Charles Ungerleider, Professor emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if
authorship is acknowledged]
Education is one of the means for achieving social justice: ensuring that everyone in society is treated fairly, that the dignity and rights of all human beings are respected, and that resources are equitably distributed. That is why education is sometimes called the great equalizer.
It
is not surprising that Mother’s Day prompted me to think about my mother, who
has been dead for almost 25 years. She was an elementary school teacher who
taught for several years when she first completed her teacher preparation in
the 1920s and again from 1960 until her retirement in the late 1970s. She was
well into her 70s when she retired.
Although
most of my mother’s generation of elementary teachers had only one year of
preparation beyond high school, my mother had two years of teacher preparation
beyond her high school degree.
My
mother taught grade one for almost her entire career. Her last grade one class enrolled
35 students. Many of the students lived in publicly subsidized housing because
their parents were receiving income assistance. Many of the children in the
area had little exposure to reading before coming to school.
My
mother was proud that year-in and year-out all of the children leaving her
inner-city grade one classroom were reading at grade level. I recall asking her
about her teaching, she said plainly, “I’ve never met a child I couldn’t teach
to read. It may have been difficult for them and for me, but all of the
children in my classes began grade two reading at grade level.”
I
asked her what she thought accounted for her success. She replied, “On the
first day of school, I would tell the children that they were very lucky to be
in school because they would learn a very powerful secret – they would learn
how to read. I’d say, ‘Once you learn to read, no one can hide anything from
you. Learning to read will be very hard, but I will help you. I have never met
a child who couldn’t learn to read.’ Then I would read them a story that I knew
they would like.”
The
methods my mother used were the ones she was taught during her two years of
teacher preparation in the 1920s. “I read to the children every day, often
twice a day. Who doesn’t like to have someone read to them?” she asked.
“We
used basal readers,” my mother explained. “You know, the readers with Dick,
Jane, Spot, and all of that. But every child also had a library card. Each
week, beginning in September, I would take them to the school library to select
their books. In my last few years of teaching, during choosing time the
children might select a cassette tape with a story that they could listen to
while they followed along in the book.”
I
asked her whether many of the children struggled with reading. “It varied from
year to year, but there were always children who struggled. Some might not have
had much opportunity to hear and handle books. Others – even the ones with
books at home – struggled too. But they all learned to read at grade level by
the end of the year.”
Reading
– perhaps more than any other capacity – is life changing. Those who can read
are more apt to succeed in school, graduate, and make a life for themselves
afterward. It is a capacity that often distinguishes them from those who do not
achieve success in school, often leave school early, and have diminished life
chances.
The
priority my mother placed on learning to read meant that she did not always
address all the topics recommended for grade one students. “None of the
principals I worked for ever complained that the children were short-changed.”
My
mother would describe herself as an ordinary classroom teacher, but I think she
was a social justice warrior for having taught all the students in her grade
one class to read at grade level. If I had told her that, she would have said,
“Oh, go on!”