Okay, if he couldn’t read or write how did he graduate High School, let alone College? Story sounds suspicious to me.
I had a 5th grade teacher, she couldn’t spell. But she got her entire class to EXCEL. She changed our lives. Strange things happend. God uses people in mysterious ways. My brother in law was trained to teach Auto Mechanics, yet his kids who took ENGLISH all got perfect scores... It just makes one wonder.
No. A person who had been a teacher was assigned to me to be trained as a salesman. I took him out for a week. His job was to write the call report.
The man was illiterate.
Literally.
Social Promotion and girls who do their homework, which was super common when I was in high school, especially for popular athletes.
Read the story and you will find out how this guy made it, then learned to read finally at 48 years old.
Social promotions in government schools are not a recent invention. Looks like he was a jock, so there was probably some pressure to get him through classes and keep him eligible.
The most heated argument I ever saw in college (late 70s) came in political science class. The professor was a conservative who later became a senior official at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Somehow, class discussion drifted to the “easiest” college major. As a journalism major, I slid down in my seat and watched the fireworks begin when someone asked the professor. His answer? “If I have a student who really wants to stay in school, but can’t handle any other major, I send them to the education department. Haven’t met anyone yet who can’t earn an education degree.”
Naturally, there were lots of future teachers in the class, and they howled. But the professor held his ground, saying the easiest classes he ever took were those required for his teaching credential. After that, the ed majors in the classroom gave up their fight. They knew he was right.
Part of this story missed...he emerged out of school capable of handling second-grade reading/writing. His studies in college appear to be mostly mathematical in nature, and that was what he taught in high school later (pure mathematics).
This was also in a period where college entry was not tested as much, and you just ‘walked’ in. On getting hired to be a teacher, even today if you look around, there just aren’t that many math teachers who are qualified in the area.
That’s happening all the time. Graduating has nothing to do with knowledge. Just look around and that should be obvious.
It has everything to do with quota’s to get money.
He was a typing teacher. From my experience, typing teachers didn't have to know anything (look, people learn to type now without even having had lessons). He could copy a text on the typewriter quickly because he couldn't read it and wasn't distracted.
I don't quite believe the story though. It reads like a satire or something. I can buy the college and teaching story, but if he turned in a blank page in a school exam, some teacher or other must have been concerned, even 50 years ago.