Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Emails to Dr. David Boulton - 2015 (Part 1 of 3)



On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 7:03 AM, luqman michel ;luqmanm2002@yahoo.co.uk; wrote:

Dear Dr.David Boulton,
I am writing an article based on videos of the Children of the Code and have one question for you.

There were 6 kids in the video below who had various excuses for not reading.


Dr. Why couldn't these kids read?

Thank you and kind regards,
Luqman Michel




David Boulton
4.9.2015
Hello Luqman,

There are no single simple answers to your question. Each child who struggles does so for reasons specific to their entire life history of learning. 

Here are few pointers for looking deeper...

I recommend you read the right-hand column explanations that accompany our video menus here:  http://www.childrenofthecode.org/Tour/index.htm

1) Because educators have misconceptions about what reading is. http://www.learningstewards.org/what-is-reading/  and http://www.childrenofthecode.org/Tour/c3/thinking.htm


3) Because of the ways 'shame' (often) disables learning: http://www.learningstewards.org/when-learning-hurts-toxic-learning/

Thanks and good luck!

David


4.9.2015
Hello Dr David,
Thank you for your prompt response.
I will go through your links and get back to you.
Much appreciated.
Luqman Michel
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
5.9.2015
Hi Dr,
I stayed up most of last night to read all the links you had sent me.
There are a few things I would like to discuss with you.
I know you must be busy but please humour me.

You have been the interviewer all the time but please let me be the interviewer this time.

Before I continue let me introduce myself.

I am 63 years old.

I am not a trained teacher. My auditing experience in a large auditing
firm  'Turquand Young and Company' now called Ernst and Young makes me ask questions such as 'why' and 'how'. But, I guess I was already doing that back in school days.
 
In 2004 I was persuaded by a friend to teach his disengaged son who had gone to kindergarten for a year and finished grade 1 without being able to read anything. He knew his alphabets.

I stopped working 11 years ago after a few months of teaching this disengaged kid as I was intrigued to find someone as smart as this kid who could not read in English but could read in Romanised Mandarin and Malay both of which languages used the same 26 Roman alphabets.

Since then I have taught about 50 similar kids on a one on one basis. I have learnt from them as much as I had taught them.

Much of what I read and listened to last night is interesting and I would like to ask a few questions based on those and some questions of my own.

I would like to do it like an interview.

Together let’s ignite the dialogue. 

I may have some of the answers you have been looking for.

Kindly acknowledge receipt of this email.
Regards,
Luqman Michel

1 comment:

Luqman Michel said...

"There are no single simple answers to your question." (Dr.David B.)

I am sure that is true. However, I believe a majority of kids who can't study are kids who have been confused by what they have been taught.

There probably is a small percentage who can't read because of other problems but let us just stick with how to solve the problem of kids who have shut-down because of confusion.

The first step will be to find out what they are confused with and then eradicate that confusion.

These kids have been taught wrongly as stated by Dr. Reid. We also know that once these wrong teachings have been deeply embedded in the minds of these kids it will have to be unlearned before the correct teaching can be implemented.

We also know that the correct approach would be not to confuse the next batch of kids who enter kindergarten but this has not been implemented.