Chapter Five - Reading Lessons (MATILDA ODONNELL MACELROY PERSONAL NOTE) I began the reading lessons with the first pages of a school book that had been used to teach pioneer children in the 1800s on the frontiers of America. It is called McGuffeys Eclectic Reader, Primer Through Sixth. 40 (Footnote) Since I am a nurse, and not a teacher, the language expert who gave me the books also gave me an extensive briefing - a course that took an entire day - on how to use the books to teach the alien. He said the reason he chose these particular books was because the original 1836 version of these books were used for three-quarters of a century to teach about four-fifths of all American school children how to read. No other books ever had so much influence over American children for so long. McGuffeys educational course begins in The Primer by presenting the letters of the alphabet to be memorized, in sequence. Children were then taught, step by step, to use the building blocks of the language to form and pronounce words, using the phonics method 41 (Footnote) which involves teaching children to connect sounds with letters. Each lesson begins with a study of words used in the reading exercise and with markings to show the correct pronunciation for each word. I discovered that the stories in the First and Second Readers picture children in their relationship with family members, teachers, friends, and animals. The Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Readers expanded on those ideas. One of the stories I remember was The Widow and the Merchant. Its kind of a morality tale about a merchant who befriends a widow in need. Later, when the widow proves herself to be honest, the merchant gives her a nice gift. The books do not necessarily teach you to believe that charity is expected only of wealthy people though. We all know that generosity is a virtue that should be practiced by everyone. All of the stories were very wholesome and they gave very good explanations to illustrate virtues like honesty, charity, thrift, hard work, courage, patriotism, reverence for God, and respect for parents. Personally, I would recommend this book to anyone! I also discovered that the vocabulary used in the book was very advanced compared to the relatively limited number of words people use commonly in our modern age. I think we have lost a lot of our own language since our Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence over 200 years ago! As instructed, I sat next to Airl in the interview room reading aloud to her from each successive book in the series of McGuffeys Readers. Each of the books had excellent, simple illustrations of the stories and subjects being taught, although they are very outdated by todays standards. Nonetheless, Airl seemed to understand and absorb every letter, sound, syllable and meaning as we progressed. We continued this process for 14 hours a day for 3 consecutive days without interruption, except for a few meals and rest breaks on my part. Airl did not take breaks for anything. She did not sleep. Instead she remained sitting in the overstuffed chair in the interview room, reviewing the lessons we had already covered. When I returned each morning to begin where wed left off, she had already memorized the previous lessons and was well into the next pages. This pattern continued to accelerate until it became pointless for me to continue reading to her. Although Airl did not have a mouth to speak with, she was now able to think at me in English. At the end of these lessons, Airl was able to read and study by herself. I showed her how to use a dictionary to look up new words she encountered. Airl consulted the dictionary continually after that. From then on my job was acting as a courier for her, requesting that reference books be brought to her in a steady stream. Next, Mr. Newble brought in a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. 42 (Footnote) Airl especially enjoyed this because it had a lot of pictures. After that, she requested many more picture books and reference books with photographs and drawings because it was much easier to understand the meaning if she could see a picture of the thing she was studying. Over the next six days books were brought in from libraries all over the country, I presume, because it wasnt more than a few more days before she had read through several hundred of them! She studied every subject I could imagine, and many other very technical things I never wanted to know anything about, like astronomy, metallurgy, engineering, mathematics, various technical manuals, and so forth. Later she began to read fiction books, novels, poetry and the classics of literature. Airl also asked to read a great many books on subjects in the humanities, especially history. I think she must had read at least 50 books about human history and archaeology. Of course, I made sure that she received a copy of the Holy Bible also, which she read from cover to cover without comment or questions. Although I continued to stay with Airl for 12 to 14 hours each day, most of that time during the following week had been spent without much communication between us, except for an occasional question she asked me. The questions were usually meant to give her a sense of context or to clarify something in the books she was reading. Oddly, Airl told me that her favorite books are Alices Adventures in Wonderland 43 (Footnote), Don Quixote de la Mancha 44 (Footnote) and One Thousand and One Nights 45 (Footnote). She said the authors of these stories showed that it is more important to have great spirit and imagination than great skill or power. I could not answer a lot of her questions, so I consulted with the people in the outer room for answers. Most of these had to do with technical and scientific things. A few of her questions were about the humanities. The depth of complex understanding and subtlety of her questions showed that she had a very penetrating intellect. Personally, I think she had already known a lot more about the culture and history of Earth than she was willing to admit when we started. I would soon discover how much more.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 01:25:27 +0000
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