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| Evelyn, Esther and Alamazan. A waste of time? |
Recently a respected member of the community came to visit our phonics class for kids who struggle to read letters, let alone words.
One of the students in the class is called Evelyn. Evelyn loves studying with us. She is often early, always enthusiastic, and a pleasure to teach. Evelyn is about 12 years old.
The aforementioned community member pointed her out and said: “You’re wasting your time with this one.”
He went on to explain that we’d be better off to teach the 5-6 year olds so that they could hit the ground running when they enter primary school. Evelyn is just too far behind.
His point does seem to have some truth to it. Looking through Evelyn’s science book shows that she is learning about different species of birds, variations in bird beaks and diets, and so on. Well, I say “learning”, but I really mean “copying from the blackboard”. She has no idea what she is copying down.
Even if we had a magic wand and could instantly teach Evelyn to read, she would still struggle to catch up in all her subjects.
On the flip side, Evelyn is a wonderful human being capable of making tremendous change in this world given the right tools. The ability to read and write is the first tool that she needs to unlock her potential.
What do you think? Are we wasting our time with kids like Evelyn? Are we better off focusing on a much younger demographic?
As an educator and a person who loves Uganda, I have seen first hand the cycle of illiteracy and what it does in a community. There are several problems here. First, is to discount this young girl's potential and her basic right as a human being to "seek" a good life. Even if her literacy level is only small enough to help her with basic functioning like reading signs and filling out paperwork at medical facilities, or perhaps even sharing in the schoolwork that her children will bring home, she will be a better person. Second, another problem is the pedagogy that dominates African schools, one that sits children in front of a blackboard to copy information, one that leans to heavily on memorization. I taught 7th grade in the US, and in my experience memorization does nothing to help a person become an intrinsic learner. This young lady appears to be motivated from within to learn. She knows the value of education. However, studies show that teaching a child to read after the age of 9-10 is very difficult. In these cases, adult education echniques should be used. Putting her in a class with 5-6 year olds, which I have seen in Uganda, does not serve her. To best serve this child and those like her, a special class where age appropriate remediation in reading should be created. After the child learns to read or is fluent in the process of word aquisition, then she should be introduced to content that suits her needs as a non-traditional student. NOTE HERE: I believe, as Paulo Freire did, that reading and writing in the Native Language is vital to stabalizing culture and for this age group is really the only way to go. Unless she speaks English rather well, she should be taught in her first language, and introduced to English as she is reading on the level of a First or Second Grader. Language acquisition totally changes at around the age of puberty. Some say that if a person has not aquired a language by then that it will never be spoken or read fluently. I have seen countless cases that run counter to this notion, and people acquire languages with fluency even as adults. Special techniques in teaching English as a Second Language would be very helpful to her.
ReplyDeleteI guess the question you are asking when you say "wasting our time" is wasting resources? Of course focusing on the little ones will make greater numbers of people literate, and when dealing with limited resources, one has to make tough decisions about how they are used.
My suggestion would be to start a program for teen and adult literacy, possibly at night when they can come from daily work to study. I know as girls get older they have a tendency to drop out because of other cultural issues, so providing a time and place that is conducive to their needs is important. However, this requires resources, and I do not know if you have them. If not, try to get them.
Evelyn deserves a chance if she wants it. So many people in this world have that chance and just don't care. If I could, I would send a motivated child from Uganda to school in place of an unmotivated US child anyday. That may sound harsh, but no matter how good you are as a teacher, if a child does not want to learn, they are not going to learn. She wants to learn. Teach her the best you can, and maybe, she will pass her love of learning on to her children. Illiteracy cycle broken.
Do not give up on her just because she's an older learner. I think one of the most hurtful narratives in modern education is that children must learn these various skills at a certain age & after that it's all 'remedial' and mostly hopeless.
ReplyDeleteI'm a homeschooling parent to two 'late bloomers'. Both my kids learned to read late by North American school standards. One of the reasons I homeschooled was to give them the opportunity to have an individually tailored education which allowed them to learn about the world, as well as developing skills such as logic and critical thinking, while they plugged away at cracking the reading code.
They're 13 & 16 now, and both are AVID readers of all sorts of books and magazines. They spend hours daily reading for pleasure.
This child may need some very targetted lessons in phenomic awareness or perhaps eye tracking exercises etc and specific individual attention. When the brain is ready, things happen very fast. Both my children went from essentially not reading to reading full length, age appropriate fiction within months.
I would not give up on a child, esp as she keeps coming and is motivated. I would consider whether the methods employed to date are useful. If it's more of the same, that may be the problem. Attack the problem from various angles to give her brain a chance to figure this out.
best wishes ~
Thanks for the feedback! Lots of useful info in there.
ReplyDeleteWe are not going to give up on Evelyn. There are few greater pleasures in life than teacher someone who wants to learn.
Err... "teaching". Need some English lessons myself...
ReplyDeleteYorkshire coal miner Joseph Wright learned his letters and numbers at primary school, but couldn't read a newspaper till he was 15. He taught himself to read, developed a fascination with languages and with the many dialects of English. Ended up as Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford, where he was one of J.R.R. Tolkien's teachers. I have books of his on the Old English and Gothic languages and a comparative grammar of Latin and Greek.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wright_(linguist)
Wright is an extreme exception, of course, but there must be a large number of children who get left behind in their youth who can catch up significantly with support and determination, which Evelyn seems to have. I have a cousin who did poorly at school, and hated it, but later got a degree.
The respected visitor may be right - I don't know the circumstances that put Evelyn so far behind in her learning - but if there's even a 1% chance that Evelyn can learn, she should be given that chance. She has a right to try to prove the visitor wrong.
Koro Neil: Great story about Joseph Wright.
ReplyDeleteWe're not giving up on Evelyn. She's too sweet a kid if nothing else.
Wright's background was a tremendous asset when he did his six-volume dictionary of English dialects. People talked to him in the language they used in their own homes and workplaces rather than in the school English appropriate to being interviewed by a note-taking academic.
ReplyDeleteIn one place, a man he had just met commented, "The roads are very dirty at this time of the year." Wright agreed that they were, and added, "But I would have thought that round here you would say, 'T'roads is mucky.'" The man grinned and said, "Ah, well, round here, us do!" After which he spoke only his own dialect to Wright.
s'good story bro
ReplyDeleteI think everyone have their own characteristic, some might learn things slow, some might learn things fast, what is important is, she has the heart to learn and overcome all obstacle, which I feel, she deserve it.
ReplyDelete=)
Never give up on a person when he/she has the passion to learn :D
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