Do you read me?

Good morning! Seeing as I don’t work on Fridays during the month of June, this will be my last entry until next Monday. If you’re new to the blog, this gives you some time to go back and read some of the old entries, if you just can’t enough Disillusioned Doctor. Otherwise, have a good and restful weekend. On a side note, I’d like to thrown in a little plug for an old friend from my theatre days. She and another gal have formed a Bio-pop group known as Suspicious Package, and you can see their newest video, Hummingbird, on MTV.com. So if you’ve got a minute, go check it out. That said, onwards!

Within the last month I’ve noticed a spike in the number of claimants reporting that their main reason for applying for disability is a problem with reading and reading comprehension. I’ve seen six patients so far this AM, and two of them have listed “Learning problems – can’t read” as their number one complaint. Both of the claimants stated that they dropped out of high school, and both also admitted that they received special reading tutoring throughout their secondary school career. When asked if they knew their “reading level,” one reported that he read at a 5th grade level, and the other reported that he read at a 7th grade level. After their exams, I thought about what I was reading at 5th and 7th grade - The Lord of the Rings, The Giver, Lord of the Flies, stuff like that. Now, I’ll throw out a caveat before I continue. I’m a self-professed Bibliophile, and always viewed language arts as one of my strong suits. Math, not so much, but I could at least read the textbook. I’ve done some research, and listed below is a smattering of books that are nationally listed as “Acceptable at a 5th grade reading level.”
1.) Old Yeller
2.) Harry Potter series
3.) Pippi Longstocking
4.) To Kill a Mockingbird

Likewise, here are some books that are a 7th grade reading level.
1.) Ann of Green Gables
2.) Cyrano de Bergerac
3.) The Jungle Book
4.) The Wizard of Oz

Now, while I’m definitely not an English teach, I know that if you can read at a level to understand Ann of Green Gables, or To Kill a Mockingbird, you should be able to understand simple written instructions for most jobs. The question arises, then, as to whether our school systems are actually teaching, in this case, reading at a level that would allow students to enjoy the above books. One could make an argument that the majority of schools simply pass kids along, regardless of their actual educational level, although I would like to think that someone, somewhere, would pick up on the kids that are still reading “Dick and Jane” in 9th grade.

President Bush passed a bill a few years back entitled the “No Child Left Behind Act,” which was supposed to make sure that situations like the ones listed above didn’t happen anymore. According to my family members who are educators (and that’s most of them), all it really did was dumb down the material for the kids that were doing well, thereby leading to boredom and thus increased classroom problems. I don’t’ know enough about the educational system to say who’s right and who’s wrong, but I do know this; if you try and add more milk to everyone’s milkshake just because one kid said his was too thick, everyone ends up with a milky mess and nobody’s happy.

It really is a sticky situation. Do you lower the expectations for everyone so nobody fails? Or do you let the folks at the bottom get washed away? I don’t know the answer, heck, maybe there isn’t an answer. What we need to consider, however, is what do we are going to do about the above people if we let them drift away. As it stands now, it looks like we’ll be handing them a check every month for the rest of their lives instead of spending that money to prevent the above situation, and to give them chance to be productive members of society. A quick fix usually doesn’t help things in the long run. The little Dutch boy can only keep his finger in the dyke so long before he has to pee.

And now for the disability quote of the day:

Manic lady: “I just hallucinated about a cake in your lobby. I was really good, you should try it.”
Me: “…What type of cake was it?”
Lady: [incredulously] “A crazy cake!”
Me: “…sounds yummy.”

Have a good weekend!
-DD