LEARNING TO READ is a rite of initiation to which schools pay more attention than any other accomplishment.
"The child learning to read is admitted into the communal memory by way of books," wrote the reading historian Alberto Manguel, "and thereby becomes acquainted with a common past which he or she renews, to a greater or lesser degree, in every reading."
This is why many people remember when and where they experienced the epiphany of reading. It's also why parents will move heaven and earth to help their children learn to read. The vast majority of people don't remember the moment they learned to add and subtract. Nor do parents whose kids are failing social studies move them from school to school, hire tutors or haul them for hours to and from school.
Reading also is a great equalizer. Parents of all races and economic classes want their children to read successfully. I recall a conversation with a teacher at one of Baltimore's inner-city public schools. "It's a myth that my parents don't care about the education of their children," she said. "They see [education] as the ticket out."
How passionate can people be about reading? They pray for it. Teresa L. Ankney found that out this summer under most unusual circumstances.
Ankney, a sociology professor at Hood College, was doing some volunteer mental health work among the Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in western South Dakota. Pine Ridge is in one of the nation's poorest counties, with an average family income of less than $4,000 and an unemployment rate of 80 percent.
Ankney said she was asked to attend a sweat lodge ceremony, the ancient Lakota ritual of healing and purification. "Until I got used to it, it was dark and hot and hard to breathe," recalled Ankney. But during the Lakota prayers at the end of the ceremony, Ankney heard the word "phonics."
"You can bet my ears perked up," said Ankney, an activist who lobbies across Maryland on behalf of children who have the reading disorder dyslexia. "When I went up to the man who had said the prayer after the ceremony, he told me that he was praying that his daughter would get the phonics she needed in school.
"I couldn't believe it. These people had no idea of my passion. Here I was surrounded by kind and loving people who are also among the most marginalized on earth, and they're praying that their children get phonics."
How passionate? Try enrolling your son at six schools before finding one where he learned to read.
