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I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

bbc.co.uk

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Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#61

Post by winrid »

beckman466 wrote: post #60
cwdegidio wrote: post #38

My grandfather, born in the back hills of West Virginia, was forced to leave school when he was around 6 years old to chop lumber so his family had enough to survive. After he left WV, he worked a press at a forge and was a landscaper at night an on the weekends. He never has learned how to read, and sadly he is in the early stages of dementia so I think that ship has sailed. But... he was always a whiz with finances…

> I can't imagine going through life like he did, how much I would hav missed. Yeah your granddads story is impressive. I cannot imagine not being able to read and write. > He was the kind of guy that can take a dollar on Monday and give you back $100 on Friday. He owns, I believe at this point, 8 properties including his own home. So he owned other peoples homes? Ugh I hate this system. Why is absentee ownership a t…

Owning a property has risk. By renting you are paying to defer risk.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#62

Post by hellbannedguy »

cwdegidio wrote: post #38

My grandfather, born in the back hills of West Virginia, was forced to leave school when he was around 6 years old to chop lumber so his family had enough to survive. After he left WV, he worked a press at a forge and was a landscaper at night an on the weekends. He never has learned how to read, and sadly he is in the early stages of dementia so I think that ship has sailed. But... he was always a whiz with finances…

The cleverest, wealthy guys, I know, barely finished high school.

I'm talking self made guys, and not guys from wealthy sympathetic families whom fund their kids until something turns a profit. Jonny at Dentek--you don't count, but daddy was a wiz.

If I had a child, buying real-estate, and learning the stock market, would be right up there with the three R's.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#63

Post by beckman466 »

winrid wrote: post #61
beckman466 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't imagine going through life like he did, how much I would hav missed. Yeah your granddads story is impressive. I cannot imagine not being able to read and write. > He was the kind of guy that can take a dollar on Monday and give you back $100 on Friday. He owns, I believe at this point, 8 properties including his own home. So he owned other peoples homes? Ugh I hate this system. Why is absentee ownership a t…

Owning a property has risk. By renting you are paying to defer risk.

Landlording is a weapon the property-owning classes use to get away with not doing anything. [1] It’s the same with the other type of property: intellectual property. Big companies buy patents and trade secrets to monopolize knowledge to starve the commons, imposing their non-modular single-use black-box products on the working class. Society would be so much more effective and beautiful if knowledge was free and land registries were 1000% more transparent (they should be completely open).

Is it really a democracy when only a small group of people have a bird's eye view of the systems and programs that run society? Does Bezos work 2,687,125 harder than warehouse workers? Fuck no, yet: “Bezos’ net worth is 2,687,125 times the median US household income and equivalent to 0.85% of US GDP“. Those numbers aren't even recent by the way, they're from 2018.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWSVG9nsRa4

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#64

Post by philliphaydon »

nindalf wrote: post #31
denton-scratch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound like he was dyslexic ("for me it was like opening a Chinese newspaper "). But the speed at which he eventually acquired reading and writing doesn't seem consistent with dyslexia; I figure there was some other problem interfering with hiis literacy.

He says it took him 7 years to feel literate. Does that seem quick to you?

This was after he finished his job. I assume he was spending a lot of time learning during those 7 years. Good on him tho.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#65

Post by novalis78 »

In 2008 when my kids went to VPK in Florida I was surprised to find out why they memorized words instead of learning how to read. The lady I spoke about this was a veteran teacher of 25 years. She said it was all BS and that a decade or two earlier they had used a book called ‘Learn how to read in 100 lessons’. With that systems, she said, they never had anyone fail. Every child that passed through learnt reading. She said it was like a miracle. But, at some point, the higher ups fell into the trap of having to introduce new regiments and systems because of ever changing fashions. They were forced to introduce silly approaches, changing them every few years, leading to kids suddenly unable to read. Whenever she met parents she would tell them about this book and everyone had success with it and was as shocked as I was how it worked and how it was missing from the school curriculum. I ended up teaching all of my children how to read with it. It’s one of the most precious experiences. They all learnt to read at a very early age. There are many stories like this about writing and early math. Many years later, I read the episode In Feynman’s book ‘Surely you must be joking’ on his encounter with school text books and his disappointment - to say it lightly. One great experiment I can highly recommend is collecting textbooks from the 20th century and compare the decades and (basic) skills taught.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#67

Post by amelius »

going_ham wrote: post #18
hogFeast wrote: post #14

> If he had called on me I was going to get out of my chair and take two steps, grab my chest, drop to the floor and hope they called 911. Used this tactic many times myself. You pull it once, they call 911. You pull it twice, they usually do it again. You pull it three times...an awkward silence fills the room...after the sixth time, my boss just carried on with the meeting, and I stopped getting invited. I think th…

Can you elaborate how you fake the heart attack when you are in different situations? Your idea seems really interesting as a life hack. There must be specific ways to clutch your heart?

Put a self-inflating armband around your upper arm (like those in blood-pressure meters), let it inflate without anyone noticing, and the pulse in that arm will disappear.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#68

Post by namenotrequired »

daniel-s wrote: post #66

Can someone who has read the whole thing spoil it and tell me how someone illiterate wrote a big, long article for the BBC?

He did learn to read and write eventually.

But going by the last line, this article was written by a certain Sarah McDermott and not by John Corcoran

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#69

Post by [deleted] »

novalis78 wrote: post #65

In 2008 when my kids went to VPK in Florida I was surprised to find out why they memorized words instead of learning how to read. The lady I spoke about this was a veteran teacher of 25 years. She said it was all BS and that a decade or two earlier they had used a book called ‘Learn how to read in 100 lessons’. With that systems, she said, they never had anyone fail. Every child that passed through learnt reading. Sh…

[deleted]

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#70

Post by alexashka »

opheliate wrote: post #29
alexashka wrote: post #23

Rather than learning how to read, it'd do everyone a whole lot more good to admit that some people are not cut out for school and to send them off to work when they're teenagers. This poor guy has felt bad his entire life when he could've been an excellent coal miner instead. Every place I've worked is filled with people like this guy to one extent or another - fearful parents pushing their kids to go to school and p…

My (much) older brother has severe dyslexia. He's bright, and now owns his own business, but in his school, they'd already reached the capacity for SEN provision, and he was refused a diagnosis. He could have massively improved his literacy if help was just available, but at that time, it simply wasn't. Branding anyone who doesn't immediately take to school an "idiot" is incredibly myopic.

Replace the word idiot with 'fool' and see if your point still applies.

In other words, the problem is not stupid people (or people with learning disabilities, which I happen to have btw), who undoubtedly exist. The problem is foolish people who think they can cheat their way through life.

My contention is that we're sinking under the weight of foolish people cheating their way into positions they have no business being in.

Foolish as in lacking wisdom. Not foolish as in lacking ability to do calculus. We have plenty of calculus, we severely lack wisdom :)

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