I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43700153

by ptr2voidStar • 5 years ago

225 107 5 years ago

bbc.co.uk

timonoko4• 5 years ago

On Google translate you can test new phonetic spelling. "Wii shäl miit tu dei in Nyy Jork" works best in Polish, Icelandic and Finnish. I suggest we just ignore weird sounds like θ and ð and just use "th" as "thö" sounds reasonably good in those languages.

timonoko4• 5 years ago

Correction: those languages seem to have already "th" == "θ".

tuukkah3• 5 years ago

That's weird as "th" is pronounced "th" in Finnish and there is no "θ" sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#Consonants

nayuki• 5 years ago

It would be nice if they used IPA instead of yet another informal nonstandard system.

timonoko4• 5 years ago

If you try "Wii shäl miit tu dei in Nyy Jork" in Google, it works quite well in Inglish too, except thö "Nyy Jork".

It would be easy to organize meeting of all Anglos and accept this as an alternate spelling. Polish have some weird sibilants, so that it could be the starting point.

arp2426• 5 years ago

I can understand what's intended with "Wii shäl miit tu dei in Nyy Jork" without even knowing what system is being used. In IPA this is "ʃæl miːt təˈdeɪ ɪn njuː jɔːk", and I have no idea what that says at all.

I find IPA fairly inaccessible for the casual user. There's a reason other systems exist.

nindalf2• 5 years ago

Is this comment chain supposed to be related to the story about the teacher who couldn’t read? Seems like a software bug.

timonoko4• 5 years ago

Yes. I forgot to explain.

I learned to read in one month like any other Finnish child ever. But it took a month longer to understand what I was reading. Like my small brain was using all its capacity in pronunciation and I forgot what I just said.

English is like Chinese, you have to learn all pictorials and their meanings. Learning the pronunciation is different process. That is why English takes years and years to learn.

jmercouris• 5 years ago

Incredible, but I still can’t help but feel like he is an idiot.

Noticing an obvious deficiency in your life and doing nothing about it is in fact idiotic.

xupybd• 5 years ago

Sometimes we hide something as a child and it gets so ingrained in us that we don't question the child's logic. We just live life hiding something that a child decided had to be hidden.

SamPatt• 5 years ago

He did fix the deficiency. It just took longer than most.

inglor_cz4• 5 years ago

"Noticing an obvious deficiency in your life and doing nothing about it is in fact idiotic."

So, how many people are overweight and fat these days?

Maybe some things aren't easy to solve. If someone told me to learn writing in Chinese, I would be very creative in finding ways how to do without. It is just too hard for me at 43 years of age.

People with certain disabilities may find English spelling (a notoriously tricky terrain full of illogical exceptions) similarly overwhelming.

gnicholas• 5 years ago

(2018)

1MachineElf• 5 years ago

His says his writing level is roughly 6th grade, and the story reads like it too. I believe it. Illiteracy was the standard for humanity not long ago, and yet there were still teachers.

mkl• 5 years ago

Despite the first person perspective, at the bottom it says "Written by Sarah McDermott". Maybe he dictated it, or parts of it.

dorkwood• 5 years ago

The story was written by the journalist, Sarah McDermott, and not by John Corcoran himself.

larusso• 5 years ago

First time I read about this (Not from the US). I wonder what‘s with his Highschool/College degree? I mean by his own words he said that he cheated big time.

hliyan2• 5 years ago

Also not from the US, but I think read about him many many years ago in Reader's Digest. It was a long form that had a lot more information. I recognized the story because of this anecdote:

"I passed my blue book out the window to him and he answered the questions for me."

But the Reader's Digest version mentioned that he was dyslexic (which I don't think the BBC article mentions) and that he taught almost exclusively using audio/visual presentations, activity based learning and guest speakers.

denton-scratch2• 5 years ago

It does sound like he was dyslexic ("for me it was like opening a Chinese newspaper "). But the speed at which he eventually acquired reading and writing doesn't seem consistent with dyslexia; I figure there was some other problem interfering with hiis literacy.

cfn• 5 years ago

I knew someone more or less like him. My friend went through high school and later even got into university. He was able to read but very slowly and he read everyday. He had this very large (and complicated) romance with him and he would read one page per day pointing at each word painfully slowly. I have no idea if he managed to understand the story or if it was just an exercise. Just like the person in the article, he was very popular with girls and managed to pull a number of similar stunts to go through tests and exams.

Eventually he dropped out of university and got a job. This was the 90s and he started playing with computers and something just clicked inside. Sudenly he could read normally and became quite proficient with computers back then. I suppose it was some kind of learning disability that went away with time and persistence on his part.

It also shows that schools are not equiped to deal with learning disabilities and push those pupils forward in the hope the problem goes away. BTW, this was in Europe, so it is not a US specific problem.

camjohnson26• 5 years ago

The author of the article was eventually diagnosed as dyslexic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Corcoran_(author)

hogFeast• 5 years ago

If he had called on me I was going to get out of my chair and take two steps, grab my chest, drop to the floor and hope they called 911.

Used this tactic many times myself. You pull it once, they call 911. You pull it twice, they usually do it again. You pull it three times...an awkward silence fills the room...after the sixth time, my boss just carried on with the meeting, and I stopped getting invited. I think they call this life hacking.

I now do it everywhere...in the line at the DMV clutches heart, wife nagging clutches heart, kid wants new shoes clutches heart. People say you can't outrun your problems...in reality, all you need to do is stay calm, pretend to have a heart attack, and your problems just melt away. I think I am going to write a self-help book.

going_ham• 5 years ago

Can you elaborate how you fake the heart attack when you are in different situations? Your idea seems really interesting as a life hack. There must be specific ways to clutch your heart?

amelius• 5 years ago

Put a self-inflating armband around your upper arm (like those in blood-pressure meters), let it inflate without anyone noticing, and the pulse in that arm will disappear.

ghoshbishakh• 5 years ago

I still don't get it. How is it possible that he managed to go through the system.

IntrepidWorm4• 5 years ago

Because despite his illiteracy, he is a clever and resourceful person- with enough cleverness and a bit of luck, its possible to do lots of stuff like this. He was able to circumvent the barriers imposed by illiteracy through deception, careful manipulation, or outright swindling. While iliteracy is definitely a huge concern in the world, I hope I'm not the only one out there to admire him for grifting his way through multiple schools and jobs...!

IntrepidWorm4• 5 years ago

Case and point: I wear glasses. In fact, I'm almost blind without them: my effective vision ends at about 3 feet. Though I am able to perceive distinction between large objects and people, everything dissolves into a fuzzy mess. In American public schools (in the northeast US, at least) in the early 90s, schools would test student vision every year during elementary/primary school years. They would use the traditional eye test sheet, with strings of letters in smaller and smaller font vertically stacked, to be read at a distance.

It took them 5 years to figure out that I couldn''t see anything other than what was immediately in front of me. I was a smart kid, and never had problems in the classroom as I sat in the front row and listened very carefully to what was going in.

I would memorize the eye test sheet while standing in line at the nurses office, waiting to be tested. They never suspected anything was amiss, and routinely reported to my parents that I had perfect vision.

I was finally discovered when my father, trying to be clever while we were out shopping, asked me about an ice cream parlor in the distance. Despite the name of the shop being written clearly above the shopfront, I bombed the question and my father realized that I couldn''t see what he was talking about.

inglor_cz4• 5 years ago

"I would memorize the eye test sheet"

There were so many of us...

Aerroon• 5 years ago

I have poor vision as well. We didn't have eye sight tests. I couldn't see anything written on the blackboard for at least a few years. I realized I had poor vision and even timidly asked about it a few times. It went nowhere and just like any kid, I felt like it was my own personal moral failing that I couldn't see well enough. (Every failing as a kid feels like that.)

The result was that I spent a few years not being able to see what was written on the blackboard. I had to mostly figure it out by myself. The worst were the tests that teachers only wrote on the blackboard. I'd inevitably have to quietly ask someone around me to tell me what the questions were. I don't think I failed a single test because of it even though talking was forbidden.

The funny part was that when my parents eventually took me to an optometrist they tried to convince me that wearing glasses won't be that bad. I distinctly remember that situation because I kept thinking "I asked for them years ago!"

Eventually my eyesight became bad enough again that the glasses I had didn't cut it anymore. I fell a little bit back into my old habits, but it wasn't as bad as before. Sitting closer and all of that helped immensely.

arp2426• 5 years ago

Why would you memorize the eye tests? You were afraid that your low vision was "discovered"? Wouldn't that be a good thing?

I'm actually really confused by your story to be honest, I think there's some part that I'm missing somehow.

fastaguy88• 5 years ago

I did very well in elementary school, though by 4th or 5th grade I often asked to be seated near the front because of the “glare” on the black board. I did not realize I could not see until a science class about clouds, and I could not tell that the sky was overcast, not blue. I was also surprised to see that street lights were points, not large haloes.

I’ve heard many similar stories from nearsighted friends.

Broken_Hippo• 5 years ago

A combination of cheating, life hacks, folks enabling him, and being labeled as a bad - and then good - student, which diverted people's attention away from his lack of reading.

And to be fair: Some of this was the time period. We catch a few more learning disabilities now (not enough, though) and have more tools to help. We just didn't screen so much in the 50s.

booleandilemma• 5 years ago

He mentions he got girls to do his homework for him. When half the population wants to see you succeed you’re going to have an easy time.

code_duck• 5 years ago

His success at gaming the system has plenty of applicability to modern issues with coordinated cheating, purchasing papers, plagarism and so forth. Sports stars who somehow go through school without learning anything academic is a serious issue in the modern day as well. That higher view of the issue like a more interesting topic than the sensational extent to which he fit the bill by falling short of even literacy.

As for him, he was apparently resourceful and charismatic, good at sports, had adequate innate math skills and was dedicated to gaming the system.

"So I was going to be a teacher's pet and do everything necessary to pass that system. I wanted to be an athlete - I had athletic skills, and I had maths skills"

"I ran around with college kids, I dated the valedictorian - the student with the highest grades who gives a speech at the graduation ceremony, I was the homecoming king"

alexashka2• 5 years ago

Rather than learning how to read, it'd do everyone a whole lot more good to admit that some people are not cut out for school and to send them off to work when they're teenagers.

This poor guy has felt bad his entire life when he could've been an excellent coal miner instead.

Every place I've worked is filled with people like this guy to one extent or another - fearful parents pushing their kids to go to school and pretend to be something they're not. Then people who have an affinity for thinking have to navigate these insecure idiots (sorry, medical term) their entire careers.

It makes workplaces hell for everyone involved, both the idiots and the capable.

People ought to do what they are capable of doing. People ought to be treated with dignity and respect. If we get that far this century, boy, that'd really be something.

ramblerman• 5 years ago

It makes workplaces hell for everyone involved, both the idiots and the capable.

I think your attitude is what makes the hell tbh.

We should definitely teach everyone to be literate, and not just decide they should be "excellent coal miner"s instead.

Ntrails2• 5 years ago

Slight devils advocate. Is everyone happier with mandatory schooling for longer? It isn't that we shouldn't give everyone the chance to learn, but maybe some people really would be happier dropping out at 14 and just getting a job. Being at school where all you do is fail does not make for a good life experience!

I think the answer is probably that we don't want parents pulling kids out of school early just to earn money for the family? So legally requiring they stay at school longer protects.

Just a thought

opheliate• 5 years ago

My (much) older brother has severe dyslexia. He's bright, and now owns his own business, but in his school, they'd already reached the capacity for SEN provision, and he was refused a diagnosis. He could have massively improved his literacy if help was just available, but at that time, it simply wasn't. Branding anyone who doesn't immediately take to school an "idiot" is incredibly myopic.

alexashka2• 5 years ago

Replace the word idiot with 'fool' and see if your point still applies.

In other words, the problem is not stupid people (or people with learning disabilities, which I happen to have btw), who undoubtedly exist. The problem is foolish people who think they can cheat their way through life.

My contention is that we're sinking under the weight of foolish people cheating their way into positions they have no business being in.

Foolish as in lacking wisdom. Not foolish as in lacking ability to do calculus. We have plenty of calculus, we severely lack wisdom :)

kzrdude• 5 years ago

He's not an idiot, he would have gotten much further, and had a better life, if school had helped him to learn to read and write. Some children need extra help/support lessons (and nowadays usually get it).

CTDOCodebases• 5 years ago

I once worked with a Chef that couldn't read. He made it through culinary school, had his own catering company at one point and owned two residential properties. He was a charismatic guy but very cunning and deceptive. I figured it out after a couple of weeks working with him. I tried to offer him help but he just brushed it off and said that he was dyslexic. Smart phones have many features that make it easy for illiterate people to survive.

cwdegidio2• 5 years ago

My grandfather, born in the back hills of West Virginia, was forced to leave school when he was around 6 years old to chop lumber so his family had enough to survive. After he left WV, he worked a press at a forge and was a landscaper at night an on the weekends. He never has learned how to read, and sadly he is in the early stages of dementia so I think that ship has sailed. But... he was always a whiz with finances.

He was the kind of guy that can take a dollar on Monday and give you back $100 on Friday. He owns, I believe at this point, 8 properties including his own home.

I always regret not staying back home for a bit to try and help him, but I think by the time I would have been in a place to do it he would have told me he had just accepted the fact he would never learn to read. I can't imagine going through life like he did, how much I would hav missed.

But it also was always an inspiration to me. Every time I would feel my motivation for something academic or professional start to wane, I remind myself that this man who gave me and my siblings anything to help us succeed didn't get to do 90% of the things I take for granted.

It's really sad to see some folks on this thread call this man an idiot. From first hand experience, that's not necessarily the case and often people like him become far more clever than I'll ever be as a means of survival.

inglor_cz4• 5 years ago

One of my grandfathers was illiterate as well. Not a finance whiz, but not stupid either. He was a rural blacksmith and he was rather good with engines and small appliances, repairing them for paying customers.

This is also a good moment to meditate on "right of repair". As recently as approx. 1970, most of the machinery in daily use could be repaired by a skillful, even though illiterate, person. The advent of semiconductors did away with that and nowadays even highly qualified people struggle to update a firmware against the vendor's wishes.

cwdegidio2• 5 years ago

It's interesting you mention this. I got a chance to visit the family holler (rural mountain farmstead) when I was a teenager. Everyone back there was still driving old pickups, most of their tools were pretty old as well. You could tell a lot of things were kept just because of that very idea that they could repair them.

I know my grandfather, growing up as poor as he did, NEVER threw anything broken away until he was absolutely convinced that it could not be repaired. I wouldn't be suprised if most of his gardening equipment was from the 60's and 70's.

hellbannedguy• 5 years ago

The cleverest, wealthy guys, I know, barely finished high school.

I'm talking self made guys, and not guys from wealthy sympathetic families whom fund their kids until something turns a profit. Jonny at Dentek--you don't count, but daddy was a wiz.

If I had a child, buying real-estate, and learning the stock market, would be right up there with the three R's.

NonContro• 5 years ago

What you are describing is rent-seeking. Its easy to make money when house values and the stock market are expanding greater than the cost of money, particularly when you buy in at the start of the bubble.

Typically the limitation for real estate ownership is lack of access to credit, or a stable job enabling you to stay in one place.

TheRealNGenius• 5 years ago

Totally believable. I've had math teachers say they can't write, and language teachers say they can't math

Ichthypresbyter• 5 years ago

A friend who worked as a doctor in the Fens of East Anglia said that many of the older farmers she treated (in the early 2010s) were essentially illiterate. If she gave them a form or a letter, they would hand it to their wife to read because they considered reading to be women's work.

rappatic• 5 years ago

This is so similar to the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson. In the world of the Stormlight Archive, called Roshar, men from the Vorin religion are not expected to be able to read (it is considered even blasphemous). Even many scholars cannot read or write and instead dictate to their wives to write down. This led to many women secretly making corrections to their husbands' work in the margins!

BrandoElFollito• 5 years ago

This also shows how poor the school system was it they did not uncover his illiteracy earlier. In France at least there was such an amount of loud reading at school that it would be hard to hide.

I ready the article with a strong dislike for the guy since I knew he was a teacher. I was pissed off for the pupils.

But it was not that bad, he was a teacher of PE where beside a limited technical knowledge (at the level he was in) the important part are social skills. So maybe it was for the better after all.

novalis78• 5 years ago

In 2008 when my kids went to VPK in Florida I was surprised to find out why they memorized words instead of learning how to read. The lady I spoke about this was a veteran teacher of 25 years. She said it was all BS and that a decade or two earlier they had used a book called ‘Learn how to read in 100 lessons’. With that systems, she said, they never had anyone fail. Every child that passed through learnt reading. She said it was like a miracle. But, at some point, the higher ups fell into the trap of having to introduce new regiments and systems because of ever changing fashions. They were forced to introduce silly approaches, changing them every few years, leading to kids suddenly unable to read. Whenever she met parents she would tell them about this book and everyone had success with it and was as shocked as I was how it worked and how it was missing from the school curriculum. I ended up teaching all of my children how to read with it. It’s one of the most precious experiences. They all learnt to read at a very early age. There are many stories like this about writing and early math. Many years later, I read the episode In Feynman’s book ‘Surely you must be joking’ on his encounter with school text books and his disappointment - to say it lightly. One great experiment I can highly recommend is collecting textbooks from the 20th century and compare the decades and (basic) skills taught.

frogpelt• 5 years ago

Is this it?

https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...

fn-mote• 5 years ago

With that systems, she said, they never had anyone fail. Every child that passed through learnt reading. She said it was like a miracle.

From someone familiar with the trenches of teaching: claims of 100% success need to be met with skepticism. There could be other classes where the lower performing children go (and fail).

There is actually a lot of research on how to teach reading. I'm not saying every school district uses research-supported materials, but I am saying nostalgia for decades-gone-by methods of teaching should be looked at with a (very) critical eye. Who is successful? Who is not? Are there alternative approaches for students for whom the main approach does not work?

On this specific claim: VPK = voluntary pre-kindergarten. Presumably this teacher is not claiming that 100% of children are learning to read before kindergarten? To critically evaluate this claim, one would have to know the grade level being taught. If they were teaching introductory reading to 7-8 year olds (instead of typical US kindergarten ~5 years old), then success rates would be higher... And in fact one of the trends in education has been pushing the skills to lower grade levels, where they (of course?) become more difficult to master - which makes these claims plausible but again, you need to know if you are comparing the performance of 2nd graders from decades ago with kindergarteners now.

daniel-s• 5 years ago

Can someone who has read the whole thing spoil it and tell me how someone illiterate wrote a big, long article for the BBC?

namenotrequired• 5 years ago

He did learn to read and write eventually.

But going by the last line, this article was written by a certain Sarah McDermott and not by John Corcoran

aymendjellal• 5 years ago

He eventually learned how to read later in his life (after his teaching career!) by seeking help at his local library adult literacy initiative.

edge17• 5 years ago

last line,

Written by Sarah McDermott.

high_byte4• 5 years ago

waiting for the next article, "I was CTO for 17 years, but couldn't code"

siva7• 5 years ago

the role of a CTO isn't either about coding ;)

high_byte4• 5 years ago

and a teacher's isn't about reading :D

arp2426• 5 years ago

I know you're joking, but I have actually had coworkers who literally could not program at all. And I'm not talking about high-pressure situations like interviews, non-realistic examples like algorithms, or a one-off fluke: they consistently couldn't program even the most basic of stuff.

How these people managed to stay employed as programmers is doing non-programming tasks and such, and copy/paste from Stack Overflow.

high_byte4• 5 years ago

haha that was expected. I'm waiting to hear about imposter managers. and no, not imposter-syndrome managers, and not managers who are not expected to know how to code. I mean actual imposters who are expected to code, can't, and still nailed high profile positions.

rytsEa• 5 years ago

I don't know about CTO positions but I do know people working as Soft. Engineer barely able to code.

Funny enough -as in the article- they are usually attracted to teaching (medium posts, best practice talks, youtube videos...) and mentoring/managing positions. Maybe as a way to escape from coding. Or maybe they want to safe others of struggling with the same problem they have. I don't know.

high_byte4• 5 years ago

As the saying goes, "Those who can't do - teach". I get it, it's a position you can't fail. You're the boss, you always learn (a day prior) and you always "know best".

wyclif• 5 years ago

I used to be an ESL teacher for foreign students transitioning to English in the USA before I was in tech. I've also taught high school English, Latin, and History. These days the only English teaching I do is helping adults learn to read. John Corcoran's story is incredibly inspiring and courageous. It's hard to imagine the amount of courage it took for him to go public with his illiteracy. It's never too late to right a wrong in your life. If you know an adult who cannot read, please encourage them to seek help. There are many people who are generous in donating their time to teaching reading skills in a non-judgemental and caring way.

hmwhy2• 5 years ago

Maybe I'm joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there.

I'm all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get away with it (please read what he actually did if you haven't — it wasn't a simple case of cheating).

I have personally seen a lot of academic misconducts that went unpunished that makes cheating in exams seem seem mundane. Fake results that academics don't own up to/just blame their students when proven wrong; made-up results so that a thesis would look better; lying about publications to get scholarships, etc. Nobody ever gets punished and some would eventually go on to hold important positions.

Reading the "supportive" comments in this thread is pretty demoralising for me.

hliyan2• 5 years ago

I agree in principle. But I think there has to be a difference in punishment between unrepentant perpetrators who get caught, and perpetrators who come forward on their own volition. If I remember the original Reader's Digest article, this person was already held to account many years ago -- he lost all his credentials, qualifications and not to mention respect and credibility. Even the original story was published much later. If we continue to pounce on people like this many years after the fact, we're only discouraging others with a guilty conscience to come forward.

hmwhy2• 5 years ago

Thank you very much for taking the time to address my comment, it has given me some food for thought.

baron816• 5 years ago

Yeah, this is kind of a Frank Abagnale type story. He did some incredible yet dishonest and criminal things, but redeemed himself later in life. I’m sure this guy bullied a lot of people to get them to help him cheat. He spent 40 years pretty much as an asshole—he had stolen a life that he hadn’t earned, and had deprived his students of a qualified educator.

Maybe the moral of the story is that people can change and become positive contributors to society. Think of all the people who have been locked up for decades for crimes they committed as teenagers. They were just thrown away by society without a chance for redemption. This is part of what Black Lives Matter means to me—there’s a primitive impulse in people’s brains to say they’re criminals and they won’t amount to anything and just cause harm. This guy got a chance that was denied to millions of black youths.

tashi• 5 years ago

I haven't seen any comments that praise him for cheating or stealing or faking his way through being a teacher. The only praise I see is for his learning to read and then coming out to tell his story.

iammisc• 5 years ago

I agree, what this man did was criminal. It doesn't matter how he felt about it, or the great redemptive arc the story talks about (him learning to read eventually), the truth is he short-changed a lot of children on a proper education.

jccalhoun• 5 years ago

Honestly, it sounds unbelievable. I absolutely can believe that people go through life without learning to read. I'm a college teacher and I've met them.

The lengths he went to in college, however, seem so incredible that I am skeptical. Stories like Richard Montainez's claims of inventing flaming hot cheetos and Frank Abagnale's claims of impersonating have been found out to be false so I need actual proof before I believe these kinds of stories are true.

arp2426• 5 years ago

This guy was born in 1939. These events happened in the 50s. It's been a long time, and at no point is the article saying of even implying it's a good thing: it's just some young person struggling to get by doing what he could because he thought it was the only way to get anywhere in life.

I don't understand why some people feel the need to be so damn judgemental and moralistic about things.

BeFlatXIII• 5 years ago

It’s a natural consequence of a culture that praises competition. “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” is the motto of those who only have a tenuous chance at success. No point accepting your “just” lot in life: may as well cheat if the consequences from cheating aren’t that much worse than the expected quality of a life lived legitimately.

aaron695• 5 years ago

he committed crimes to get there.

I don't consider cheating in exams a crime so I'll assume you mean breaking and entering.

I doubt the story, but I saw many people do similar breaking and entering for pranks at uni so have no real problem with that.

I also had access to a library of exams. Once I went to an exam to steal? a copy for next year, but I couldn't work out how to get it out of the room. This is what hackers do, test limits on conventional systems. I also did a lot of work.

You seem to be confusing a job (academia) with his life as an undergrad student, they are not the same.

He worked hard at Uni the way he/BBC tells it, that's good enough for me. I don't believe his story, I am sure it's not as clean as he says, but unless you have the info I'm commenting on the BBC tale.

hackeraccount• 5 years ago

There a funny short story I read in H.S. - The Verger by Somerset Maugham - about a guy who's in a position not unlike this. He's illiterate but competent. He doesn't bother to hide it though and is fired from is job as a verger because of that. It's a short read as I remember so I won't ruin the end but the punch line really stuck with me for some reason.

pfrrp• 5 years ago

Great story. He’s an excellent speaker and very charismatic.

For those interested he has a non profit focused on teaching reading and writing: https://www.johncorcoranfoundation.org/

mmmuhd• 5 years ago

I told my friends about this article,they replied no this could never happen in the US, this could only happen in countries like Nigeria. What a world we live in.

jasonhansel• 5 years ago

Here's a question: what can be done to make tech more accessible for illiterate people? That seems to be a side of accessibility that usually gets overlooked.

ajsnigrutin• 5 years ago

Put symbols and images on stuff... like we already do on most devices. Play, stop, pause, fastforward and reverse are pracitcally never written out in text.

In reality, teaching them to read first, would be best.

sparrish• 5 years ago

The first failure of his illiteracy sits solely with his parents.

So many of us parents put the burden of our children's learning on teachers when the responsibility is squarely ours.

If my son is in 5th grade and can't read, it's my responsibility to teach him or get him the help he needs to be able to learn.

marviio• 5 years ago

My grandfather was a teacher and in the 50s he started noting that trouble learning to read/write wasn’t linked to lack of intelligence. He started groups for kids (mostly guys) with what we now call dyslexia and tried to help them. He had to invent material and methods.

On his eightieth birthday some of his students, now in their 50s, told how they had always felt stupid until he showed them they were not. Now they had businesses and successful careers.

I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

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