One Woman's Odyssey to Opportunity

Well, it took me a while, but I have finished Retarding America. Wow, it was a lot to digest and I am not saying I got it all. But as I was reading it I found myself making comments. I'd like to share them.

Page 30--"What brings about the delinquency is not the academic failure per se, but the sustained frustration which results from continued failure to achieve selected academic goals."

This also lets us know we have no hope for future opportunity. I begged God for opportunity; it is almost like a drug for me. I felt so cheated and lost as a child. I don't want my adult years to be wasted.

Dr. Mark Williams, an educator at Emory Medical School, told me that a psychiatrist told him that in her experience, those who were functionally illiterate had more shame than victims of incest. The psychiatrist came to that conclusion based on how it [the functional illiteracy] was hidden.

The fact is that those disabled readers were less likely to tell any other person. Incest survivors do tend to share their horrible situation. Carl [her husband] was the safest person on the face of the earth for me. Yet, I did not tell even him until I had begun to see an improvement in my reading after going into the literacy program in Oklahoma City.

When I have the opportunity to talk to people about children who are beginning to get into trouble at school, I suggest they find out how well that student is reading. My theory is that when we are succeeding with our basic skills in school, we will cooperate with the teachers. If the young person is failing, they will do what all of us tend to do with failure; we run from it.

Page 49-- "When a disorder affects so many people, one calls it an epidemic. An epidemic is always caused by external forces, not by defects in the individual."

A huge thank you for those words. You see if you live with the shame of being a poor reader or non-reader, you assume it is your fault. Many of us feel forced to wear the cloak of "stupid" every day. It is really too much to carry while you are trying to live life and do daily tasks.

It is wonderful to read and see that someone important enough to be doing research understands. It is not uncommon that we think we are aliens on this planet.

Page 50-- "The difference between a dyslexic and a functional illiterate is purely social."

Isn't it interesting that when my middle child, Eric, was in the third grade he was labeled "dyslexic"? We were very middle class and had the funds to put him and the other two children into private school for better training. Thank God. Otherwise, my wonderful Eric might have ended up with a very different life.

When I walked into a literacy program I would have been considered functionally illiterate. Now when I am communicating with someone outside of the literacy field, I would prefer to be called dyslexic rather than functionally illiterate. Isn't that interesting? I kept my reading problem to myself until after I was being tutored and getting help.

Page 59-- "Simply put, the student who is not taught to read is inevitably destined for programmed retardation." "Students who cannot decode, or do so poorly, have depressed I.Q. scores." "As Mona McNee states in her manual for teaching children to read, 'the experts will in time be proved doubly wrong, not that low I.Q stops a child learning, but that not learning to read prevents the normal development of I.Q!'"

At some point in the past ten years it occurred to me that my 107 and 117 I.Q. score in high school could not be accurate since I was reading at the fifth grade level. If I can't read and understand the question, I can't answer it. I wanted to go back and scream at them and defend myself and plead with educators to stop this pain. Don't stop the problem just for me; it's a bit late for that. But God help us, stop doing this to other generations.

Page 72-- "Academic child abuse."

It is so true, and it rips at my heart.

Editor's Note: Pages 87 and 89 quotations are erroneous beliefs that have driven reading instruction.

Page 87-- "Students learn to read best the same way they learn to speak."

That question on the research is especially interesting to me because I have been told by my mother that I did not speak until I was four. Yet today I do a great deal of public speaking using the language correctly most of the time. I seldom have problems communicating orally. The paragraph explaining this was fascinating.

Page 89-- "Students who are taught phonics tend to be slow readers."

Now that I have been taught phonics (through the literacy program) I am a much faster reader than before. Also my reading is smoother which means my comprehension is greatly improved.

Page 113-- "Recommendations"

I know this research was focused on incarcerated juveniles. However, I wonder if gathering a group of adult literacy students for a round table discussion would add a level of understanding. If it could be video taped, I suspect powerful emotions could be captured. If properly lead, a lifetime of pain and struggle would come up and out. There would be stories of limitations faced and in some cases overcome.

I don't know if it would help educators to see the long term effects. Maybe someone like Oprah could use her studio and staff to do this kind of project/show. It could be enlightening for many.

One of the challenges Whole Language created for me was the way I confused words that have similar overall shapes. For example, the words "accident" and "ancient" both look like the same word at first glance.

If you can see a benefit by my speaking about my reading problem, please ask me. I would gladly share. I'll be able to include some of the powerful word pictures from this book. I am so grateful for the chance to read this research. I found myself crying several times.

Editor's Note:
Following are notes from a speech Toni gave on the occasion of her receipt of the Georgia Occupation Award of Leadership

Because I am privileged to have been born in the United States of America, I have not been trapped in a life of servitude and drudgery. I graduated from high school reading at about the 5th grade level. The word "dyslexia" wasn't talked about and may not have been understood in the 60's.

I could read well enough to:

But failure is not the worst thing that can happen to us.
      I consider the lack of opportunity more devastating.
           The word "opportunity" is one of my favorite words.

In the late 1980s, I found out there was help for adults like me who did not seem academically talented. I went to a Literacy program and was taught Phonics for the first time in my life. It opened doors to new adventures, including a cross country event (R4R) to draw mass media attention to the solvable problem of illiteracy.

Low literacy levels leave psychological and emotional scars deep inside long after the repairs are complete. In spite of that, today I am half way through an Associates degree in business management here at Griffin Technical College.

In the first class I took with Mr. Walden, he told the students we could earn an "A". His confidence in us planted the possibility in my thinking.

Mr. Walden is a shining example of what Technical Education is... He teaches to all three learning styles (which include our hearing, seeing, and hands-on doing). He engages the students in such a way that knowledge seeps past learning into application.

The education I am getting at Griffin Technical College can't be measured by any traditional evaluation tools. You see, I can now hope to fulfill more of the dreams I had on the back burners for so long.

I am a risk taker. Mark Twain said, "Courage is restraint of fear and mastery of fear, not the absence of fear." Every written test I take requires that I face fear and "do it anyway".

If life puts a wall in front of me, I may retreat, but only long enough to re-think, look, mull, then choose how I will deal with this stumbling block.

Because I will not allow fear to stop me when I have a desire to live a life of purpose larger than self. If it is important to do so I will move around that wall, under it, or over it--- I am tenacious, and I will find a way to go forward.

OK, so my brain does not function at lightning speed on every academic challenge, but when faced with an occasional crisis (including a crazed gunman threatening customers in a retail store), my brain was smooth and seamless.

My experience at Griffin Technical College has revealed that the staff and instructor care enough about students' success that we can now turn the flame up on the front burners!

Our hopes and dreams can be turned into realistic goals.

The law of the harvest teaches:

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