Literacy Autobiography.

        Told in five memories

Memory 1

When I was 4 my mother read a dozen Dr. Seuss books to me. These are my earliest memories related to reading. While I currently don't remember all of the books, my mother told me that I had all of the books memorized and that I used that memorization process to learn to read before I enrolled in kindergarten. As an aside I only discovered Dr. Seuss whimsical masterpiece Fox in Sox a few years ago and I did find a natural affinity for its alliteration, rhyme schemes, and various literary techniques.

As a young child I enjoyed these works so much that I would recite them while watching television or playing with toys. An odd but fascinating detail is that I remember Green Eggs and Ham as one of the books from my mother read to me before I was 5, and when I  recently tried to  memorize that work I achieved that goal without effort in less than five minutes. It took me half an hour to memorize William Blake's poem the "Chimney Sweeper". It is true that alliteration, rhyme, and repetition eases memorization, it is also true that the chimney sweeper is a much shorter work and is filled with lots of evocative imagery and metaphor which also aids in the memorization process.

I even remember reciting the Cat In The Hat in kindergarten from memory. When I began reading in class I already learned to read for fun. Most people who tell me they do not read for enjoyment also tell me there dominant memories of reading is reading page after page of some school assignment that they didn't want to read. Once they are done reading for the assignment they, don't want to read another word! Its seems simple when it is said plainly, but if we want students to read more then they should be encouraged to read material they find interesting. Society wouldn't function if we refused to read any texts we didn't find interesting in the first 5 seconds, but wouldn't society be a more interesting place to live if most people spent a little more time reading.

Memory 2

When I was 13 I read the biography of Bruce Lee. My step father has five black belts: so I always loved martial arts and Bruce Lee was a family favorite. What I learned from that book was not martial arts but Bruce Lee's philosophy. Bruce lee practiced martial arts during the 50's, 60's, and early 70's. At that time people did not like to mix different martial arts because they believed what ever martial they were practicing was the best one. Bruce lee was one of the first great martial artists to supplement his training by learning dozens of different styles. This meant that he could adapt to more variety of situations than anyone else he encountered and he became of the greatest martial artists of his time. All martial arts have strengths and weaknesses and Bruce lee would learn one style after the other and he as a fighter would work on his weaknesses until he was a well rounded world class expert.

To quickly go threw some details from the book. Bruce Lee practiced a style called Wing Chun and it gave him phenomenal hand speed and coordination, but when scientist measure the force of the punches thrown by Wing Chun practitioners they are almost twice as strong as an untrained 300 pound NFL player, but not as strong a lot of other styles, So he practiced boxing to sharpen his coordination even more and to add more power to his punches. Wing Chun also doesn't do any grappling, throwing, slamming, or joint locks so when fighting a wrestler or grappler, Wing Chun proponents are often man handled. Bruce lee studied Greco-Roman Wrestling, Catch Wrestling, Jui Jitsu, Judo, and Aikido to make himself a world class grappler.

This was important to me at the time because I was a musician and I didn't want to be hampered by thinking any one style of music was complete or better than the other. I wanted to be as well rounded in music as Bruce Lee was in martial arts. So I practiced jazz and classical and I dabbled in other genres. I am not pursuing music anymore but when I was pursuing my undergrad in psychology I remember thinking this would be really useful for teachers. While I think of myself as a math teacher I am more than happy to supplement my curriculum with relevant finding is psychology sociology anthropology etc. little did I know that a lot of people had beaten me to the punch. 

This approach does mean I will have to constantly challenge myself to work on my weaknesses. If I want to be as good as a math teacher as Bruce Lee was a Martial artist, then I have no choice.

Memory 3

When I was a senior in high school I read a book titled the Color of Water. This book was assigned by an English teacher and I associated school reading as skimming material to prepare me for tests. This book was the first time I experienced reading an assignment that I enjoyed. The book consists of two biographies. James McBride's autobiography and his biography of his mother. the chapters alternate between the two stories. I was assigned to read the book over the course of three weeks and read it three times in three weeks instead.

The most surprising thing about detail about the book is that James barely knew his mothers history before he interviewed her from the book. His mothers history was so painful that she didn't bother to ever talk about it. This woman raised 12 children in the 60's and 70's in the ghettos of Manhattan and all of her children went to college two of whom became medical doctors. It was shocking to me that you could know a person for 30 years and not know them well at all. James Mcbride constantly remarked on his surprise of his mothers story. The courage of a woman to allow herself to be excommunicated  from her Jewish family and to go into poverty to marry a black man, or the courage of a woman to tell the social workers she didn't need put her children in foster care she knew what she was doing. Raising 12 Children seems counter intuitive because I do not believe most people man or woman could raise 12 children by themselves and do half as good a job as James' mom. The courage to face racist and violent police officers in the 60's to protect her kids. The Courage to face drug dealers pimps and violent criminals to protect her teenage children. I feel like I could do those things but I know I could be wrong, And I am a 300 pound muscle bound, martial arts enthusiast freak of nature power lifter and she was a 100 pound old lady.

 Before I read this book I mostly read for fun. This was the first time I read anything and was emotionally affected by it. while it is great to read for your own enjoyment sometimes it is good to be challenged to do an activity outside of your comfort zone.  To quote a great mind " we must allow for the unexpected discovery   ( Commander Tuvak Star Trek Voyager). I discovered that I could be inspired by what I read. I was 18 at the time which is young by most standards, but at the time I remember thinking I should have known this already. His mother must have been intelligent courageous, creative, tenacious but also caring compassionate. All of her children felt loved and cherished. etc. I cant come up with enough positive adjectives to do her justice.

Memory 4

During my undergrad, I was once accused of cheating on a paper: I didn't cheat. The assignment was to pick a short story and write an analysis on it. The first paper was on Edgar Allen Poe's the "Fall of the House of Usher" but after I was accused of cheating he said do the assignment over so I choose  Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does a Man Need?". To prepare for a third story I read Dostoevsky's the Grand Inquisitor. This story affected me so much I make it a tradition to reread it every year around the time of my birthday.

The short story the Grand Inquisitor is a chapter from a 1000 page grand novel titled The Brothers Karamazov. The Grand Inquisitor is a story written by one of the major characters of the book and he is recounting the story to one of his brothers whom is also another major character of the book. The two characters often talk about the story as one character is telling the story to the other.

Story begins in heaven and Mary mother of Jesus is pleading with god to forgive the sinners burning in the lake of fire for forgiveness. God says how can I forgive them when my son has holes in his hands and feet from the barbarous technique of crucifixion. She begs all saints martyrs and angels to join her cause and god finally gives the souls the Easter weekend off every year and gives them those few days of respite from the lake of fire.

 Immediately I could tell that this story was about the meaning of suffering and an examination of our historical psychological and sociological responses to it. The previous chapter of the book is used to allow the character telling the story of the grand inquisitor to preface the story with many shorter stories of suffering innocent children. Most of those stories about children are based on true stories. This book made me think about suffering about the colossal amount of it in the world. It is easy to ignore suffering because it is so uncomfortable, but much easier to tolerate it if it is put into an aesthetically pleasing format. Perhaps this is why it is easier to watch a mournful melancholy film, but harder to learn about the true story the film is based on.This gives the reader the emotional distance necessary to process the material.

After the introduction the story takes place in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition and Jesus returns to earth and starts performing miracles. The church arrests him and tell him he will be burned alive in the morning. When the Grand Inquisitor hears that Jesus is going to be burned at the stake he rushes to Jesus cell and interrogates him. The bulk of the story is the Grand Inquisitor's attempt to goad a response out of Jesus by critiquing his first attempt to save mankind through redemption. He calls Jesus's crusade an utter failing. Just a few centuries after Jesus was crucified Christians were crucifying pagans in the same barbarous manner. He goes on to say during this christian age it is your religion that is the main perpetrator of violence. After admitting to working for Satan and thinking Jesus should have accepted Satan's offer during his temptations the grand inquisitor says Jesus acts as if he doesn't understand humans. he says humans are not strong enough to embrace salvation and rarely wise enough to even understand it. You don't save people by offering salvation but you save people by alleviating the suffering of the world.

However, somehow this turned into the Grand Inquisitor burning hundreds of heretics at the stake everyday. If anyone has failed it is the Grand Inquisitor.... I wouldn't call the Spanish Inquisition a success.

When I read it I thought I should do something to alleviate suffering and one of the many things I thought I could do was to teach. As a math teacher I would help students get into good colleges and improve their socio-economic status, and one of my fantasies is that one of my students will go on to do important work on important 21st century problems.

Memory 5

Three years ago I realized that Wikipedia had an article on every comic book, film, novel and manga I had ever half read watched or read so I took two weeks out of my life to devout 5 hours a day to reading only this kind of material. I became an encyclopedia of comic book lore and as an aside both of my brothers tend to know more than me in this area. This made me realize that we live in a world with more access to information than anytime in human history, and our access to information is growing at an exponential rate.

Because we have more access to information than ever before it is more important to be able to read than at any other time in human history. I believe this is true even with the amount of videos on the internet ready for consumption. It's also more important to be able to think critically about the content a text. The internet is filled with quack conspiracy theories and we all have to learn how to navigate through an age of over saturation of data.

When you read the history of comic books you realize that 70 years of comics means that there is a lot of conflicting stories out there. This means that you have to double and triple check your facts and try to confirm you information through independent sources. If  your second source received all of its information from the first source then you don't have two sources. That's why in science you want another researcher to duplicate the results of an experiment independent of the first researcher.

Wikipedia only works because there are thousands of people writing articles. It was Wikipedia that made me think about how many people literate people it takes for our society to function. Large products are produced by at least hundreds of people and sometimes more. Novels are on average written by one person but the publishing company hires teams of editors to proof read the novel. The publishing company also hires teams of advertisers, pubic relations, and marketing folks to create an interest in the book. The writer is usually influenced by at least a dozen or so authors who are also influenced by a dozen or so authors.
This means that all of us readers and writers are all influenced by each other, no one is an island to themselves and no one writes in a vacuum.