I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

My grandfather, born in the back hills of West Virginia, was forced to leave school when he was around 6 years old to chop lumber so his family had enough to survive. After he left WV, he worked a press at a forge and was a landscaper at night an on the weekends. He never has learned how to read, and sadly he is in the early stages of dementia so I think that ship has sailed. But... he was always a whiz with finances.<p>He was the kind of guy that can take a dollar on Monday and give you back $100 on Friday. He owns, I believe at this point, 8 properties including his own home.<p>I always regret not staying back home for a bit to try and help him, but I think by the time I would have been in a place to do it he would have told me he had just accepted the fact he would never learn to read. I can&#x27;t imagine going through life like he did, how much I would hav missed.<p>But it also was always an inspiration to me. Every time I would feel my motivation for something academic or professional start to wane, I remind myself that this man who gave me and my siblings anything to help us succeed didn&#x27;t get to do 90% of the things I take for granted.<p>It&#x27;s really sad to see some folks on this thread call this man an idiot. From first hand experience, that&#x27;s not necessarily the case and often people like him become far more clever than I&#x27;ll ever be as a means of survival.

I knew someone more or less like him. My friend went through high school and later even got into university. He was able to read but very slowly and he read everyday. He had this very large (and complicated) romance with him and he would read one page per day pointing at each word painfully slowly. I have no idea if he managed to understand the story or if it was just an exercise. Just like the person in the article, he was very popular with girls and managed to pull a number of similar stunts to go through tests and exams.<p>Eventually he dropped out of university and got a job. This was the 90s and he started playing with computers and something just clicked inside. Sudenly he could read normally and became quite proficient with computers back then. I suppose it was some kind of learning disability that went away with time and persistence on his part.<p>It also shows that schools are not equiped to deal with learning disabilities and push those pupils forward in the hope the problem goes away. BTW, this was in Europe, so it is not a US specific problem.

This also shows how poor the school system was it they did not uncover his illiteracy earlier. In France at least there was such an amount of loud reading at school that it would be hard to hide.<p>I ready the article with a strong dislike for the guy since I knew he was a teacher. I was pissed off for the pupils.<p>But it was not that bad, he was a teacher of PE where beside a limited technical knowledge (at the level he was in) the important part are social skills. So maybe it was for the better after all.

Maybe I&#x27;m joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there.<p>I&#x27;m all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn&#x27;t be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get away with it (please read what he actually did if you haven&#x27;t — it wasn&#x27;t a simple case of cheating).<p>I have personally seen a lot of academic misconducts that went unpunished that makes cheating in exams seem seem mundane. Fake results that academics don&#x27;t own up to&#x2F;just blame their students when proven wrong; made-up results so that a thesis would look better; lying about publications to get scholarships, etc. Nobody ever gets punished and some would eventually go on to hold important positions.<p>Reading the &quot;supportive&quot; comments in this thread is pretty demoralising for me.

In 2008 when my kids went to VPK in Florida I was surprised to find out why they memorized words instead of learning how to read. The lady I spoke about this was a veteran teacher of 25 years. She said it was all BS and that a decade or two earlier they had used a book called ‘Learn how to read in 100 lessons’. With that systems, she said, they never had anyone fail. Every child that passed through learnt reading. She said it was like a miracle. But, at some point, the higher ups fell into the trap of having to introduce new regiments and systems because of ever changing fashions. They were forced to introduce silly approaches, changing them every few years, leading to kids suddenly unable to read. Whenever she met parents she would tell them about this book and everyone had success with it and was as shocked as I was how it worked and how it was missing from the school curriculum. I ended up teaching all of my children how to read with it. It’s one of the most precious experiences. They all learnt to read at a very early age. There are many stories like this about writing and early math. Many years later, I read the episode In Feynman’s book ‘Surely you must be joking’ on his encounter with school text books and his disappointment - to say it lightly. One great experiment I can highly recommend is collecting textbooks from the 20th century and compare the decades and (basic) skills taught.

I once worked with a Chef that couldn&#x27;t read. He made it through culinary school, had his own catering company at one point and owned two residential properties. He was a charismatic guy but very cunning and deceptive. I figured it out after a couple of weeks working with him. I tried to offer him help but he just brushed it off and said that he was dyslexic. Smart phones have many features that make it easy for illiterate people to survive.

A friend who worked as a doctor in the Fens of East Anglia said that many of the older farmers she treated (in the early 2010s) were essentially illiterate. If she gave them a form or a letter, they would hand it to their wife to read because they considered reading to be women&#x27;s work.

There a funny short story I read in H.S. - The Verger by Somerset Maugham - about a guy who&#x27;s in a position not unlike this. He&#x27;s illiterate but competent. He doesn&#x27;t bother to hide it though and is fired from is job as a verger because of that. It&#x27;s a short read as I remember so I won&#x27;t ruin the end but the punch line really stuck with me for some reason.

On Google translate you can test new phonetic spelling. &quot;Wii shäl miit tu dei in Nyy Jork&quot; works best in Polish, Icelandic and Finnish. I suggest we just ignore weird sounds like θ and ð and just use &quot;th&quot; as &quot;thö&quot; sounds reasonably good in those languages.

Great story. He’s an excellent speaker and very charismatic.<p>For those interested he has a non profit focused on teaching reading and writing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.johncorcoranfoundation.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.johncorcoranfoundation.org&#x2F;</a>

I used to be an ESL teacher for foreign students transitioning to English in the USA before I was in tech. I&#x27;ve also taught high school English, Latin, and History. These days the only English teaching I do is helping adults learn to read. John Corcoran&#x27;s story is incredibly inspiring and courageous. It&#x27;s hard to imagine the amount of courage it took for him to go public with his illiteracy. It&#x27;s never too late to right a wrong in your life. If you know an adult who cannot read, please encourage them to seek help. There are many people who are generous in donating their time to teaching reading skills in a non-judgemental and caring way.

waiting for the next article, &quot;I was CTO for 17 years, but couldn&#x27;t code&quot;

I still don&#x27;t get it. How is it possible that he managed to go through the system.

My grandfather was a teacher and in the 50s he started noting that trouble learning to read&#x2F;write wasn’t linked to lack of intelligence. He started groups for kids (mostly guys) with what we now call dyslexia and tried to help them. He had to invent material and methods.<p>On his eightieth birthday some of his students, now in their 50s, told how they had always felt stupid until he showed them they were not. Now they had businesses and successful careers.

First time I read about this (Not from the US). I wonder what‘s with his Highschool&#x2F;College degree? I mean by his own words he said that he cheated big time.

The first failure of his illiteracy sits solely with his parents.<p>So many of us parents put the burden of our children&#x27;s learning on teachers when the responsibility is squarely ours.<p>If my son is in 5th grade and can&#x27;t read, it&#x27;s my responsibility to teach him or get him the help he needs to be able to learn.

Here&#x27;s a question: what can be done to make tech more accessible for illiterate people? That seems to be a side of accessibility that usually gets overlooked.

I told my friends about this article,they replied no this could never happen in the US, this could only happen in countries like Nigeria. What a world we live in.

Can someone who has read the whole thing spoil it and tell me how someone illiterate wrote a big, long article for the BBC?

(2018)

Incredible, but I still can’t help but feel like he is an idiot.<p>Noticing an obvious deficiency in your life and doing nothing about it is in fact idiotic.

Totally believable. I&#x27;ve had math teachers say they can&#x27;t write, and language teachers say they can&#x27;t math

His says his writing level is roughly 6th grade, and the story reads like it too. I believe it. Illiteracy was the standard for humanity not long ago, and yet there were still teachers.

&gt; If he had called on me I was going to get out of my chair and take two steps, grab my chest, drop to the floor and hope they called 911.<p>Used this tactic many times myself. You pull it once, they call 911. You pull it twice, they usually do it again. You pull it three times...an awkward silence fills the room...after the sixth time, my boss just carried on with the meeting, and I stopped getting invited. I think they call this life hacking.<p>I now do it everywhere...in the line at the DMV <i>clutches heart</i>, wife nagging <i>clutches heart</i>, kid wants new shoes <i>clutches heart</i>. People say you can&#x27;t outrun your problems...in reality, all you need to do is stay calm, pretend to have a heart attack, and your problems just melt away. I think I am going to write a self-help book.

Rather than learning how to read, it&#x27;d do everyone a whole lot more good to admit that some people are not cut out for school and to send them off to work when they&#x27;re teenagers.<p>This poor guy has felt bad his entire life when he could&#x27;ve been an excellent coal miner instead.<p>Every place I&#x27;ve worked is filled with people like this guy to one extent or another - fearful parents pushing their kids to go to school and pretend to be something they&#x27;re not. Then people who have an affinity for thinking have to navigate these insecure idiots (sorry, medical term) their entire careers.<p>It makes workplaces hell for everyone involved, both the idiots and the capable.<p>People ought to do what they are capable of doing. People ought to be treated with dignity and respect. If we get that far this century, boy, that&#x27;d really be something.