Don't give up

 

                   I've changed my face, I've changed my name
                   but no one wants you when you lose.
                                                                     - Peter Gabriel, So

"How will you know when you're done?" That's a question I often ask my learners. Sometimes they have an answer. Sometimes they don't.

This has been another year of young moms. When I think back, different moms stick out for different reasons. One sticks out because of what she helped me learn about myself (although I haven't yet figured how to put it into words).

This was a smart, successful young woman who, upon becoming a mom, lost most of her confidence and self-esteem. I recognized the patterns, the signals, from back in the day when I was working with a family resource centre. Don't get me wrong: she loved her little girl like life itself. But the trajectory of her life had collapsed, and she was long done believing she could get it back on track.

Some of what we talked about was that: about how you can't go back, but you can build something new and good. Some of what we talked about was math or where commas go and why. I worked really hard at scaffolding, at staying hard inside her instructional level, at listening to her fears without confirming or discounting them. I leaned heavily, as I always do, on my best friend Cheryl's understanding of Choice Theory and adult learning and being a mom. I planned, and made better plans, and brought my A game to almost every class. She worked hard, too. Of course. But that was outside my control. I'm talking here about my own work and worry.

When it came time for her to challenge the GED, I was nothing but confident and clear-eyed. (I am an accomplished liar.) There was no doubt at all that she would do well, I told her. At worst, she would flub the essay and we'd fix that with a quick June re-write. For her part, she bought me a very nice card, wrote a "thank you" inside, and disappeared, pale-faced, to write the test.

I brought the card home to stick in my inspiration file, but I didn't.

I don't know about how it is where you live, but in New Brunswick we wait 4 to 6 weeks for GED results. I think they fly them in from Neptune. Four weeks of waiting and worrying and not thinking, I am not thinking about....

And I dunno. It was just a card. It wasn't... enough. It didn't seem like we were done.

Then, at last, the marks came. By chance, I was notified a day before she got her envelope, so I knew she passed everything before she told me. Congratulations, her note from the Minister would say. She'd be so happy.

Now that was something worth keeping - the pdf file of her marks! That I printed off and put right up on my fridge. At work, I waited for her phone call.

And while I was waiting, I thought, now what?

Okay, you've got your GED. But it's not like it comes with a cash award. How was she supposed to go on? If she got brave enough to try college or university, how could she afford it? Would she be able to get a job now? How would she manage childcare? (Who was going to - we'll just whisper this - look out for her self-esteem now that she wasn't my learner anymore?) 

I took my worry out on Cheryl when we were supposed to be getting ready for Bookwagon - waving my arms and ranting about our lack of an effective, local women's support movement and just generally being in the way as she packed books. Not two weeks ago there were all these women saying we needed to elect women because they were going to somehow support women and now where are those influential and affluent women to stick up for this young mom's who's still trapped without access to adequate daycare or support without going on welfare and then a bunch of women who are caseworkers are just going to tell her what to do while the rest of us say she's no good because, look, she's on welfare but how's she supposed to get a job or an education if she's got to raise her little girl and if she tries to get a student loan she'll be in debt the rest of her life and when she puts her daughter first it's like we say she has to put her daughter last and it just makes me so angry, so angry! (Cheryl, being a trained therapist remained completely calm and said things like, "So, what are you going to do about that?" and "Have you packed the picture books yet?" and "Are you coming with me or what?")

Then, the next day, my learner showed up with her little girl. She wanted to show off her certificate. She wanted to say "Thank you" and stuff. She wanted me to know it was a big deal and it all worked out. "So," I timidly asked (because I couldn't think of any way of not asking), "what's next for you?"

It was too in the year late for getting into college, she reasoned, "so I'll probably get a job - which I can do with this" (she waved the GED). She reached down for her daughter's hand and said, "We're going places."

I don't know how to write this, really. Don't know how to explain her tone. But it was convincing, and brimming with confidence. She knew she was going places! She is going places! It is going to be okay! And my job's done.

That's what I felt. A whole bunch of weight came up off my shoulders, and I knew we were done.

"I gotta get back in class," I said. Goodbye, goodbye. And that was that.

 

What I didn't say was this:

Thank you. Thank you for bringing me along with you. Thank you for trusting me and listening to what I said (even when I was wrong). Thanks for believing in me.

You go, girl.

(We're done, and that's ok.)

 

                       Don't give up, because you have friends.
                       Don't give up, you're not the only one.
                       Don't give up.  No reason to be ashamed.
                       Don't give up.  You still have us
                       Don't give up now.  We're proud of who you are.
                       Don't give up.  You know it's never been easy.
                       Don't give up, because I believe there's a place,
                        there's a place where we belong.
                                                                   - Peter Gabriel, So

PRACE Page Turners

   

    Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
                                                          - G. K. Chesterton

    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a
    dog, it's just too dark to read.
                                                         - Groucho Marx

I got a note from a scholarly sleuth down in Brisbane asking me about the PRACE Page Turners and matters related to reading materials with Australian content for ESL or adult literacy learners.  She was wondering how I came across the PRACE readers, why I decided to buy them, and how I used them.  A wise and fair-minded Australian, she noted that I am "obviously an experienced and dedicated literacy teacher."  That being so much better than the "self-important Gickeleshut wearing Fanfarrón" I'm always getting in those angry emails from Europe, I decided to answer her right away.

Sadly, I had no idea how I came across the Aussie readers.  I'm guessing I saw them in a Grass Roots Press catalogue circa 2007-2008.  Nor do I remember exactly why I decided to buy them, except that I used to specialize in helping adults with very low literacy levels, and I was always looking for more resources for individual or group reading.

As for how I use them: I use them eighteen ways from Sunday.  I use them in group reading (each learner taking a page).  I use them in one-on-one reading.  I leave them behind as part of home visits.  I lend them to teens and adults from the bookwagon or storytent - sometimes people I don't help in any other way. I use them for a quick self-assessment of reading level ("Sort these books into three piles: too easy; too hard; just right").  I use the text in cloze exercises and 'choose the right verb tense' exercises.  I use them a lot, and I value the sheer number of titles PRACE has on offer.

My researcher friend asked about a comment I'd made about the narrative tense used in the elementary readers; specifically contrasting the Pageturners' use of past tense with the Grass Roots Press use of present tense.  I replied:

The first low-level stories I worked with came from Grass Roots Press (Canada). Their books are all written in the present tense. PRACE gave me an assortment of books written in the past tense, which provided something new and different, as well as balance. But, more than that, it gave learners the chance to see things written in the tense that - in my perception - we most often use in journaling or writing notes and letters. (Think about the classic back-to-school writing assignment: how I spent my summer vacation.)

Later, I recalled that the Pageturners also mix up narrative voice, writing stories in both the first and third person.  GRP Readers are only written in the third person.

My correspondent told me the latest PRACE Pageturners collection (Series 5) uses a mix of past and present tense in the level 1 stories.  That's interesting.  It's also a reminder (to me) that I haven't picked up any readers from that series.  My discretionary spending on adult learning materials over the past year has all gone into GED-prep level materials - a sign of how the focus of my paid work has shifted.  In any case, I was pleased to hear PRACE was providing stories in both past and present tense.  It's hard to imagine what it would be like, but a collection of writings using the future tense would also be useful to learners.

My last epistolary remark was that I have a whole language, read-in-context, make-learning-functional approach to supporting basic adult literacy.  These books offer my learners 'real life' examples of written English, which I judge to be superior to word lists and de-contextualized conjugation exercises.

That was a learning for me; that I think of 'reading literature' as 'functional literacy' (and consider stories like What? to be part of the canon of 'literature').  But it doesn't surprise me.

I noticed sometime back that I come to literacy work first and foremost as an ambassador of English written well.  I don't mean to say that I write well - I have far too much fun with language to be a good writer.  What I mean is I read prose and tell stories and share poetry and tinker with sentences with my learners because I like that kind of thing.  I like English.  And I like helping other adults discover what a rich and wonderful place written English can be.  I'm not interested in fixing people, much less training them.  I'm not really interested in that kind of education at all.  If they get a job or pass a test or learn to read their phone bill - well, that's nice.  But mostly, I want to show them the wonders of a well written sentence.

Learn to read, and the whole of English history and philosophy and literature and written dreams of future hope is open to you.  I like the Pageturners because they are one part of a tradition and treasury I have found easy and pleasant to share.

The privileges of university

We hear a great deal these days about how we have to be reasonable about the times we live in. Corporate officers pulling in massive salaries and bonuses even as their companies lose money say average working men and women have to understand that the age of job security, pensions and even a middle-class wage are behind us. Have any of them offered to take the lead by surrendering even a fraction of their benefits? Are Federal Labour Minister Lisa Rait and Quebec Premier Jean Charest prepared to trim their gold-plated pensions to set an example to the students and workers they condescendingly lecture about the "new reality"?
    Today's youth face a grim future not of their own making. Is it any wonder that they're angry about it? What they are asking for is what previous generations so eagerly gobbled up for themselves. If those generations now believe their entitlements were too generous, then, perhaps, in the spirit of sharing the burden, they might want to give some of them back.
    John Moore, It’s the older generation that’s entitled, not students,
                                                                                        National Post

And now, if I may take for granted that the true and adequate end of intellectual training and of a University is not Learning or Acquirement ….
                                               Newman, The Idea of a University

Our Western way of life is coming to an end.  We're easily within thirty years of an end to the united, NAFTA-type North American economy that supplies much of our food and consumer products.  Smaller, regional economies with a manufacturing base and links to post-carbon energy sources could survive longer, but we're not taking any steps at all to build or protect these.  At one level, our hope is to sell the last of our resources to Asia, becoming a sort of snowy version of Africa or South America with China playing the role of the US.  At the other level, people are buying lottery tickets and hoping for the best.

And when they can, of course, they send their kids to university.

Getting kids into university is a big deal in Eastern Canada.  (Alas, all three of us kids disappointed my parents in this respect.)  Since coming to live in Saint John, I've only seen one large demonstration.  It was an October 2007 protest against the provincial government's plans to shut down the University of New Brunswick's Saint John campus and turn it into a community college.  It wasn't a crazy plan: our current community college is aging badly and strapped for space, and repurposing UNBSJ would be much cheaper then building a new NBCC campus.  But the liberal party - Shawn Graham's liberals - handled it badly and the residents of Saint John just weren't going to have it.

I remember being mostly unmoved by the UNBSJ protests.  I was surprised at the government's clumsy handling of it.  I noted the impressive PR campaign the university put on.  I was curious to see the Irving newspapers avoid committing themselves.  But, above all, I remember wishing that the many, many people who filled King Square demanding that we "Save UNBSJ" where as passionate about things further down Maslow's pyramid of needs.

At the time, I complained:

There were two news stories that caught my eye today - both front page on our local paper.

One was about our Premier sticking to his plan to demote our city's sole university to a community college. This [was] especially newsworthy because of the large and continuing public protests against this move. People in Saint John believe that, once lost, the university will never come back.

But, Premier Graham believes this is something that must be done for our province and our community....  I could almost respect Premier Graham and his determination to see this through, were it not for the other story in the news.

There's a trial going on, and details are emerging about the death of a little girl in New Brunswick. ...what we have learned is that, once again, the Department of Family and Community Services knew there was trouble in the household but did not adequately intervene.

This news story begins: "A mere week before a New Brunswick toddler died of alleged neglect a group of social workers in the Department of Family and Community Services asked their director if 'someone need to die' before much-needed staff and resources were poured into the department."

It was a silly question. As the director knew, kids have already died. In the past, the deaths of poor kids - whom FCS were monitoring and worrying about - hasn't had much impact in the larger picture of resource allocation. There's no reason to suppose this will change.

But it could change. It could change tomorrow morning. All it would take is for Premier Shawn Graham to decide to act, and to act with the determination he has shown in the area of post-secondary education.

And the worst news of all? Nothing in this case is causing anything like the uproar the plan to close a university has caused.

Two and a half years later, I posted my vexation at what I took to be a continued privileging of the merits and wants of universities and their fans:

There's also the $2 million, $23 million and $25 million for renovating two university buildings and constructing another, as well as $6 million for landscaping ("I want people to drive through the gate, look up and say, 'this is a prominent institution'" said UNBSJ's vice-president).

In recent months, I've watched other monies that might have gone into core family or literacy support programming, or even soup kitchens and food banks, being diverted to UNBSJ in a recruitment effort directed at selected poor families in one of our Saint John neighbourhoods.

Well, what are you going to do?  Everybody loves a university.

 

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
                                              Mario Savio, Speech, December, 1964.

The first time I heard Mario Savio's 1964 "Bodies Upon The Gears" speech, I was a university student myself - at least, in theory.  It was one of those summers in the mid-80's when I was working manual labour jobs in the daylight hours and studying Hebrew thought and Latin American liberation theology late into the night.  The speech was tucked inside an industrial rock protest track played on CBC's overnight program Brave New Waves, and it suited my mood exactly.

Only much later did I learn that this passionate, poetic speech was not directly about bringing an end to the war in Vietnam or torture in Central America; nor curbing the growth and spread of nuclear weapons; nor extending social service basics like free health care and quality schools to America's poor.  It was, directly, about whether or not students at UCLA Berkeley would be allowed to set up tables and/or hold various protests on university property.  The Dean and Board of Regents - uncharitably and foolishly - said no.  The students said yes, and commenced to hold sit-ins and demonstrations for the next three months.  The cops got called.  People got arrested and released, expelled and re-admitted.  A student-faculty-administration study committee was struck.  That went nowhere, and eventually Mr. Savio climbed atop a car and gave his famous speech; which included a request that members of "Locals 40 and 127 of the Painters Union... painting the inside of the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall... not be heckled in any way."

Everybody loves a university.

 

For generations now, Americans have been told that it always makes sense to invest in higher education for themselves and their children. This belief was so strong that it had three unfortunate consequences: It convinced politicians and taxpayers that there was no good reason to subsidize public higher education (if people were going to enjoy such a good return on an investment why should the government subsidize it?). It encouraged colleges and universities to adopt a business mentality, which increasingly led these institutions to make revenue maximization their top goal. And it led the purchasers of higher education not to ask hard questions about whether what they were buying was worth the price they were being asked to pay for it.
                                     Singleton, Debt: Not just for undergrads, Salon

I'm told by a variety of commentators that the Quebec student protests are about more than a proposed tuition hike; that it has become a protest of Bill 78, which restricts demonstrations and protest marches. I believe that.  And I believe that the issue has been badly handled by a Liberal party that has gotten lazy about consensus governing.

And yet.  I notice the other stories.  The ones about our continued failure to reduce carbon emissions or otherwise address global warming, for example. The ones about bills being passed at a federal level to bring our legislation more into alignment with the United States as regards environmental regulations, labour rules, food and material safety inspections, and anti-terrorism measures.  The ones revealing that our government did indeed (secretly) bail out our banks to the tune of several billion dollars (this in the years they were lecturing us on the need for "financial literacy").  The stories about the latest round of Employment Insurance changes and the general, nation-wide effort to depress wages and create a migrant-worker class.  I wonder, with real sadness, why we can't have a hundred thousand people on the streets of Montreal to protest some of that?

We just had another soup kitchen close down in Saint John because there is no charitable or tax money to support it.  Why doesn't that fill King Square with protestors?

Fifty million dollars for three university buildings.  Another six million for landscaping.  "I want people to drive through the gate, look up and say, 'this is a prominent institution'" said UNBSJ's vice-president.  I'm sure they will.

Everybody loves a university.

A letter to George Monbiot

 

Re: See No Evil

Dear Mr. Monbiot,

In his review of Gould's The Mismeasure of Man for the NYRB, Richard Lewontin wrote, "Scientists, like others, sometimes tell deliberate lies because they believe that small lies can serve big truths."  I suppose the same thing happens with great frequency within left wing social discourse.

Certainly, there has been a visible fracturing of the Left in America over the past three years as Obama has extended and deepened powers and policies once associated with Bush.  I can't follow all of the debate(s) but it's pretty obvious that someone is lying.  Here at home, our highest profile "left" party - the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) - elected a leader who promptly praised the Tar Sands oil extraction, wishing only that processing of the oil could happen in Canada's depressed eastern provinces.  I heard no public outcry from the NDP ranks.  Presumably, they think....  Well, who knows what they think.  Maybe that when they get in power, they'll fix it all up somehow?

When I can, I try to talk with my class of adult learners about the myth of the good king, explaining that the sort of things a king has to do to stay in power preclude good behaviour.  Though sometimes, when I see them getting hopeless, I relent and talk cheerful foolishness about the power of elections.

On my own blog, I write about any number of things related to literacy; most of little or no import.  Once in a while, I find the words to reflect on an experience or event that - I think - sheds useful light on the work of supporting the literacy learning of adults or children or families.  But the posts that are popular, that raise a bit of a response from my peers, are almost invariably the cranky posts where I criticize the government or right wing business groups or some big-name bully-type organization who's been stepping on smaller literacy orgs.  These are not important posts, merely reactive and argumentative.  The fact that they are popular is... disappointing.

I don't mean to imply that I value truth over comfort - far from it!  I confess to being frustrated with your own writings on nuclear power.  Irrationally, I find myself hoping you'll be proved wrong.  How much easier it is just to cheer blindly for our side than to deal in doubt, and change, and growth.  How much more pleasant to be a well-liked cheer leader.  (And how important it can seem to "win" when we know how absolutely awful the other side can be.)

But, you know, every day I ask my learners to accept doubt, and change, and growth.  I tell them with all the pompous conceit of a doctor or priest or teacher that it is good for them.  I tell them even more idiotic things like "truth matters" and "we are responsible for our neighbours and ourselves."  So I swallow my frustration and read your next column, and your next.  I don't always enjoy it, but I owe it to my learners and my neighbours and myself.

You're right.  Your fight is both hopeless and necessary.  And in the end you die.  So what.

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Wendell Dryden
Community Literacy Worker

 

Talking about politics

Like you, I suppose, I was up much too late last night watching the Alberta election on twitter.  Today I fought to stay awake despite the warm air and sounds of the rain on the windows all day, New Brunswick having entered some kind of tropical rainy season.

In other poli-sci news, I see that the apparently shameless Michael Ignatieff was on the BBC warning the Brits that if Scotland separates from the UK, Quebec will surely follow suit (Québécois being famous for emulating Scots... or something).  Ignatieff highlighted the damage caused by previous Quebec referenda by pointing out that Canada had given the province power over things like natural resources, health and education - showing himself to be a political contemporary of Lord Durham and somewhat less than up on the BNA Act (gawd help the U of T). At first, I thought he was lamenting the good old days when Liberals could get elected by stoking fears of Quebec's imminent separation, and then riding in to save the day.  (If I understood the Sponsorship Scandal hearings correctly, the last round of pro-independence bill boards in Quebec were almost wholly funded with the aid of the Liberal Party of Canada.)  But now I'm wondering if he's testing sound-bites for a run at leadership of a Scottish political party. Certainly, he could be no more a stranger there than he was in Ontario when he first came striding up out of America's bright lights in hopes of becoming PM.

Locally, we're approaching a round of municipal elections with the electorate in a wonderfully angry mood. (I hope for great things.) The most recent run of our small, free community newsmagazine Around the Block did a great job of identifying wards and candidates, as well as explaining elections in a general way. (Did I mention my hopes?)

I see the French - the ones in France, not in Quebec - are voting in a run-off election for their country's leadership. It's a contest between austerity and sanity, and the good guys may well win. Yesterday, the newspapers told us the stock market was showing "jitters" over the outcome, but it was mostly just trying to scare French voters back into the arms of Nicolas Sarkozy and the Germans.

Most of Europe's countries are experiencing heavy economic and fiscal strains. Given the up-coming centenary of 1914 and the 30 years of war that followed, this is something we might choose to pay greater attention to. A century ago, the first of two Balkan Wars took place on the Balkan Peninsula in south-eastern Europe. Fall-out from the second war led to World War One. (Did you know that over the past few weeks Russian troops have massed near Iran's northern border in apparent response to US threats to invade that country? Did you know the aircraft carrier Independent just moved into the Persian Gulf?)

Well... my point is, there are some interesting things going on in politics and society. And with so much of it as near as the internet, small wonder I'm short on sleep.

But not everyone feels that way.




When I announced to my class the up-coming visit of a mayoral candidate, I had to preface my remarks with a bizarre warning that I would send home the first person to tell me they "hate politicians" or "couldn't care less about politics." This apparently psychotic threat was necessary because, invariably, my every effort to address any current political issue is met with a chorus of boos, imprecations and denunciations effectively drowning out my voice.

This is not the case when I bring up John A. or the 1982 constitutional changes or how someone gets to be prime minister.  My learners don't seem to be inconsolably exasperated with dead politicians or the mechanics of our democracy.  But let me mention a living, breathing representative of the people, and they instantly transform into a torch-wielding mob....  but never a vote wielding mob! Why never a vote wielding mob?!

Well, it's not hard to understand. Robo-calls and inflated pensions. Broken promises and cuts to social services. But, really, I don't think it's any of those things. I think it's altogether too great a faith in right-wing, anti-government American infotainment.

American infotainment.  Like when that Ignatieff fellow came up from Harvard to be our PM. When what we really need, I suppose, is more Rick Mercer.

Opposing adult literacy "with due respect"

But his remarkable progress was not a matter of him believing in himself. He came to believe in himself in the context of appropriate funding, significant physical and emotional care and safety, and an intensely self-paced and learner-centered curriculum. More, he indicated in his follow-up remarks that his academic improve-ment "really began" (his words) after his physical and emotional needs were met.
                                              The Mind Learns When the Body Heals

On Saturday, the editorial writer of the Telegraph Journal, New Brunswick's sole provincial newspaper, angered and disappointed some of my colleagues by proposing we divert adult literacy funds into elementary school programs.



The writer doesn't name these school programs, but one assumes he would include his boss's hobby-horse. In 2009, Jamie Irving, then publisher of the Brunswick News Inc. owned Telegraph-Journal, and now Vice-President of Brunswick News itself, came up with a volunteer-based, in-school reading program for grade two students. While not a bad idea in itself - provided it adheres to recognized best practices - the Elementary Literacy Friends' effort is a lightweight program.  In contrast with, say, the four component Kenan model (an adaptation of Sharon Darling's Parent and Child Education or P.A.C.E. program noted here and here) and the fiscal efficiency of the double duty program spending envisioned by Tom Sticht, or the kind of family literacy work described in Other People's Words by Purcell-Gates, or that celebrated in Denny Taylor's Many Families Many Literacies, ELF appears to be the equivalent of "getting extra help after school."  That's always a good idea, but it's no reason to defund adult literacy.



If they could find the venue, my colleagues would argue the facts. (It's hard to argue publicly with the guy who owns all the newspapers and is determined to ignore you.) They would call up the research showing that what happens inside homes has a greater impact than schooling on children's literacy success. They would argue that improving the literacy skills of parents almost always improves the literacy (as well as health, living conditions and developmental outcomes) of their children. They would point out that fieldworkers in family literacy have been critically reviewing and improving on their work since the mid-1990s, paring away the more blatantly invasive, sexist and classist of interventions, and becoming increasingly effective.

But all that's beside the point.  The editorial opens with an untruth ("In a province where some 60 per cent of adults lack basic reading skills...") and carries on with cheerful disregard of facts thereafter. Jamie Irving and his employees aren't going to be swayed by anything as trifling as research.  In any case, my friends' reactions aren't really a result of the editorial's falsehoods.  They are about about years of scarce-rewarded hard work and a persistent feeling of powerlessness.





When Mr. Irving came up with his ELF idea, he had little problem talking the Minister of Education into sliding him a quick $250,000. Said Mr. Irving, "It's amazing how quickly things progress once you put a co-ordinated effort towards it" (quoted in the Telegraph). Well, he's an audacious and vigorous sort of guy (see the Ryerson piece "The Calm after the Storm").

He's also arrogant and naive, and you can see how people working in the field for a couple of decades or more could react to a rich kid throwing his weight around like that. For him to openly argue that we should stop funding adult literacy work is more than just silly and immature: it's frightening.  What if somebody with real power listens to him?

And that's the thing.  Campaigning politicians, government departments and literacy organizations alike are fuelled by money and good press.  Mr. Irving, like the Irving family in general, seems to be in a position to provide both.



I wasn't bothered much by the editorial.  I'd already learned about Mr. Irving's distain for adult literacy learners. (His appointment to the board of LCNB for a time helped me understand just how vacuous that organization had become.) If anything, I think its good that literacy and basic adult education workers get to see how Brunswick News views their field.

There's a myth that Business is a vital stakeholder in literacy; that Business supports adult literacy work, though it naturally wants us to spend conservatively.  But there is no such thing as Business.  There are only business people. Some of them are friends of literacy. Some of them are not.

So, the next time you hear they're inviting the "stakeholders" to the table, you might ask who they are and what kind of stakes they're bringing.

Barriers

Lt. Ken McPherson: What if he can read our minds?
Eddie: He'll be real mad when he gets to me.
                                               The Thing from Another World (1951)

Yesterday was a good day.  Both classes.  And again today.  If anything, today was better.  I had all my learners right where they needed to be - right at their instructional level, on-task, slowly progressing.

And I was holding my breath - so much my chest began to hurt.

And it took me a while to understand why I was holding my breath - why everything seemed poised on a cliff's edge - when, after all, everything was going really, really well.

It took me a while to realise that I was putting off opening my laptop and checking my email - to realise I was avoiding my email and holding my breath in fear that "they" would come along with their bright new plans and their changed requirements and their suddenly urgent task lists and interrupt all this again.

"Just leave us alone," I kept thinking.  "Let us be for a couple of weeks.  I've got everyone doing exactly what they need to be doing, and feeling good about it.  Just leave us alone, and I'll get you your those employment ready, post-GED adults you say you want."

Just leave us alone.

 

 

The barriers aren't always what you'd think they would be.

On reading names

If we turn the clock 30 years back, to the linguistic notes Tolkien wrote around the time he started working on The Lord of the Rings... Tolkien mentioned a base THÛ “puff, blow” which yields Quenya words for “breathe, breath” and also such an august title as Súlimo, Manwë’s surname as a “wind-god” (we are to understand that the older pronunciation was Thúlimo). And then it comes (LR:392): "THUS- (related to THÛ?) *thausâ: Q[uenya] saura foul, evil-smelling, putrid. N[oldorin] thaw corrupt, rotten; thû stench, as proper name Thû chief servant of Morgoth, also called Mor-thu, Q[uenya] Sauro or Sauron or Súro = Thû."
                              Helge Kåre Fauskanger, A Name for the Dark Lord

When the second edition of "Lord of the Rings" gave Tolkien a chance to alter the text, he went in and tinkered with the inflections in his invented Elvish language.
                                                       Douglas Harper, J.R.R. TOLKIEN

 

J.R.R. Tolkien was, by all accounts, a man who loved words. He was also a storyteller of some note - who hasn't at least heard of The Hobbit and/or The Lord Of The Rings? But Tolkien was an uneven writer.

Tolkien’s love of words is visible in the care he took in choosing his characters' names. Tolkien had strong feelings about the appearance, sound and etymology of names. I'm not linguist or cultural historian enough to follow all his thinking, but it was, presumably, because of his theories of naming that he called two of his main bad guys Sauron and Saruman.

Unfortunately, this resulted in readers such as I forever paging backward and forward trying to figure out which bad guy was which. Nothing I've read by or of Tolkien makes me think he would care much about that, but as a reader I care a lot. He was, as I have said, a storyteller, and scholar of languages, but not so much a great writer. It was as if his passion for old or imagined languages distracted him from the writer’s necessary work polishing his use of contemporary language.

I recall a similar frustration reading Isaac Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy.

Here again, we meet a wonderful storyteller, a hobbiest (this time of the physical and chemical sciences) and an author of an impressive alternate universe. Here again we meet someone who really, really needed an editor.  Asimov gave the two most important characters in the first portion of his story the confusingly similar names Hari Seldon and Salvor Hardin.  One hundred and fifty odd pages later, he mercifully named his third central character Hober Mallow.  Yes, he's still using H's but at least the S is gone.

I was thinking about this after a learner and I read Just Good Friends, another story made more difficult by names.

There's Joan the mother, Beth the daughter, and James the son. Then there's the dad, Scott, who is often just called "Dad" and the interloper, er... innocent bystander named "Dan". When Dan suggests camping and Mom says they should wait for Dad, or when Dad's on the phone asking about Dan... well, you can see how a new reader could get confused.

Ah, but isn't there a lesson here? (That's what you're thinking, right?) Isn't there something to learn about reading the whole of words, and applying phonemic tools to their end syllables as well as their beginnings? Doesn't this provide a lesson in the need to read carefully, paying attention to details.

Sure.  That's what I thought, too.

Then I remembered Sauron and Saruman and Seldon and Salvor, and Hober and Hari and Hardin and the way Tolkien and Asimov managed to frustrate me despite my being an excellent and persistent reader.

So, yeah. There is a lesson here.  But I think it's a lesson for writers, not readers (meaning no disrespect to the excellent Linda Kita-Bradley who, it must be recalled, gave us the indispensible The Big Goof, The Hike and Bears all without ever forcing us to read turgid Elvish poetry). The lesson is this: unless you're going to get all Tolkien on us about hidden meanings in the appearance, sound and etymology of names, you might think about names chiefly as tools your readers will use to keep your main characters straight.