Maggie's Farm

As much as I like to bash my English teachers for being arbitrary and capricious, I would say the single MOST IMPORTANT series of classes I had in school were English. I hated English classes, hated them.

I suppose I am lucky in some regards, I had a series of teachers in grade school, and parents, siblings, cousins all, who loved to read. (To the despair of the teachers I suppose, I loved science fiction and not those standard reading list 'classics' that would bore paint off the wall.) My 5th & 6th grade teacher (same one both years) used to take 15 to 30 minutes 3-4 days a week and read a chapter to the class from some book. She was OLD, most probably in her late 50's, a real grandmotherly type, who loved kids, loved to read, and the attitude was apparent to her students. Mrs. Reed God rest her soul.

This "love to read" attitude carried me forward.... to a point I suppose. The standard English classics of High School at the time, Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights, Adam Bede caused severe mental lockup, if not for the rescuing of Authur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, etc. etc. etc. Mr Asimov's robot series rescued my young mind from the pits of despair over stilted earlier century english usage and phrasing. boooooorrrrrrriiiiinnnnngggg (we were too poor by some standards to afford the Cliff's Notes excerpting on the English Classics that the more affluent kids could buy. You think they read that stuff? Hah!)

But learning HOW_TO_READ was the important lesson. As I tried to teach my children, if you can read, you can do (almost) anything your heart desires. For once you know how to read, you can learn just about anything from books and other literature. The "reading comprehension" part comes with volume and practice.

Now late in my career, I see the failing of the children's lost ability to READ. I see it in casual business communication passed in endless "Forward", "Reply to all", and "CC'd" emails. I believe their inability and lack of love of reading is illustrated in their total lack of sentence structure and most all, ability to use and understand "spell check". (Spell check is no panacea either, but its a far sight better than NOT spell checking.) And proof reading? I occasionally fail at that myself, but come on! I know 5 year olds that have better sentence structure and word usage than some business writers.

Sheesh. I just am sounding old..........