May 08, 2008 10:59 am
—
Thanks, friends, for your
reactions to my recent column
on learning language.
Phone calls, emails, letters
— that was the biggest response
that I’ve ever had to
one column. And, bless you,
all of it was positive. I guess
that means that Ebonics fans
don’t read the Crier. Or
can’t.
Many responses were
from people about my age.
They affectionately reminisced
about being taught
language by the “Margaret
Jones Method,” which had
them wrestling with texts
that were slightly beyond
them and sweating bullets
as they recited memorized
poems in front of the class.
Without exception, these
folks spoke of their long-ago
teachers with gratitude.
Other responses came
from retired English teachers.
These said that they’d
carried on that effective way
of teaching as long as they
could. Until, that is, they
were overwhelmed with cries
of “That’s too hard!“
The cries had come from
the students (they always
have), but suddenly from
parents and, shame on them,
from school administrators.
These last had knuckled under
to parental complaints or
had fallen victim to the new
watchwords: “Teach each to
their (sic) capacity,” and
“Self-esteem leads to learning.”
Oh, my. Where to start?
Don’t those pacing the educational
quarterdecks know
that, EVERYWHERE ELSE
IN LIFE, raising the bar is a
way to improve performance?
And don’t they understand
that their second slogan is
exactly backward?
Self-esteem is a byproduct
of accomplishment. And accomplishment
results from
work that can be challenging
and (dare I say it?) even
painful.
(I was cheered to hear
from a friend and veteran
teacher, Hilda Wilcox of Cooperstown,
that she’s recently
gone back to requiring some
memorization from her
SUCO composition and literature
students. Hurray for
you, Hilda! You go, girl!)
Other responders raised a
dimension of language-teaching
that I failed to mention:
the importance of being read
to. Oldsters recalled with
pleasure how their one-room
schoolteachers, often on overcast
winter afternoons when
the classroom’s natural light
was poor, would draw them
close around the stove and
read to them from “Treasure
Island” or “A Tale of Two Cities.”
What a great way to
teach how sounds, rhythms,
emphasis, and intonation all
make for enjoying good writing,
and for producing it,
too.
I also heard from a lot of
English teachers still in the
trenches, who grieved about
addressing inert bodies that
intend to stay just that way.
(“I feel like a battery trying
to jump-start two-dozen
cars,” said one.)
Many of those inert youngsters,
I’d guess, had begun
school without essential
work by their first teachers:
their parents. Here’s part of
an email from one of my former
students, now a grandpa
(yikes!) down near Philadelphia:
“My niece is a teacher in a
Chester City charter school.
She speaks of children coming
to kindergarten, who do
not even know how a book is
held, or that the pages move
left to right, let alone that a
line is read left to right.
“The other thing that surprised
her was the limited
vocabulary of the children.
They will use one word and
give it multiple meanings.
Amazingly, many of them do
respond; but for some, the
damage is such they will
never catch up.” (Maybe
that’s it. Maybe it’s the frustration
of a cramped vocabulary
that makes them wear
out that all-purpose obscenity.
It’s to fill in the blanks.)
But, imagine: Kids who
don’t know a book’s front
from its back, or how to open
one.
Kids who use “horsy” to
denote any animal with four
legs; who use “birdie” for
anything with wings, from a
baby chick to an ostrich.
These are kids who were
starved of language, and at
the age when they could have
been drinking it in like mother’s
milk.
Once I heard a well-known
pediatrician questioned by a
young mother; she had her
18-month-old in her lap.
“When,” she asked, “should I
begin reading to my baby?”
The doctor smiled gently. “It
should have been back
around your seventh month.
He was hearing sounds back
then, and he could have begun
internalizing rhythms.”
The very best of your responses,
friends, came from
a man who sometimes swims
the same time I do. He’s
about 80, I’d guess; but,
though we often wave encouragement
to one another
across the lanes, I don’t know
his name.
Last week I was out of the
pool and taking a shower,
and so was he. The shower
room was otherwise empty,
and silent except for the rush
of water and the harrumphing
and snorting that older
men seem to do under running
water. But suddenly his
harrumphing stopped, and
through the steamy air came
a strong baritone.
“I read that column about
memorizing. Listen to this:
“‘Life is real! Life is earnest!/
And the grave is not its
goal./ Dust thou art, to dust
returnest/ was not written of
the soul.’” It was a beautiful
recitation, not sing-song, but
with careful emphasis on
“real,” “earnest,” “not,” “art,”
“returnest,” “not,” and
“soul.”
“I got that whole poem
down 65 years ago,” he said,
“in Miss Daly’s class. It’s always
stuck with me, but I
can’t remember the title.”
Well, I’d learned the poem
about the same time, under
Sister Alowine’s mournful
glare. “It’s Longfellow,” I
said. “‘A Psalm of Life.’”
“That’s it!” he said, slapping
a wet foot on the tile;
and he began to recite again,
from the top, with me joining
in: “Tell me not in mournful
numbers/ Life is but a weary
dream./ For the soul is dead
that slumbers,/ And things
are not as they seem.” On we
recited in unison, till we got
to the last verse, which neither
of us could remember.
“Never mind,” he said.
“It’ll come back to one of us.”
And it did. Standing at my
locker, I shouted back toward
the shower room, “Let us,
then, be up and doing ...” His
voice boomed back, joining
mine. “With a heart for any
fate,/ Still achieving, still
pursuing,/ Learn to labor and
to wait.”
Somewhere, I hope, prim
Miss Daly, Margaret Jones,
and even gloomy Sister Alowine
smiled in approval, delicately
overlooking that it
was two naked old dodderers
who were reciting. Comrades-
in-arms, that trio had
worked hard for their students;
they’d worked them
pretty hard, too. And the
work had stuck.
Learn about Jim Atwell’s
book, “From Fly Creek — Celebrating
Life in Leatherstocking
Country” at www.JimAtwell.
com.
Longfellow, across the years
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.