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A secret from the third grade.
Sunday, 1 December 2002 07:05 am"I Want More Cake, I Want More Cake, I Want More Cake!"*
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Third grade was also when I started cheating in class.
This was not bought on by my many, many absences, or even an attempt at better grades. It was brought on by addiction to stories.
See, third grade they moved me from the regular classes to what they called Programmed Reading. We didn't have any regular readers that year, we had work books, a series of twenty-something of them. They'd start you out where they thought you ought to be, and the stories got progressively more difficult, both in vocabulary and in concepts. By the end we were reading about the Greek and Roman gods and I was absolutely fascinated. And before that, there was a long, involved story that sounds like it was based on the Narnia books, at least according to the people I've mentioned it to who have read C. S. Lewis. It was about these children who went down in the basement one day, only the basement steps went down much further than they ever had before, and they ended up in some other dimension, or something. It was wonderful, and I couldn't stop reading it.
Which is where the cheating came in.
Because in Programmed Reading, you read at your own pace. They started you out at what they considered to be your proper reading level, then let you go. You'd read a chapter, then there would be a test to take. You take the test, score it, turn in your paper, and go back to reading. It was pretty much on the honor system, though I suspect there were people who were considered less-than-honorable, and were watched more closely.
I wasn't one of them. I was always, always a good girl. And the thing was, nobody would ever have suspected I was cheating because I really was a good, fast reader who comprehended what she'd read and could tell you the story back if you asked. I was doing just what they wanted in those terms.
I was just cheating on their tests. See, I found out pretty quickly that if you just mark down most of the right answers, rather than actually take the test, you can get back to the stories that much sooner. And, God, I had to get back to the stories! The stories were wonderful, and besides, it wasn't like a book, where you could take it home and read it all night 'til bedtime. The only opportunity I had to read these stories was in school. (This is how much I loved them—when we had free time, to draw or whatever, I would go over and get the books that came before where they started me, so I could read the beginning of the story. And let me just say right here that I love how experts think. Apparently it never occurred to them that it might be something of an obstacle to start out a kid in the middle of a continuing story, that it might somehow impair their interest and/or comprehension.)
Stories were such an escape for me, they got me out of whatever stressful thing was happening in my life (I really don't remember). But, you know, I never cheated at anything I was actually bad at, like math or geography. I can't figure out just what this says about me. I think it means I'm basically honest—that is, I represent myself as honestly as possible. Sort of like here—the things I'm writing are true, but the names are changed. Would the stories be any more true with the real names in them? Would I be any better or worse a reader if I'd taken their tests?
*Russell
-:- -:- -:-
Third grade was also when I started cheating in class.
This was not bought on by my many, many absences, or even an attempt at better grades. It was brought on by addiction to stories.
See, third grade they moved me from the regular classes to what they called Programmed Reading. We didn't have any regular readers that year, we had work books, a series of twenty-something of them. They'd start you out where they thought you ought to be, and the stories got progressively more difficult, both in vocabulary and in concepts. By the end we were reading about the Greek and Roman gods and I was absolutely fascinated. And before that, there was a long, involved story that sounds like it was based on the Narnia books, at least according to the people I've mentioned it to who have read C. S. Lewis. It was about these children who went down in the basement one day, only the basement steps went down much further than they ever had before, and they ended up in some other dimension, or something. It was wonderful, and I couldn't stop reading it.
Which is where the cheating came in.
Because in Programmed Reading, you read at your own pace. They started you out at what they considered to be your proper reading level, then let you go. You'd read a chapter, then there would be a test to take. You take the test, score it, turn in your paper, and go back to reading. It was pretty much on the honor system, though I suspect there were people who were considered less-than-honorable, and were watched more closely.
I wasn't one of them. I was always, always a good girl. And the thing was, nobody would ever have suspected I was cheating because I really was a good, fast reader who comprehended what she'd read and could tell you the story back if you asked. I was doing just what they wanted in those terms.
I was just cheating on their tests. See, I found out pretty quickly that if you just mark down most of the right answers, rather than actually take the test, you can get back to the stories that much sooner. And, God, I had to get back to the stories! The stories were wonderful, and besides, it wasn't like a book, where you could take it home and read it all night 'til bedtime. The only opportunity I had to read these stories was in school. (This is how much I loved them—when we had free time, to draw or whatever, I would go over and get the books that came before where they started me, so I could read the beginning of the story. And let me just say right here that I love how experts think. Apparently it never occurred to them that it might be something of an obstacle to start out a kid in the middle of a continuing story, that it might somehow impair their interest and/or comprehension.)
Stories were such an escape for me, they got me out of whatever stressful thing was happening in my life (I really don't remember). But, you know, I never cheated at anything I was actually bad at, like math or geography. I can't figure out just what this says about me. I think it means I'm basically honest—that is, I represent myself as honestly as possible. Sort of like here—the things I'm writing are true, but the names are changed. Would the stories be any more true with the real names in them? Would I be any better or worse a reader if I'd taken their tests?
*Russell