Illiteracy vs. Alliteracy

Illiteracy vs Alliteracy

As a Tittle I school teacher with 75% of my students entering yearly that are functionally illiterate. We have BIG Problems today if this is the trend. As Title I teachers we function more like Sisyphus and less like Plato. Teachers and administra­tors at many schools have no idea how to match curriculum­, standards, expectatio­ns, and the high stakes mandates of performanc­e based assessment­. We have one option to save the left-behin­d and that is REAL Literacy. Giving this gift of literacy is paragon to all other reforms, curriculum­, or standards.

Struggling most of my public school life to overcoming Dyslexia and become moderately literate was accomplish­ed with the help of great authors and illustrato­rs not curriculum and standards. All the special education programs and canned reading (curriculu­m) programs killed all desire to read and write by age 12. What saved me was great books and the love of learning. The schools almost destroyed my love of learning as I filtered it through my dyslexic eyes.

My invented curriculum and standards at age 12:
Simply when I was 12, I wanted to learn how to read, so I could play and understand Dungeons and Dragons, and learn how to write heroic D&D campaigns with sensory rich detail that drew my friends into worlds vast in scope. What would my future be without the fantasy genre? 

Teach kids to read so they can find their own standards and curriculum­. Sean Taylor M.Ed

Alliteracy is the state of being able to read but being uninterested in doing so. This phenomenon has been reported on as a problem occurring separately from illiteracy, which is more common in the developing world, while aliteracy is primarily a problem in the developed world. 


Illiteracy is the inability to read and write. 
More to come! 


At what point do kids devalue reading?