Thermomixed Up Strikes Back! (The Work and Dignity Edition)

David Ryan

David Ryan is a boat builder and USCG licensed master captain. He is the owner of Sailing Montauk and skipper of Montauk''s charter sailing catamaran MON TIKI You can follow him on Twitter @CaptDavidRyan

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5 Responses

  1. I find I have the similar issues with reading as Matt Feeney. It’s my understanding that around the time I was learning to read, the Ontario school system was experimenting with different teaching methods (using phonics, or moving away from phonics, or… ahh, I don’t remember). I had wondered if I was just unlucky with the teaching method I experienced. I’ve had to train myself to be a better/faster reader. Some things work a it, but it kind of sucks the joy out of reading.

    Anyway, enjoyable read, Cap’n.Report

    • David Ryan in reply to Jonathan McLeod says:

      I’m 46, which meant I was in grade school smack dab in the middle of the 70s. Lots of new ideas about education in the US at that time. Probably I benefited from some. Quite sure others did me no good at all! Think Simpsons, Season 1, Episode 2.Report

      • I’m somewhat older. Our small-town school system was using some series of English textbooks that the author was in the process of writing, one per year. My class was at the leading edge, so each year we used the text he had just finished writing. He died before writing the ninth-grade volume. Instead of a whole-year of literature/whatever, for the spring semester my class did a full three-act play. Due to an accident of history, ninth grade was physically in the old high school which had a magnificent auditorium; really, it was a full-blown 300-seat theater. So we got to do the whole deal: casting, costuming, scenery flats, lighting, the cast learning their parts, and finally performances (it’s been a long time, but I believe we ended up doing six). Most entertaining English class I ever took. Not the most useful, but certainly the most fun.Report

  2. Artor says:

    Likewise, it’s interesting hearing other people’s experiences with reading. My mom ran a day-care from home when I was a toddler, and I had two older sisters, so I was steeped in an older kid’s learning environment long before I entered kindergarten. Consequently, I have no memory of ever NOT being able to read. I’d picked it up by age 4? 3? In high school, scheduling conflicts forced me into a remedial reading class one term. Frustrated by the fact that my reading abilities were far beyond those of the adult teacher, I went through 2 years worth of reading comprehension tests in one week and spent the rest of the time using that class as a free period.Report

  3. zic says:

    I found this fascinating:
    As a child I excelled at reading non-fiction, but struggled with fiction. I also struggled (and still do struggle) with spelling, or even simply omitting words or parts of words as I write. (No doubt this is frequently evident in my comments here.) What I’ve come to believe is that I read words as characters, with no real phonetic subvocalization, and I think this was a strategy I developed to deal with the fact that English spelling is haphazard. When I read, I understand the difference between “think” and “thinks” more by context than by the “s” on the end. This reading style served me well in nonfiction because I could quickly scan a page and extract the facts and relationships, without absorbing the prose style at all. But it doesn’t work well for fiction, especially sophisticated fiction. Just at this instant I’m realizing that the first time I really connected subvocalization with text was when a college writing professor told me, “Just write it the way you would say it.” I have always marked that moment as a profound leap forward in my ability to write, but I had never linked up the “psychomechanical” relationship between subvocalization, writing, and reading.

    Perfect description of my youngest. A machinist, an electronic musician, an auto mechanic (restores 1980’s European compact cars).

    Myself, & older child, somewhat, though we’ve a love of fiction that the younger misses.

    But much of the struggle, at least the struggle to write, settled with the age of 22 or so, and development of the frontal cortex. Spelling? Not so much.

    Thank you, David.Report