In which the reader considers both her brains, some neuro-anatomy, some fundamental processes of mind (such as association and spreading activation) and goes to Wimbledon.
It is a hard thing to have to admit, but when I was first introduced to adult literacy teaching the following quote applied, in spades. Literacy tuition provision for adults, in the 1970s and 1980s, was:
...a practically random pairing of complete strangers, frequently from very different social backgrounds, brought together to conduct an intimate and technically difficult transfer of skills often on the basis of little more than shared optimism. (Levine 1986 p. 95)
The little batch of new volunteer tutors, of which I was one, was given training: Twelve hours of practical tips and exhortations and a pile of cryptic handouts and strangely specific worksheets. We were then considered ready for student allocation and off we went, working, in those allegedly innocent days, in disconcerting seclusion, one to one, often in student’s or tutor’s homes. Nobody understood much about literacy or its acquisition, but nobody seemed particularly bothered either. The atmosphere was relentlessly optimistic, perhaps because there was so little assessment or understanding of our work. At the same time, though, it was felt that literacy was so complex as to be almost insuperable; a Byzantine labyrinth of incompletely understood, rule-based skills and sub-skills which were to be learned individually, overtly and in isolation from any other aspect of literacy, through endless performance of eccentric and often rather infantile exercises which were labour intensive for the tutor and repetitive for the student. The meaning of much of what we did was difficult to discern. Perhaps because the transmission of real, autonomous, confidently useable literacy was felt to be unlikely the endeavour was sold to us mainly as a generally supportive, if patronising, social activity; as a Jolly Kind Thing To Do, and not much else. The technical outcomes of tuition were blurred and unregarded. Absurdities, often requiring scissors, coloured paper and glue, multiplied. It was the golden age for tutor autonomy and many and extraordinary were the things done in the name of literacy while it lasted.
We struggled on (and on and on), sometimes for years, the same tutors with the same students in much the same state, slowly toppling into the long grass by the wayside. We tutors, so obviously lacking ‘a firm and respectable intellectual basis’ (Waterland 1988 p. 10), were suckers for all those bizarre schemes and worksheets continually drilling such peculiarities as homographs or homophones, consonant blends or vowel digraphs, cloze exercises or phonological segmentation drills, continually seeking for succulent ways to present the same dry and tasteless thing. A singularly torpid pace, curiously forgettable material and an almost perverse inability to use anything apparently learned in class when out in the real world became accepted as inevitable and thus tolerable. Except, of course, that they are not.
We need the aforementioned ‘firm and respectable intellectual base’ beneath our feet if we are to pull ourselves free from such a condition. This intellectual base, in our present context, must include cognitive psychology - an understanding of the basic layout of, and procedures in, the brain, which is where it’s all done. Without it we cannot understand literacy. I will therefore begin this book with a theoretical consideration of the cognitive psychology which enables reading and writing. This theory is beautiful, fascinating, exciting, eye-opening and liberating stuff, something to look forward to. It is the indispensable foundation of our ‘intellectual base’. It is, for the thoughtful teacher, affirming and enabling. If you have read this far you already qualify as a thoughtful teacher. Perhaps, like me, you are convinced it can be better done and fascinated as to why it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t. In the words of one tutor ‘Why does she spell ‘people’ correctly?’ (Charnley and Jones 1981 p. 46). It’s a fine question.