Response to 'Literacy Primer', p. 1-48

"functionally illiterate" persons is as follows: They are able to read a recipe. follow a map, and work the keys of a McDonald's cash register... It is no wonder that such individuals believe themselves to be inferior to those who can read, write, and do simple mathematics in a seemingly effortless manner... the term 'illiteracy' is commonly associated with poverty and ignorance, for people who are supposedly of below average intelligence... we need to emphasize that these individuals are not somehow less intelligent or less worthy as human beings than those who are able to read and write."- Blake and Blake p.6- 11


Today was my first day back for the start of my third school year, and what I had experienced with my first semester of teaching had been solidified through the bickering of my colleagues. Some of my colleagues have had the privilege of only teaching honors students since they first started teaching and have no idea what it is like to teach low level students. But their main complaint was when they receive their new batch of honor students that these students don't know anything, and that their previous teacher should have taught them... but what do these teachers end up teaching if the previous teacher before them is supposed to only teach them skills? What happened to their responsibility?


When I had first started teaching, I had a ninth grade class that was comprised of students that were deemed "functionally illiterate" and were treated that way when starting the new school year. The curriculum that was given to me exemplified that these students were not worthy of learning meaningful information, instead the curriculum that was given was so oversimplified, that the students in other classes with the same curriculum knew that the teachers thought less of them as actual students.

The common excuse that I have heard throughout today was "They should have learned this by now" and since they haven't no one wants to take responsibility to teach what they should know.

Just because these student should have been taught certain things by a certain point in their lives, doesn't mean that they have been, and I realized today, because certain people excuse away what they don't know and do not take action, these students stay functionally illiterate. It dawned on me that these students had been left behind, and they learned how to cope and go through the motions to barely get by in school.

If their teachers believe that their student's previous teacher should have taught them, then nothing gets taught to these students, and most student just give up. The student's are in a frustrating situation, they do not have the skills but then aren't helped in achieving, and are then punished by failing grades.