ALIEN INTERVIEW
Based On Personal Notes and Interview Transcriptions Provided by :Matilda O'Donnell MacElroy
Chapter Four
45
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!
46
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, except for
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. I showed 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 archaeology.
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.
47
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."
To be continued … Chapter Six
Footnotes:
40 (Footnote)
41 (Footnote)
42 (Footnote)
43 (Footnote)
44 (Footnote)
45 (Footnote)
No comments:
Post a Comment