Re: Oddities

On 4/9/2025 11:31 AM, cyclintom wrote:

One of the things that has really puzzled me is the reaction of Liebermann and Flunky to my simoply saying that I read out aoll of the nun-fiction books in three libraries.
 What in heavens name would be unusual or unlikely about that?

If it's not unusual then we should be able to find others that have performed such a pedestrian feat rather readily......Anyone?

 While listening to Victor David Hansen

It's "davis", not "david"

Hoover Fellow at Stanford, said the reason. While he was teaching literacy,

"literacy"....lol

he started out with assigning 6 books starting with the Iliad and the Odyssy to his student and was by the late 60's forced to reduce this to 2.

Hanson didn't start his college professorship until 1984.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181015184140/http://www.fresnostate.edu/artshum/mcll/faculty-staff/hanson.html

 Much to his surprise rather than reading at the normal 180 words per minute,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749596X19300786
"For English silent reading it is 238 words per minute."

students were struggling with 40 or 50 wpm and they couldn't understand half of the words expected of a high school student, let alone a college student.

Post a link to what you were listening to. I'd like to opportunity to hear for myself he was lamenting his students only reading 40 - 50 words per minute.

 Suddenly that rang a bell: the reason that Flunky and Liebermann and to a lesser extend Krygowski found this unbelievable is because they are nearly illiterate.

"in this message "nun-fiction", "davis", "literacy", "normal 180 words per minute".....but I'm the illiterate one...Let's not forget Tommy thinks spelling isn't important on a resume...lol

They simply cannot believe that someone would voluntarily read, when it is so difficult for them.

I can guarantee I've read more than you in my lifetime.

We did not see this sort of disbelief from John or Andrew.

Andrew doesn't normally comment on such laughable claims.
John probably missed it

We are of an age that we were expected to be able to read. While they may not be as highly read on every subject, every few days, Andrew or John will post something referring to books that the other three either have never heard of or only heard the title in passing.

Reference please?

In our day MOST high school students were assigned the Iliad and/or The Odyssy.

OK, who was your least favorite character and why?

 While it is true that I didn't read more current books such as those aqssigned in writing or literacy coures, that was because it was entirely outside of my areas of interest. Liebermann at least has the excuse that English is his second language.

That's news to me, Is it true, Jeff?

But what excuse other than illiteracy would Flunky have?

Excuse for what?

Or while misspelling when you have trouble seeing the screen means that my touch typing is shitty,

Yet you can't figure out how to use a spell checker

why would spelling be so important to Frank if he didn't have such a microscopic vocabular?

I suspect the opposite is actually more true, and BTW, you forgot something in that sentence.

 Shadow found no trouble with my reading, because he is himselk well read in Spanish.

Shadow Likely is aware of your claim to have read the entire "nun"-fiction contents of three libraries.

Roger well read in English. Rolf in German. these people did not comment on myh reading volume. While it may not have been what they might do, they did not find it unusual.

That the didn't comment only means they didn't comment. I'm more than willing to bet they find the idea that anyone read three libraries worth of "nun"-fiction highly unusual, and in your case it's an outright fabrication.

 The reason for this is tha American Teacher's Union.

oh dear gawd.....

When questioned, my wife who herself taught reading and writing admitted that there had been a large drop in the literacy of teachers with the recognition of the Teacher's Union.

Yeah, I've seen the data showing teacher literacy being inversely proportional to teachers union membership...lol

During the pandemic, in THREE weeks, she taught her grandsons reading well enough to go from 2 years behind their grade level to 2 years ahead. That doesn't say a lot for people in Teacher's Unions.

If your grandkids were that far behind, why didn't she get more involved before that?
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