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Last night, I had an epiphany. Judith Martin (Miss Manners) was on the Colbert Report, and I told Jeff about finding one of her books when I was fourteen or so. One of the reasons I checked it out of the library was because it was a *small* temporary library (it was in a storefront in the mall near the Safeway) and I was running out of stuff to read. The thickness of the book was a large mark in its favor.

So, I was telling Jeff this and realized that, not everyone reads up to grade level, nor do they test out. (Huh?)

Okay. When I was in third grade, we were in a kindergarten room. Since we didn't need all the room, they used part of the room to store the books for other classes. We also had an in-room library. I can't remember if I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to read the other books or not. I don't think it ever occured to me, honestly. So, I found a big stack of *big* reading books (which was where I first read an excerpt from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I cannot adequately express how beautiful it was. She described a woman's skin as "dark as a plum, full to bursting with juice" (paraphrased) and I could see it. Hell, I could damn near *taste* it. That had never happened to me before. Maya Angelou is a remarkable writer)(and human being) (How many parentheses are we up to?)))) and dived happily into them. I was up to the eighth grade book when Mrs. Finney asked me what I was doing. (This took some time, and it's probably good that she didn't know I'd been taking them home with me over the weekends...) I told her I was reading the book. She said "That's an eighth grade book." I said okay. She said "Are you really reading it?" I allowed that I was. She looked at the bit I was reading and asked me about it. I answered all the questions I could.

The next day/weeek/something, I went to the office and they gave me a reading test. I think I was reading at eighth grade level, but it could have been seventh. Every year after that, they tested me and my reading level kept rising, till I tested out sometime in jr. high. I was either reading at college level or beyond.

And for all these years, I've figured that nearly everyone does that. Just that the majority of people don't do it as quickly as I did. When I was discussing the tiny library and my reading damn near everything that appealed to me in the place, it hit me that not everyone reads up to grade level (and while I'd always known that, I never knew it) and not everyone's reading level keeps getting higher till they're all at the same level(ish) somewhere in adulthood.

Wild.

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My experience is similar to yours, with the addendum that my early grade teachers actively reswented that I could read better than they could teach, so to speak. And, because my father spent decades telling me how substandard I was, I never realized that most folks didn;t read at anywhere near the level I did. In fact, I still tend to think that if I can do something, pretty much anyone must be able to do it.

My partner is still struggling with that last bit. He got out of high school by taking the equivalency exam when he was sixteen, and he kept insisting to me that "it was so easy that anyone could have passed it; this is nothing for me to be proud of."

It may have been easy for him, but then again, he has an IQ of over 160, so...

It's funny. My mom went to my kindergarten teacher the first day and asked what provisions were being made for early readers. The teacher told my mother that in her learned experience, kids weren't actually reading in kindergarten, but that they had just memorized the book. My mother just went "Oooh-kay" and walked away, figuring I'd find a way to blow her theory out of the water.

And a few weeks later, my teacher approached my mom (who was volunteering in my kindergarten class) and said, "Why didn't you tell me Katrina was reading?" My mother smiled and inquired as to how my teacher had figured it out. My teacher mentioned that she thought something was suspicious when she saw me wandering around the classroom reading all the posters. But it didn't sink in for her until it came a day to learn the color red. All the kindergarteners were supposed to draw a picture using mainly red and then approach the teacher to caption it. And I guess I wandered up to my teacher, and said "This is Strawberry Shortcake wearing a red dress. The dress is messy."

My teacher decided to save time by writing only the first sentence. I wouldn't know any better -- I couldn't read, right? Except that when she handed the paper back to me, I said, "You forgot 'The dress is messy.'"

I was tested, and was reading third grade level in kindergarten. By third grade I was reading Mom's old college textbooks without much difficulty, but kindergarten was the only year they tested me. Although I did get accused of plagerism in seventh grade by a teacher that said no seventh grader writes that way, and thus I must have copied it from a book.

The irony there? She was the gifted teacher. If anybody should have known better...

(In a fitting end to the story, the essay was submitted to the contest over her grave misgivings, and I won first place. So there.)

-kat

When I was five, I was reading at a fifth-grade reading level. The kindergarten teacher didn't believe my mother either, until she found me under one of the tables at playtime, reading Little House on the Prairie. Even then she thought I was just looking at the pictures until I read her two straight paragraphs without stopping.

The poor woman nearly had a heart attack.

When I was three years old, I had every children's book in our house memorized.

My mom took me to a dentist appointment one day, and while we were in the waiting room I wandered over toward the book rack. I picked up a book and started reading it aloud. Mom thought nothing of it until one of the other people nudged her and exclaimed, "Your little girl is *reading*!" Mom started to explain about the memorization thing when it dawned on her that we didn't own that book.

They never actually tested me (to my knowledge) but I started reading at age 4 - my parents knew because I was reading the billboards & street signs on the highway (no way to memorize them yet). To me, reading is like breathing.

This is why it's been rather disconcerting to have a daughter with a learning disability - she's an aural learner, almost exclusively. I can know (in my mind) that she doesn't really understand reading because it's so much work for her - but knowing it & understanding it in my HEART has been much harder.

Maybe that's why I fight for her so much in her school with her IEP & such - I don't want her to get caught in "she doesn't read, so she's dumb" - I know damned well she's VERY smart...she just has trouble reading.

I guess you've not noticed the number of REMEDIAL reading courses they offer in both high school and college, huh? Not only are a large number of kids not reading up to their grade level, some of them never catch up, nor do they want to. (what do you mean, you don't WANT to read????)
I can remember having to get a note from my teacher so that the librarian would let me check out 6th-grade books when I was in 3rd grade, and having to have my mom or older sister check out books from the adult section of the public library. That ended when I took some books back and the librarian asked me why I always brought their books back for them and I told her I was reading them, and we discussed one of the ones I'd just returned: Les Miserables....
Nowadays, of course, I don't read much that's more complicated than the Mrs Murphy mysteries. I think I wore out my brain in middle school.

My daughter gets tested for her reading level every quarter. Right now, she's testing on a 5th grade level--the highest books the school has in the library that they will allow her to test on. She recently read Ella, Enchanted to her little brother, one chapter at a time before bed. I think she's reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to him now.

She's in 1st grade.

My experiences were similar, so it's still a shock sometimes to realize that the parents of most of our Peace Partners kids barely read more than their kids-- and some parents don't read at all.

Even within middle class white families, colleges are having trouble with freshman who can't read and make sense of a newspaper article. The kidlet's roommate, who seems like a bright kid, is taking remedial math-- in college!

Grew up surrounded by books, but never really believed that I was smart beyond my years until those years were long gone! (I suppose that's why I'm still such a sweet, unassuming and delightful old lady at nearly-70?)

::Simpers sweetly, just to keep in practise::

Have you ever read a book called "The Bone People" by New Zealand author Keri Hulme? There's a lady with an amazing command of language and evocation, whose juggling with and romping around in the flavour of words delighted my reader's soul! The story she presents can be totally engrossing and gut-wrenching, as parts of this one are, but at the same time, one revels in the multiple 'tastes' of the creation.

Your Sammy apparently contains so many emotions in her small being that they overcome her at times, just as they used to (and maybe still do) overwhelm us so-called 'grownups'. How wonderful that you recognise and help her cope with the 'meltdown' times or the can't-sleep and/or afraid-to-sleep times, and know not to tell her she's naughty to be so 'difficult'!

Parenting can be a strain, a struggle beyond earlier imaginings, but how great it is to learn our own selves through accepting our kids' expressions of who they are becoming.

Happy reading!! Books are WINGS! (And a random hug for Sammy, just because she's so vibrant!)

The school system is geared to be at the level of the most remedial student and a specific kind of learner. IF a student does not learn to read at the specific time set by the state standards, that student will only be able to read if he does it himself or if his parents or another adult encourages him. If you are an early reader, it's more likely to get caught because it's wonderful and shocking. If you are a late reader, you tend to have to hide or fake your way through. Everyone ELSE is reading, but you can't seem to get it. You must be DUMB. Which, of course, is not true. Everyone learns at a different pace. But then, why would you then want to learn how to read later when you're ready?

What, for instance, would all of the early readers have done if they had listened to the "standards" and tried to read only at the level they were "supposed" to be? What would happen to all the late readers if someone took them aside later and worked with them?

Literacy in American was 99% before mandatory schooling came into affect. The kids learned by grabbing whatever was on the shelf and reading it without worrying about "grade level" or "ability." I'm just glad that so many kids are "slipping through the cracks" so to speak and learning despite school. I'm still going to home school my son, though. XD Ok, going back to my padded cell, now ^_^!

Something tells me you're going to find similar reading stories on LJ, just because most of us are "good with words"...comes with the territory of being a superior reader.

I can tell you about this, because I was the chair of the curriculum and instruction committee on the local school board. It has to o with learning styles and the way our brains are wired. You all are what is called 'natural readers', and it is like being good with spatial relationships or sports or music or anything else. It is how you process information.

My parents never understoo my love affair with reading and books, and I was beaten for reading and my reading material destroyed. I've been able to read since I was about two or three years old. No one taught me.

I too would read above grade books. Once I was sent to the guidance office for reading a glossary (!), this is where testing commenced for me. My skills were off the chart.

I don't think of the ability as anything special, either. It just is.

The literacy rate is a fallacy, btw. Part of the problem is that they teach to the test, and don't really measure skills or comprehension. There still are a high number of people in the US who are functionally illiterate, and many of those are the older people (like me) who squawk a lot about the schools.

I need to get to work, or I'll be writing all morning!

*chuckle* I so understand. I never met a book I couldn't read (a few words I might've had to look up, maybe)...that others honestly could is one of those brain-hurty things. Although my epiphanies like this were more about "other people don't see things in their head the way I do or make the connections the way/at the speed I do."

I can remember a teacher making me take a book back to the library because she decided it was too high a level for me. She acted like I was showing off and I was terribly embarrassed. This was fifth grade and the book was The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. Outside of school I was reading Jane Eyre, but in school I stuck to the rules, so I took the book back. To this day I haven't read Helen Keller's book, because every time I even think of getting it from the library, I feel that same embarrassment. Up until high school I was a very obedient child and I read books from the sections of the library which we were told were appropriate for our age group. In high-school I snuck the Canterbury Tales off the teacher's cart and took it home to read (it wasn't in the school library). I felt like reading that book was sort of presumptuous of me, because I was just one of the average kids and that book was only being read by kids in the advanced classes.

My 13 year old son reads either graphic novels (I'm sure they'd be considered below grade level)and adult non-fiction (above grade level)- neither of which would be on any reading lists if he were in school. It seems schools don't know what to do with the advanced readers, but then they also don't give the other children enough time to learn to read naturally. I have a niece who was flunking Kindergarten (her mom pulled her out) because of her reading skills. A bright happy child now thinks she isn't smart because she wasn't ready to learn to read yet. When I was in Kindergarten, kids learned the alphabet and that was it as far as reading. It just wasn't considered developmentally appropriate to push any more than that on five year old children. My own son's teacher was concerned about him in Kindergarten because he wouldn't look up words to see if they were misspelled. He came to school already reading and writing, but her pushing was turning him off of it! I think schools actually make many kids hate reading. The longer I homeschool the more I think schools should forget all that teaching and testing and just let kids read all day. I'll bet the kids would learn just as much (and by that I mean real learning- not just memorize enough for the test and forget it all later) and they'd be more likely to all grow-up readers.

My 13 year old son reads either graphic novels (I'm sure they'd be considered below grade level)

Depending on the graphic novel in question, the concepts and even the language may be well above his "grade level". There are some "comic book" writers who - though there aren't many words in a graphic novel - manage to pack a lot of information into them.

I just noticed how long all the comments to this post are. You've struck a chord! IMO, college level is overrated! That's as high as you can go! I'm in college and I'm no whiz! lol

The hard thing for me to wrap my head around is that there are people who don't enjoy reading. How can you not enjoy reading?!? That's like not being human, to me.

I can't stand the thought of reading any of "The Classics."

That part of me got burned out when people expected me to read them, and come away with Deep Insights into the author's Message.

Anything that asks about the theme, or asks me to find allegory...blyeh. If I hadn't been addicted to reading before these questions started coming up, I would have learned that books were drudgery, and pointless questions. In short, I could have been one of those people who don't enjoy reading, if I hadn't been hooked at an early age.

There are probably other reasons that people don't enjoy reading. Some people may not "get" reading - imagination is not in short supply, but the ability to build the scene in your mind is not as common, in my opinion. And that helps make reading come alive.

Ok, but as a grown-up, where do I find TIME to read? I like to just sit down and READ, not pick it up and put it down a dozen times :(

Reading seriously cuts into my sleeping time these days.

I read in the bathtub.

I read when I'm eating alone.

If I could figure out how to keep my eyes open, I'd read when I was sleeping.

I as a very slow start but came up to speed quickly once I did read. I can remember flubbing a word learning exercise in first grade because I was strictly following the example, and only two of the 10 questions fit the example. I am also very dyslexic, and had to be drilled to make modules out of some letters and sounds (str, ch etc.). Being the youngest of a large family, and shy, and with a precocious and very social sister just a year or so oldest than me who did 'cute' baby things, I don't think I was read to much.
However I think it was inate to find reading enjoyable. It is such a persistant family trait that by the time my Dad died when I was 9, he had already made my Mother promise him I could read anything I wished. Somewhere between second and third grade I 'got it', advanced to my proper reading level quickly and just kept going at that pace of growing sophistication until I was reading college level by fifth grade. I was in the back of the class, next to a tall spinning display of compilation books and I would sneak the books regularly. Sure, I could miss a lot of context that relied on wisdom, such as Jonathan Swift being so very good at snark that I had a hard time distinguishing if he was kidding. But my technical comprehension was there.
The upside of being the youngest was that everyone's old book got put in the basement and I had access to my siblings' summer reading lists. Old whole earth catalog margin stories were my introduction to erotica. I read The Chocolate War, 1984, Animal Farm, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and a seemingly million other things on my own. I am very glad I got to enjoy them before they were deconstructed in a way that made sense to the teacher.
It is easy to forget that my friends, while not the same in habit or tastes, tend to be the same level I am. They have a wide scattering of types of intelligences and wisdoms, but they are all very bright. Only once have I socially visited a house with no brightness. They were warm, generous and lovely people. But there wasn't a book in the house, not even a bible. There was no music in the house, only what was available on television and the radio. They didn't even lay in the hammock in the backyard and gaze at the light filtering through the leaves. I have a lot of people in my life who spend to much time in their heads. This family spent NO time in their heads. It was surreal.

They stopped testing me in 7th grade when I hit the 13th grade (college-level). I read all the time, or used to. Now I'm struggling to get my 50 books in each year!

heh. I know how that goes. When I was about 7 or 8 year old - "Primary 3" level in Scotland - we had some student teachers come to the school for work experience. Among other things they did was to give us all a reading test.

With me, they ran out of tests. Their tests only went up to age 16, so they started giving me pieces from adult books and the quality newspapers. Every so often I'd get a word I hadn't met before, so I'd stumble over its pronounciation, and they'd pounce on me, to see if I'd met it before and understood it. "No, I haven't seen that word before, but from the context it must mean...." Apparently it freaked them out so much that it was recorded on my school records, and the Headmaster passed the info on to my mother years later, even though these tests were supposed to be 'confidential' (ie, specifically NOT to be passed on to either students or parents)

Books are an expensive addiction - as bad as drugs for me - I can go through two paper-backs in a day, if I'm on holiday. If I'm only reading in the evening, it's a book a day. I have a big problem putting down a book when I'm more than a certain length into it - NO WAY could I put aside a book when I was on the final chapter.

I hear you on the expensive addiction comment.
My mother-in-law is a firm believer in buying her books at either second-hand shops or charity shops. I'd do that here in the Netherlands, but I wouldn't understand much, yet. I've taken her tip a couple of times on trips to the UK, though: I picked up 3 books for a quid at a country house book store, and one of those was a hardback novel. Most of our trips lately have been fly-bys with no time for bargain hunting, which is a pity.

I miss affordable books and free public libraries. Even Barnes&Noble is cheaper than The American Book Center. *sigh*

Wow, interesting post.

Reading is quite challenging for me. This may be an oxymoron, but I consider myself a person of intelligence who has a great amount of difficulty with conprehension. Sometimes I have to re-read five to six times, and I still don't get it fully.

In class growing up, we would read together (such as in jr high) and I wouldn't be able to fully digest what was being read. I would then be embarrassed by the teacher who would ask me a question pertaining to the material that I would not be able to answer. If I'd had the chance to digest it my own way in my own time, I could give a thoughtful answer with perspective and insight, perhaps better than any of the kids in the class. My learning style is different.

Unfortunately they didn't figure out about kids with different learning styles until it was too late for me. I started school in 1968. Times were different then.

In my life, it has made me look like a stupid person from time to time. I'm not stupid (although it took me years to be able to say that.) Reading is not fun for me, it is frustrating. This is not always the case, but more often than not. I have learning/focus problems.

I wish it wasn't this way for me, because I'd love to say I love to read.

*comprehension, not conprehension. ;-)

When I am feeling particularly challenged by the world, by my own aging, or by other insecurities, I confess to pulling out the set of Frank L Baum "Oz" books and reading them through, from The Wizard of Oz forward. I love the illustrations, I love the stories, I love painting illustrations when I'm in the mood (defiant/possessive Inner Child 'marking her territory').

But MOST of all, I love the fact that the stories are the same as they were 65 years ago! They haven't been redacted, interpreted, politicised, turned into bland strings of nothing-words! They tell me simple stories, with implicit or explicit morals, and allow me to re-feel the simple comprehension of those early years, before I was expected to 'act like a big girl'!

Having reassured my Inner Child that some things DO stay the same, I am better able to cope with the ideas and realities of this too-rapid world we've created. I think we all need to slow down sometimes, or we miss a lot of the delicate details.

Oooops! L. Frank Baum, I meant to say!

Oh thank you, maybe I'll try that. My daughter has at least one of those books, which she re-reads from time to time. She is 12.

I think we all need to slow down sometimes, or we miss a lot of the delicate details. My kids go to a school that does not embrace television. They are all about the delicate details.

I remember as a little girl I used to love bedtime stories from my grandmother (rest her sweet soul) about the "Olden Days." She would sit by my bed at night when I stayed with her and tell me stories about when she was a little girl. They were magical. I hung on her every word. She had Scandinavian parents who had immigrated from Sweden and Finland (the Finns were Swedish speaking) and had instilled in her a love and appreciation for life itself, the little things. They were hard-working people who taught her to be kind and to stop and smell the roses.

She also told me a lot about the great depression of the 1930's and how everyone coped. Back then it wasn't such a fast-paced dog-eat-dog society where everyone was looking out for number one. Everyone pitched in to help each other. They bonded and made it through.

I guess I went off on a tangent there, but your comment had me thinking. I wish my grandma was still around so I could continue to pick her brain. I think she could teach our current society a few things.

I don't think it's an oxymoron. One can be very intelligent and still have places where figuring things out is difficult.

My problems tend to be with math. When I was in the second grade, I was in remedial math class and advanced reading. (Nobody told me it was advanced reading, so for years I figured it was remedial reading as well.)(No one had to tell me it was remeidal math.) :)

You're *so* not stupid. My Nana was a very smart person who had to leave school in the third grade (she was in and out of the hospital with hip problems and wasn't able to go back). She could read and write, but never felt comfortable with her reading skills. She read as much as she could, but couldn't enjoy it very much because she felt deficient. We started getting her books on tape in the nineties and she was *thrilled*. My Boompa got her this special walkman that played the four-channel (I think) tapes and she got to listen to *so* much great stuff. If she was still around, I know she'd be rockin' an Audible subscription and an MP3 player. *grin*

I've got some books on mp3 that I could burn for you, if you'd like. What kinds of things do you like? Or, more importantly, what do you *not* like?:)

****HUG****

Gessi

I'm responding late. Thanks for your kind words Gessi.

I like non-fiction books. I like biographies and auto-biographies. I don't have an mp3 though, but I think my kids do. (I think their father may have gifted them an mp3.)

I guess I'm not really into sci-fi.

~huge hugs back~

Heh. I still have the results of an old IQ test when I was in... elementary? Pretty early, anyway. However, my reading level was post-high school level. I know what you mean about the reading grade level thing -- I knew that, but I never really *thought* about it either, until you wrote about it. Wow.

And I know whereof you speak regarding the reading material thing. Oy. :)

But according to testing, I was reading at a 12th grade level in the 3rd grade.

No wonder I just barely graduated high school. Heh.

I was a natural reader, at age three. AFAIK, no one bothered testing me.

My grades always sucked because there was too much busywork disguised as homework, and therapy sessions because I didn't have a social life or want to be around kids my own age and would have been much happier just being a hermit.

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Reading, like music, is life....

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Sometimes reading makes me cranky.

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It meant little to me at the time...

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