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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

#81

Post by hmwhy »

Maybe I'm joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there.

I'm all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get away with it (please read what he actually did if you haven't — it wasn't a simple case of cheating).

I have personally seen a lot of academic misconducts that went unpunished that makes cheating in exams seem seem mundane. Fake results that academics don't own up to/just blame their students when proven wrong; made-up results so that a thesis would look better; lying about publications to get scholarships, etc. Nobody ever gets punished and some would eventually go on to hold important positions.

Reading the "supportive" comments in this thread is pretty demoralising for me.

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

#83

Post by CryptoPunk »

ricardobeat wrote: post #78
CryptoPunk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate is a man-made resource that is created through investment of capital. It doesn't emerge otherwise. Without the freedom to invest in property, there would be less housing, and higher housing costs.

How exactly would housing costs rise without property investment? I’d expect the opposite, as you see in countries that have rent and ownership controls.

With less investment, you would have less money going into building housing.. Profit-motivated investment is the primary way in which market needs are met. When it's impeded by regulatory restrictions, market needs are met less.

>>I’d expect the opposite, as you see in countries that have rent and ownership controls.

The highest rental rates in the world are in the US city with the most ownership controls to prevents developers and landlords from profiting: San Francisco.

Rent control makes housing less affordable:

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

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

#84

Post by hliyan »

hmwhy wrote: post #81

Maybe I'm joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there. I'm all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get aw…

I agree in principle. But I think there has to be a difference in punishment between unrepentant perpetrators who get caught, and perpetrators who come forward on their own volition. If I remember the original Reader's Digest article, this person was already held to account many years ago -- he lost all his credentials, qualifications and not to mention respect and credibility. Even the original story was published much later. If we continue to pounce on people like this many years after the fact, we're only discouraging others with a guilty conscience to come forward.

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

#85

Post by beckman466 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #83
ricardobeat wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would housing costs rise without property investment? I’d expect the opposite, as you see in countries that have rent and ownership controls.

With less investment, you would have less money going into building housing.. Profit-motivated investment is the primary way in which market needs are met. When it's impeded by regulatory restrictions, market needs are met less. >>I’d expect the opposite, as you see in countries that have rent and ownership controls. The highest rental rates in the world are in the US city with the most ownership controls to prevents…

> The highest rental rates in the world are in the city with the most ownership controls to prevents developers and landlords from profiting: San Francisco.

Correlation is not causation. The reason rents are high in San Francisco is because it's where the 'owners' of a bunch of high-tech Intellectual Property live. Labor aristocrats have to move there to be able to work on that tech. That is what has driven up the rents.

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

#86

Post by cwdegidio »

inglor_cz wrote: post #47
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…

One of my grandfathers was illiterate as well. Not a finance whiz, but not stupid either. He was a rural blacksmith and he was rather good with engines and small appliances, repairing them for paying customers. This is also a good moment to meditate on "right of repair". As recently as approx. 1970, most of the machinery in daily use could be repaired by a skillful, even though illiterate, person. The advent of semic…

It's interesting you mention this. I got a chance to visit the family holler (rural mountain farmstead) when I was a teenager. Everyone back there was still driving old pickups, most of their tools were pretty old as well. You could tell a lot of things were kept just because of that very idea that they could repair them.

I know my grandfather, growing up as poor as he did, NEVER threw anything broken away until he was absolutely convinced that it could not be repaired. I wouldn't be suprised if most of his gardening equipment was from the 60's and 70's.

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

#87

Post by HowTheStoryEnds »

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.

Only true in those instances where rent is significantly cheaper than mortgage + maintenance costs.

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

#88

Post by frogpelt »

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…

Is this it?

https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...

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

#89

Post by kzrdude »

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…

He's not an idiot, he would have gotten much further, and had a better life, if school had helped him to learn to read and write. Some children need extra help/support lessons (and nowadays usually get it).

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

#90

Post by kzrdude »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #45
inglor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this comment takes a very cynical and US centric view of things. I've found this story was well written and pretty inspiring. Just because people are privileged doesn't mean they don't struggle or that their struggles can't teach us things. It's surprising to see this sort of toxicity in hacker news.

You’re surprised someone didn’t find it inspiring? Really? C’mon it’s a story about a guy who committed fraud, screwed up kids education, and then got an applause for it? This is a picture perfect case of white privilege. I’m not at all surprised at the comments like yours on HN. This is a place dominated by white people and they don’t like to be uncomfortable.

Maybe it could be called fraud when he was adult.

But this story starts with a child who can't read and is ashamed to admit it, and it's nothing strange, it is human.

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