ALIEN INTERVEW -- CHAPTER FIVE
ALIEN INTERVIEW
Based On Personal Notes and Interview Transcriptions Provided by :Matilda O'Donnell MacElroy
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Chapter Five
Reading Lessons
(MATILDA O'DONNELL
MACELROY PERSONAL NOTE)
"I began
the reading lessons with the first pages of a school book that had been used to
teach pioneer children in the 1800s on the frontiers of America. It is called "McGuffey's
Eclectic Reader, Primer Through Sixth". 40 (Footnote)
Since I am a
nurse, and not a teacher, the language expert who gave me the books also gave
me an extensive briefing -- a course that took an entire day -- on how to use
the books to teach the alien. He said the reason he chose these particular
books was because the original 1836 version of these books were used for three-quarters
of a century to teach about four-fifths of all American school children how to
read. No other books ever had so much influence over American children for so
long.
McGuffey's
educational course begins in "The Primer" by presenting the letters of
the alphabet to be memorized, in sequence. Children were then taught, step by
step, to use the building blocks of the language to form and pronounce words,
using the phonics method 41 (Footnote) which involves teaching children to
connect sounds with letters. Each lesson begins with a study of words used in
the reading exercise and with markings to show the correct pronunciation for
each word. I discovered that the stories in the "First and Second
Readers" picture children in their relationship with family members,
teachers, friends, and animals. The "Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth
Readers" expanded on those ideas. One of the stories I remember was
"The Widow and the Merchant". It's kind of a morality tale about a merchant
who befriends a widow in need. Later, when the widow proves herself to be
honest, the merchant gives her a nice gift. The books do not necessarily teach
you to believe that charity is expected only of wealthy people though. We all
know that generosity is a virtue that should be practiced by everyone.
All of the stories were very wholesome and they gave very good
explanations to illustrate virtues like honesty, charity, thrift, hard work,
courage, patriotism, reverence for God, and respect for parents. Personally, I would
recommend this book to anyone!
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I also
discovered that the vocabulary used in the book was very advanced compared to
the relatively limited number of words people use commonly in our modern age. I
think we have lost a lot of our own language since our Founding Fathers wrote
the Declaration of Independence over 200 years ago!
As instructed,
I sat next to Airl in the interview room reading aloud to her from each successive
book in the series of McGuffey's Readers. Each of the books had excellent,
simple illustrations of the stories and subjects being taught, although they are
very outdated by today's standards. Nonetheless, Airl seemed to understand and absorb
every letter, sound, syllable and meaning as we progressed. We continued this
process for 14 hours a day for 3 consecutive days without interruption, exceptfor
a few meals and rest breaks on my part.
Airl did not
take breaks for anything. She did not sleep. Instead she remained sitting in
the overstuffed chair in the interview room, reviewing the lessons we had
already covered. When I returned each morning to begin where we'd left off, she
had already memorized the previous lessons and was well into the next pages.
This pattern continued to accelerate until it became pointless for me to
continue reading to her.
Although Airl
did not have a mouth to speak with, she was now able to "think" at me
in English. At the end of these lessons, Airl was able to read and study by
herself. Ishowed her how to use a dictionary to look up new words she
encountered. Airl consulted the dictionary continually after that. From then on
my job was acting as a courier for her, requesting that reference books be
brought to her in a steady stream.
Next, Mr.
Newble brought in a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. 42 (Footnote) Airl
especially enjoyed this because it had a lot of pictures. After that, she
requested many more picture books and reference books with photographs and
drawings because it was much easier to understand the meaning if she could see
a picture of the thing she was studying.
Over the next
six days books were brought in from libraries all over the country, I presume,
because it wasn't more than a few more days before she had read through several
hundred of them! She studied every subject I could imagine, and many other very
technical things I never wanted to know anything about, like astronomy,metallurgy,
engineering, mathematics, various technical manuals, and so forth.
Later she began
to read fiction books, novels, poetry and the classics of literature. Airl also
asked to read a great many books on subjects in the humanities, especially history.
I think she must had read at least 50 books about human history and marchaeology.
Of course, I made sure that she received a copy of the Holy Bible also, which
she read from cover to cover without comment or questions.
Although I
continued to stay with Airl for 12 to 14 hours each day, most of that time during
the following week had been spent without much communication between us, except
for an occasional question she asked me. The questions were usually meant to
give her a sense of context or to clarify something in the books she was
reading.
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Oddly, Airl
told me that her favorite books are "Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland"
43 (Footnote), "Don
Quixote de la Mancha" 44 (Footnote) and "One Thousand and One Nights"
45
(Footnote). She said the authors of these stories showed that it is more
important to have great spirit and imagination than great skill or power.
I could not
answer a lot of her questions, so I consulted with the people in the outer room
for answers. Most of these had to do with technical and scientific things. A few
of her questions were about the humanities. The depth of complex understanding
and subtlety of her questions showed that she had a very penetrating intellect.
Personally, I
think she had already known a lot more about the culture and history of Earth
than she was willing to admit when we started. I would soon discover how much
more."
Footnotes:
40 (Footnote) -
41 (Footnote) -
42 (Footnote) -
43 (Footnote) -
44 (Footnote) -
45 (Footnote) -
To be continued…
Chapter Six
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