Words and More Words

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Last Sunday I was sitting in Relief Society (the woman’s organization of the Latter-Day Saint Church) when I noticed something quite profound. The discussion leader began her presentation by saying that she had five quotes from the lesson materials she’d like to have volunteers read. Of the approximately 30 women in the room, at least a dozen raised their hands to offer assistance. I thought about how remarkable that was—a whole roomful of adult women, every one of whom who could read.

Truth is, in my life, other than a small number of new immigrants from countries with fewer opportunities, I have only personally known one adult in my circle of friends who could not read. He was in his mid-thirties, father of three children, and owner of a very successful carpet cleaning company. He was also a leader in our local church community. Most of the folks in our neighborhood had no idea he was functionally illiterate. I, too, would have been unaware of that deficiency had not his wife once confided in me that she handled all the paperwork for the business and their home necessities. In that arena, he was totally dependent on her.

They had been married 8 or 10 years, and over the years he had learned not only to accommodate his lack of literacy skill, he’d also successfully managed to hide it from virtually everyone he knew—even his young children. But as they grew and started school, he worried that his inability to read would interfere with his capacity to help them value education. He was determined not to let that happen. A caring, dedicated dad, his primary goal became to be comfortable enough with books to read aloud bedtime stories to his children. His wife asked me to help her find an adult literacy class for him. There were/are lots of them available (mostly free), and last I heard (some years ago), he was thrilled to be making progress.

I have never gotten over the exhilaration I felt as a child when I learned to read by myself. It was as if someone opened a door to another universe and invited me in. Because I went to a different school every year or so, I don’t remember many of my elementary school teachers. But I do remember Miss Maxfield—fifth grade—in Dallas, Texas. She read to our class for 20 minutes every day. Sometimes we were so caught up in the stories, the whole class begged her to keep reading. Even the rowdiest of boys shut up and listened to Old Yeller and Where The Red Fern Grows. This week at the dinner table, my brother mentioned how much both those two novels had impacted him when he was young. I remember crying through the endings of both of them. So did the rest of the members of my class. Every single one. It was the first time I realized that I could begin to understand the experience of another human being though words—a life-changing idea for me.

Once I began to read, I couldn’t stop. (I’m guessing you’re in the same boat, as you are reading this at the moment!) Like the women in my church group on Sunday, a high percentage of you probably learned to read in public schools. Even though I was a teacher, I, too, depended on the folks working at my local elementary school to help my kids learn to love to read. And read, they did.

When Son #1 took Advanced Placement Literature, I was a bit leery. He was a great student, but if it didn’t involve jumping, or running, usually with a ball of some kind, he really didn’t seem able to commit. Since I knew the AP teacher at his high school, I also knew that the class required 2500 pages of reading every QUARTER. Not once that whole year did I ever see Son #1 with a book in hand. “You’re going to fail the AP test at this rate,” I told him. He just laughed and said, “Mom. I read all those pages every night after I go to bed.” Bless that teacher and all those before who taught him to love reading.

I find it sad and somewhat ironic that media today is filled with parental complaints about what their children are learning in school. (After all, where did most of those content providers learn to read?) And while I do understand that there are a few outliers who have highjacked materials supported by the general populace, for the vast majority of us—the women in my church group last week, me, my husband, two and soon three generations of my family, and the folks in my community–learning to read happened at school, public school which everyone has opportunity to attend, regardless of their circumstances or abilities. It is the very essence of a democratic society. It is also a gift that should never be taken lightly.