48.Name
Sounds, Not Things: The Underground HIstory of American Education by John
Taylor Gatto from archive.org
Name
Sounds, Not Things
So how was the murder of American reading ability
pulled off? I'll tell you in a second,
but come back first to classical Greece where the stupendous invention
of the alphabet by Phoenicians was
initially understood. The
Phoenicians had an alphabetic language used to keep accounts, but
the Greeks were the first to guess correctly that revolutionary power could be unleashed by transcending mere
lists, using written language for the permanent storage of analysis, exhortation, visions, and other things.
After a period of experiment the
Greeks came up with a series of letters to represent sounds of their language.
Like the Phoenicians, they
recognized the value of naming each letter in a way distinct from its sound value — as every human being has
a name distinct from his or her personality, as numbers have names for reference.
Naming sounds rather
than things was the breakthrough! While the number of things to be pictured is impossibly large, the
number of sounds is strictly limited. In English, for example, most people recognize only forty- four. 1 The problem, which American
families once largely solved for themselves, is this: in English, a Latin alphabet has been
imposed on a Germanic language with multiple non- Germanic borrowings, and it doesn't quite fit. Our 44 sounds
are spelled 400+ different ways.
That sounds horrible, but in reality in the hands of even a mediocre teacher,
it's only annoying; in the hands
of a good one, a thrilling challenge. Actually, 85 percent of the vast word stock of English can be
read with knowledge of only 70 of the phonograms. A large number of the remaining irregularities seldom occur
and can be remastered on an
as-needed basis. Meanwhile a whole armory of mnemonic tricks like
"If a 'c' I chance to spy, place the 'e' before the 'i'"
exists to get new readers over the common humps. Inexpensive dictionaries, spell-check typewriters,
computers, and other technology are
readily available these days to silently coach the fearful, but in my
experience, that "fear"
is neither warranted nor natural. Instead, it is engendered. Call it
good business practice. Also, communicating abstractions in picture language is
a subtlety requiring more time and
training to master than is available for most of us. Greeks now could
organize ambitious concepts
abstractly in written language, communicating accurately with each other over space and time much more
readily than their competitors.
According to Mitford
Mathews: 2 The secret of
their phenomenal advance was in their conception of the nature of a word. They reasoned that words were sounds or
combinations of ascertainable sounds, and they held inexorably to the basic proposition that writing,
properly executed, was a guide to
sound, reading. A number of other good treatments are available for the
newcomer.
Learning sound-sight correspondences comes
first in an alphabetic language.
Competence with the entire package of sounds corresponding to alphabet
symbols comes quickly. After that
anything can be read and its meaning inquired after. The substantial speaking vocabulary kids bring to
school (6,000 — 10,000 words) can now be read at once, and understood.
When the Romans got
the alphabet through the Etruscans they lost the old letter names so they invented new ones making them
closer to the letter sounds. That was a significant mistake which causes confusion in novice readers even today.
Through conquest the Latin
alphabet spread to the languages of Europe; Rome's later mutation into the Universal Christian Church caused
Latin, the language of church liturgy, to flow into every nook and cranny of the former empire.
The Latin alphabet
was applied to the English language by Christian missionaries in the seventh century. While it fused with
spoken English this was far from a perfect fit. There were no single letters to stand for certain sounds. Scribes
had to scramble to combine letters
to approximate sounds that had no companion letter. This matching process
was complicated over centuries by
repeated borrowings from other languages and by certain massive sound shifts which still occupy
scholars in trying to explain.
Before the spread of
printing in the sixteenth century, not being able to read wasn't much of a big deal. There wasn't much to
read. The principal volume available was the Bible, from which appropriate bits were read aloud by religious
authorities during worship and on
ceremonial occasions. Available texts were in Latin or Greek, but persistent
attempts to provide translations
was a practice thought to contain much potential for schism. An official English Bible, the Authorized
King James Version, appeared in 1611, preempting all competitors in a bold stroke which changed popular
destiny.
Instantly, the Bible
became a universal textbook, offering insights both delicate and powerful, a vibrant cast of characters,
brilliant verbal pyrotechnics and more to the humblest rascal who could read. Talk about a revolutionary
awakening for ordinary people! The
Bible was it, thanks to the dazzling range of models it provided in the
areas of exegesis, drama,
politics, psychology, characterization, plus the formidable reading skills it took to grapple with the
Bible. A little more than three decades after this translation, the English king was deposed and beheaded. The
connection was direct. Nothing
would ever be the same again because too many good readers had acquired
the proclivity of thinking for
themselves.
The magnificent enlargement of
imagination and voice that the Bible's exceptional catalogue of language and ideas made available awakened in
ordinary people a powerful desire
to read in order to read the Holy Book without a priest's mediation.
Strenuous efforts were made to
discourage this, but the Puritan Revolution and Cromwell's interregnum sent literacy surging.
Nowhere was it so accelerated as in the British colonies in North America, a place already far removed from
the royal voice.
Printing technology
emerged. Like the computer in our own day, it was quickly incorporated into every corner of daily
life. But there were still frequent jailings, whippings, and confiscations for seditious reading as people
of substance came to realize how
dangerous literacy could be.
Reading offered many delights. Cravings
to satisfy curiosity about this Shakespeare fellow or to dabble in the musings of Lord Bacon or John
Locke were now not difficult to
satisfy. Spelling and layout were made consistent. Before long, prices
of books dropped. All this
activity intensified pressure on illiterate individuals to become literate. The
net result of printing (and
Protestantism, which urged communicants to go directly to the Word, eliminating the priestly
middleman), stimulated the spread of roving teachers and small proprietary and church schools. A
profession arose to satisfy demand for a popular way to understand what uses to make of books, and from this
a demand to understand many
things.
5.
'The "problem" with English phonics has been wildly exaggerated,
sometimes by sincere people but most
often by those who make a living as guides through the supposed perils
of learning to read. These latter
constitute a vast commercial empire with linkages among state education
departments, foundations,
publishers, authors of school readers, press, magazines, education journals,
university departments of
education, professional organizations, teachers, reading specialists,
local administrators, local school
boards, various politicians who facilitate the process and the U.S.
offices of education, defense and labor. 2 Mitford Mathews, Teaching to Read Historically
Considered (1966). A brief, intelligent history of reading A number of other good treatments are
available for the newcomer.
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