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sl8

(13,769 posts)
Sun Apr 15, 2018, 11:15 PM Apr 2018

I was a teacher for 17 years, but I couldnt read or write

From http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43700153

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

15 April 2018



John Corcoran grew up in New Mexico in the US during the 1940s and 50s. One of six siblings, he graduated from high school, went on to university, and became a teacher in the 1960s - a job he held for 17 years. But, as he explains here, he hid an extraordinary secret.

When I was a child I was told by my parents that I was a winner, and for the first six years of my life I believed what my parents had told me.

I was late in talking, but I went off to school with high hopes of learning to read like my sisters, and for the first year things were fine because there weren't many demands on us other than standing in the right line, sitting down, keeping our mouths shut and going to the bathroom on time.

And then in the second grade we were supposed to learn to read. But for me it was like opening a Chinese newspaper and looking at it - I didn't understand what those lines were, and as a child of six, seven, eight years old I didn't know how to articulate the problem.

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I was a teacher for 17 years, but I couldnt read or write (Original Post) sl8 Apr 2018 OP
BULLSHIT!!!! -nt Freelancer Apr 2018 #1
k&r Eko Apr 2018 #2
I find it beyond horrifying that he could cheat his way through PoindexterOglethorpe Apr 2018 #3
His wife helped him through dreamland Apr 2018 #5
i took the act or the non SAT. i am NOT a math person. i was just randomly guestimating my answers. pansypoo53219 Apr 2018 #4

PoindexterOglethorpe

(25,856 posts)
3. I find it beyond horrifying that he could cheat his way through
Mon Apr 16, 2018, 12:19 AM
Apr 2018

all of school. It's unfathomable to me that he was never caught.

Oh, and if he ever took the SAT or the ACT, which he ought to have needed to get into college, those exams are generally proctored well enough that he couldn't have cheated. Unless he simply hired someone to take those exams for him.

And I wonder what he did for exams for his students. All of them were oral exams? And how he managed to turn in the grades?

It feels as if there's a lot missing from this story.

pansypoo53219

(20,976 posts)
4. i took the act or the non SAT. i am NOT a math person. i was just randomly guestimating my answers.
Mon Apr 16, 2018, 06:21 AM
Apr 2018

ended up with a GOOD score. yeah. i was WTF. i was taken out of class for advanced s†uƒƒ just as they were doing multication. downhill from there.

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