I vaguely remember being in Miss Maggie’s 1934 first grade class. Still, I recall some of the names of my classmates and most surprisingly, can recite from some of the early wall posters used to teach reading skills. Baby Ray was the principal character. He had a little dog. He loved his little dog. The little dog loved Baby Ray.
The mind is a wonderful memory bank storing in its billions of nerve endings (neurons) all the experiences of life. Now if I could just recall my password for my online account.
Today when children enter the first grade, they already have had years (literally) of schooling experience meaning that what I learned in the first grade initially, most of today’s students already know and more. If you want to be impressed with their accomplishments, review the list of things these 6 year olds should already know before being seated as first graders. It’s amazing.
Adults sometimes try to ‘hide’ information from little ones by various deceptions such as whispering, eye movement (wink) and other body gestures, but one method used to keep children from knowing certain details of a conversation being overheard is to S P E L L the word. For instance, the adult wants to comment on a person but not in a favorable light but trying to hide that information from the child, she simply spells for example the subject word A U N T J A N believing that the child would not be able to understand the spelling therefore the secret is kept. One would hope.
The three, the mother, daughter and a friend were on the way home after leaving an out of state school and the conversation included comments about the weather, a movie, the current news when the friend made a comment about the child’s teacher saying she admired her patience and skill in teaching these little one, but she added a less than complimentary remark but one not meant for the ears of the little one in the group. She stated that Miss Ann, bless her heart, was one more ugly person. So instead of saying the word ‘ugly’ she simply spelled the word: U G L Y. That was a sure way, she thought, to keep the remark on an adult only level. Wrong. (Another technique used to keep the ears of little ones from hearing/knowing the identity of a person being mentioned is to SPELL the name of the person backwards, thus TOM would be MOT and spoken as such.)
The child had not seemed to be interested in the adults’ conversation but once the word ‘ugly’ was spelled, she became alert much to the surprise and distress of the two adults.
“U G,” she repeated. “That sounds like ‘UGH’ with the ‘LY’ makes the sound of a word I know. It’s ugly.”
The adult was somewhat embarrassed; first that she had even made the statement and second that the child had been able to understand the spelling of the word. She was in the FIRST grade after all and was not expected to have developed such a skill!
But she had.
The subject was quickly changed, and the child seemed to have forgotten that the new word she knew how to spell and to pronounce was even uttered.
Words cannot be recalled once said or S P E L L E D.
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Bill Lee, PO Box 128, Hamer, SC 29547
