Re: the complete works
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Wed, 18 Aug 1999 17:15:39 -0400
On Wed, Aug 18, 1999 at 07:52:05AM +0100, Scottie Bowman wrote:
> Still. There must be some on the list who've had the advantage
> of the more enlightened teaching. If they were to identify
> themselves we could all then judge the method by the quality
> of their prose. Or is it aimed more at speed of consumption
> than clarity of expression?
I never heard the the "Whole" approach until it was mentioned here. I
taught myself to read at an obscenely early age by going through the NYC
tabloids (from which some of the crimes are still fresh in my head) and
any other printed matter I found around the house. I think I was two or
three; I handle words well, but I'm numerically illiterate. When I got
to school and they did reading lessons, I found it painful to experience
and, like Will, read books secretly.
I don't know how enlightened my teachers were (it was Catholic school),
but I learned to write by reading. Often the material was way over my
head, but I learned about technique in a strange spongelike way. (For
instance, at age 9, I saw, in Dickens, I think, a sentence containing
the words "that that"; I thought it was a typo, so I asked the
librarian to show me where I could find out the rules for constructing a
sentence like that one. She looked at me as if I were on LSD. It took
a lot of osmosis to learn the logic, and I didn't learn it in school; I
learned it in libraries and other places where I could hide with a book.
And I confess that the entry in Fowler's Modern English Usage about the
use of "that" and "which" is one of my favorite non-fictional passages,
as exquisite as a perfect meal.)
They also had these bizarre tests called "SRAs" (Science Research
Associates?) that were supposed to work you, through a progressive color
scheme, to higher levels of comprehension and performance. I finished
the whole box in about a month. It was supposed to last a year, I
think.
My point is not that I'm so smart (I'm not) -- but that we actually had
"See Spot run" books, and those and other techniques convinced me early
on that the teachers didn't know what to do to teach us about language.
It was sink or swim on my own, as far as I was concerned, and I did what
I could.
Oh, yes, I also recall the phrase "phonics" spoken by the teachers when
I was very young, as if it were an approaching tsunami. I still don't
know if the tsunami touched land near us, or swung off to sea.
Scottie, I don't know if all this answers your question or gives you a
chance to categorize me in the learning tree, but that's how I got to
where I am.
--tim