When did you learn how to read?

[sweetnpetite]

I don't know when I learned. With my oldest, who is 7, we didn't teach him to read because we were afraid he would be bored in kindergarten. He was anyway, though. He has read all 5 Harry Potter books by himself- no other kids in his class can keep up with his reading. So, I don't think it matters when you learn if you have a love of books.

SJ

shesh!

You guys are making me feel dumb!

I'm only 'really smart'-- not 'super smart'

 

[sweetnpetite]

When i learned to read has been very much obscured by time... Dick and Jane, even Spot has been lost in time... The only memory left is one of me lay on cool grass on a summer morning reading.... It is vivid but the books title isn't, another thing lost to time...

I never read "Dick and Jane" but I do remember having this old book- it was an old school book, but I had it at home about a boy and a girl. I remember one story about Bessy the Cow. And something about milk coming in glass bottles. I used to underline and circle words in the book. the other book I remember marking up was a children's bible. It was very big and thick and had a wonderful expanation of the meaning of "The lord is my shepard" and the symbolism in it. Then, I had this red book that had probably a fake leather cover with an embossed look- I think there was a tree on the cover or something. It was fairy tales. There was a book about a pirate that I never read all the way but I think they sang "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" or something, and there was a story about a nymph or something like that named echo (who yelled back the echo's) and there was a story about a guy who was kissed by a dryad and became younger and his mother didn't know him anymore. Many I wish I still had that book- or knew what it was. That was a well loved book.

 

[sweetnpetite]

One really fucked up thing about where I went to elementary school is that in first grade they assign all the students to one of two reading groups. The advanced group and the slow group. However, in first grade, they haven't taught reading yet, so the way they decide who is advanced and who is slow by how well they know your parents and whether they are friends or not. My parents hadn't met my teacher before the reading groupd had been assigned and I was put in the slow group. While the advanced group was working on the books beyond Dick and Jane, I was stuck with the slow kids trying to hack their way through Dick and Jane, but I was reading small novels at home. I was reading Hardy Boys mysteries and Alfred Hitchcock Presents novels, as well as Eerie and Creepy adult horror comics. I was much more advanced than the advanced group.

As ridiculous as it may sound, my first grade teacher took an interest in fucking with me and keeping me down. I didn't realize it at the time and I don't have a persecution complex about it or anything, but several years later when I thought about all the things she did to me and the double standards she used against me, it seemed really obvious. She really fucked me over because in our school system, once you're in the slow group, you're in the slow group for life. Come to think of it, I'm glad she's dead. LOL.

I don't know if they did it on purpose to me, but I always seemed to get put in behind were i thought I should go.

Come to think of it- I think it was because I could never spell. And they put you in one group for reading and writing. They tested you on all these things and then they put you in the lowest group that you qualified for or something.

Anyway- in my Jr year of HS, (or I should say at the end of Soph year) they started having Advanced Placement and Honors English classes- you had to apply which included being interviewed. My Jr year I didn't make the cut. When they asked me what books I had read- I drew a blank! I couldn't think of a single book title. And anyway, I didn't read the 'right' things. I just read everything. The English teacher was definatley a 'book snob.' Anyway, my Sr year, she seemed a bit unsure but let me in anyway- and I did great, naturally. She was one of my favorite teachers, so I say she was a book snob with much love and respect. She did so much for me, I hardly even know were to start

 

[Xelebes]

I remember reading the grade one reader before kindergarten even started. I think the earliest would have been around 4 years of age when I started hetting through the Dr. Seuss books. I remeber enjoying reading in grade 1 as I do seem to remember trying to get to the section of the library where only grade 3's and 4's were allowed - just so I could read the books on dinosaurs.

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

I was 3.5 when I learned how to read... "Green Eggs and Ham".....but to keep it all in perspective...my son is 4 and he can't read a lick and I read to him all the time. I must not have passed on my super enormous and extra wrinkly brain.

~WOK

 

[MadBrit]

I can never remember not being able to read

I started writing erotica when I was about 13, but the teachers and staff at my boarding-school didn't call it "Erotica" they called it "filth" and referred me to a trick-cyclist.
It took me about 30 minutes to reduce the poor silly bastard to a gibbering wreck, and in the end they just left me to get on with it, thinking that I'd get it out of my system.

Of course, they had more chance of making the world go the opposite way around the Sun, but they had to try it their way I suppose

Now that I'm approaching 40, I still write a few lines occasionally, but laziness has captured me of late and I'm more content to read than write.

 

[scheherazade_79]

I was really, really slow I used to be more interested in video games and pets. I reached about 6 before my parents discovered that I was barely holding my own in class, and they freaked out. I was whisked down to the local bookshop with my feet barely touching the ground, and my mum spent hours and hours trying to get me to read, with no success.

Then one day I got up and read perfectly - totally out of the blue. I guess I just wasn't in the mood before.

 

[SlickTony]

I am convinced that in one way or another, reading is often ruined for kids.

I have been a subscriber to Analog since the 80s, and enjoy not only the fiction, but the many excellent articles and essays in it. I think the country would be better off if all our lawmakers had a subscription to it. But I dare say that most of them say they don't have time for stuff like that, and when they're not reading wads of policy/job-related stuff, they do well to read a few mainstream novels, and no genre stuff...it's too bad.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

I've long been of the opinion that everyone (lawmakers and non-lawmakers) ought memorize every word of a basic Logic textbook before being allowed to speak in public. What's Analog?

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I learned really fucking young and I suspect a lot of my early success was based on that. By first grade, the Kindergarden teacher was asking me to come in and read to the class. Somewhere in my first years of school I took my first shot at Dickens (still think he's stuffy as all get out). I read my first King and Bradbury books in Fourth grade. Did a book report on Cujo.

But then I was a prodigy back then, doing math three years above my level, constantly burying myself in whatever books my mother foolishly left lying around, started writing my first god awful stories and everything else.

But the school was against bumping kids up and a few things happened in succession for better and worse and I became the dumb sonuvabitch I am today.

Though, I still believe that learning to read is a skill better gained early and developed heavily. It helps in everything except social interaction and let's face it, most people are already screwed beyond help on that skill anyways.

That and the faster they learn speed reading, the faster they can learn to cram three books at once the day before big tests.