Reading Thread 1/2/22 Edition!

Howdy Readers! Your ol' pal Weasel here, attempting to fill the bigly shoes of OregonMuse, who usually occupies this space with blogging excellence, and who is off on a secret mission. Yep, mighty big shoes, if I indeedy-doo say so myself. Like these shoes, or these shoes, or even these shoes. I don't much care if you're wearing pants, but for Heaven's sake, please wear shoes. 'Kay?

So! Reading is pretty wacky, huh? Some might even say Reading is Fundamental. Just for funsies, I did the very minimum amount of research required to learn the world literacy rate is about 86%, and about 79% in the U.S. The numbers are all over the place depending on the source, but these seem to be in the generally accepted ballpark. Focusing on the U.S. with approximately 210 million adults, that's almost 44 million people who cannot read or write. Again, these are very rough numbers, but can that be right? 44 million? It's sort of hard for me to believe, but sketchy sources and questionable math do not lie.

Think about how reading influences your daily lives. Try and look at a word without reading it. You can't. It's a learned skill that has become reflexive. Think not about simply reading for pleasure, but how you would get along during the day if you couldn't read. The answer may be different for someone living in a modern society compared to a lonely goat-herder living in a mud and grass hut, but I think you would agree the rate of illiteracy in the United States is disgraceful. I recall working many years ago in a restaurant as a bookkeeper, and wondered for a time why some of the kitchen staff drew little pictures and made scribbles on their timecards. It was because they could not read their printed names.

So who is at fault? The student? The teacher? The society as a whole? I suspect it's a little bit of all of the above. It's shameful, and in my view we have failed by allowing 44 million people to fail, spectacularly.

Do you remember learning to read? I vaguely do. Phonics have been around since the really, really olden days, and like all human endeavors, the best practices for teaching reading have become the subject of great debate and "reading wars" as early as the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of the "whole-word" approach. A quick article on the methods can be found here.

However you managed to achieve literacy, be very thankful for the gift.

Beginner Books
WeaselWoman is a teacher of little chirrun' and sometimes I will see among her school stuff some of the books I recall reading when I was a tot. Here are three; anyone remember them?

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Are You My Mother?

Stick Man

Nice to see these still being used and enjoyed today. Did you have a particular favorite when learning to read? How about series like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew later as a young adult? Sadly, I was almost a little surprised to see these wholesome classics still in print, having apparently survived the onslaught of 'progressive' ideology.

Last book I read? Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

I think I liked The Martian more better.

What is in your pile of books to read?

That's it for this week. Have you been to the library?

posted by Weasel at 09:00 AM

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