't not read. Of course the applies specifically to one's own mother tongue though reading in another language becomes as automatic with time. I can read some modern Greek but have to sound it out, syllable by syllable before I can pronounce the word. The same is true of Spanish and since Spanish shares almost the same alphabet, decoding it requires less effort than Greek though I understand spoken Greek far better than spoken Spanish and speak ( in a rustic and very simple way) Greek, I do not speak Spanish with any degree of polish. The same is not true of French. I speak French better than I speak Spanish and can read it but often fumble over words. This area of langauge acquistion is beyond my comprehension.
Here's the pith. I was a certificated Reading Specialist.. I was supposed to know how to teach people who could not read to read. But I did not know how to do that other than to read to them and have them read with me. Having never taught first grade I am at a loss as to the progression of sound-symbol recognition to the actual decoding. I know that the shapes of letters and words are eventually assigned to the sounds we make. Much like crawling, walking and running, reading progresses through the intial hesitant activities to the more difficult ones. For anyone who has worked with a person who is sounding out words, the process is tedious and tiresome. I suppose this is the see-say method and for most students it works. . But even though I am certified as a Reading Specialist I can't think of a way to teach someone with a severe learning disability to read. I've known many students with brilliant minds, who slipped through school and graduated without being able to read. Something else must be working. I keep harping on the physical aspect of reading or pretending to read. It takes a special intelligence to fake it, to go to school for over a dozen years and never catch on to reading. Some kids who do this are amazingly bright, they have to be. They have a store of knowledge that amazes me. Others are just passed along. Sad to say that but it's true. Of this first group of non-readers I acknowledge they had the capacity, the intelligence to learn. why didn't they? Is there a genetic link ? Of the latter class I hang my head an confess that there is a certain level of intelligence that is often missing, though many people with limited intelligence can and do learn to read even if it is at the most functional level.
So dear readers if you have progressed this far, you too are probably a serial reader. It's not a crime but it does offer a trip to anywhere at any time. The one area I do have some expertise in as regards reading is fluency and rate. I refer the reader back to the tedious and tiresome work of listening to a learning read sound out each letter. It takes patience. God bless elementary school teachers who not only teach kids to read but work with several diferent reading levels in the same class. Memory fails me when I attempt to remember how I learned to read. I can't remember there being different reading groups at any time in my primary years. It seems that everyone was at the same level in the same book. Memory is no ally. I wish I could speak with my first grade teacher. If she is still living I will seek her out at the next family reunion which is held in the town where I began elementary school. Even in later years I don't recall 'reading' groups. At one point in my elementary schooling I was in the 'low' class whatever that means. I had moved to Baltimore from Canonsburg, PA in the fifth grade and the school placed me in a class with discipline problems. I knew the kids were 'bad' but never associated the idea that this was the 'slow' group. Grouping inthose days consisted of entire classes. I don't think we had three reading groups in my fifth grade class. Ironically the Baltimore City Schools had suggested I be put back a grade. The school system felt that my education in PA had been inferior to the Baltimore City Schools. It hadn't been. In fact the opposite was true. The PA schools had done a much better job of teaching me. For me fifth grade was a nightmare, terrible discipline problems, an older burned out teacher, a new school, a city instead of a little town. All of these conspired to make school a horrible place to be but I never adopted that opinion. I still loved school. What I did learn that year was to teach myself. I always had a book at my desk, most often a biography from the school library. Those little biographies were a life line for me. I read everyone one the school library had. It was a harrowing experience moving to Baltimore from First Ward, the school my father had attended.
No comments:
Post a Comment