The Spatial Child

I read The Spatial Child chapter and enjoyed it. This particular child named John Dixon was not a good reader in the first grade. All of his classmates could read aloud and he did not understand why he could mot put letters into spoken words. John looked at his classmates as if they were co conspirators, simply because they were understanding something that he could not grasp. His teacher wanted to hold him back in the first grade and John was scared. The teacher made a deal with John mother that if she gives him special instruction in reading for the whole summer semester that he could advance to the third grade. John began to enjoy reading even though he read very slow. He would rush through test and reading drills just so he would not be the last one in the class to finish. John began to show that he had another type of intelligence. He was really good at constructing models of buildings and excellent at math. When John got to high school he was actually taking advance algebra classes. John states that as a child his teachers would always say that in his mind "Still water runs deep." He did not understand what this meant but as he got older he realized that he just had a different intelligence than most others and that he would just have to excel in the logical mathematical portions of school. I believe that this chapter shows that some children are considered slow learners or maybe even learning disabled when in fact they are just very talented in other ways. Children need to be tested in all areas on intelligence. I learned that calling on some students to read aloud in the classroom can be very embarrassing if they feel inadequate. I do believe that John's teacher did the right thing by having a special meeting with his mother and getting her involved in his learning how to read.