I Rearranged the Alphabet: A Complaint of Modern Literacy Education

By: VSH

When I was six, I rearranged the alphabet. I’d say this is a little-known fact, but I have the unfortunate tendency of telling nearly every new acquaintance I meet. For the most part, it’s a fun little conversation starter, but then there’s the part of me screaming in search of someone else who understands—the not-so-quiet begging to be told how clever I was and condemning the world for not listening. I’ve always had a particular vice for vanity; I was the youngest sibling growing up, which I feel is a sufficient enough excuse to blame it on.

It wasn’t that I “refused to learn” how to read (though that is what I typically tell people); it was more that no one could help me figure out the parts of English I deemed “wrong.” So, I was full of all this wasted anger and frustration about something I didn't understand.

I sat on the floor of my parents’ shower, letting the condensation fog up the glass, allowing me to rearrange the alphabet. I was in there for hours; both of my parents had to check on me, but I wouldn’t leave until I solved what a bunch of grown adults, in my mind, had been unable to accomplish. Maybe they’d even give me an award for it. “Six-year-old student fixes glaring problems with our incomprehensible alphabet,” I imagined the headline would read. Of course, when I showed my teacher the following day, she didn’t immediately call up the active president to sign an executive order changing the alphabetical structure. Which was, quite frankly, ridiculous! Did she even look at it? I had fixed it! There is no reason for J to be before M, and don’t even get me started on the location of T. Now, even as an adult, I sing the alphabet when I have something to sort because I never have been able to make it make sense in my brain.

I asked my teacher why it was the way it was and couldn’t be changed, but she gave me the very unsatisfying answer of not knowing. Then my mom had the audacity to also not know. When I was old enough to do a bit more extensive research myself, I learned that we don’t actually know why the alphabet is ordered as such. We can trace back routes to the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, which probably originated around 2100-1800 BC, but the ordering is seemingly unknown/heavily debated. Though it makes less sense for a six-year-old to officially rearrange the alphabet than it does for M to come before N, I also quickly decided language was working against me. It didn’t make sense, and so far, no one could prove to me that it did in any language.

The following year, in 2nd grade, they started pulling us out into the hall for reading tests where you’d read a passage of text and then answer a few questions about what you just read. I read what was in front of me and answered every question with as much comprehension as you could expect of a seven-year-old. So, it should be easy to mark where my confusion came from when, the next week, they began pulling me from class to attend the “special” reading classes made for kids a little behind. I take no issue with these classes for the students that need them; there were about six to eight other students with me, some with English as a second language, others who transferred late, or those with an early IEP. I went home and told my mom about it, but she had no idea they were going to pull me. It was about a week and a half before she worked out what was happening with the school. “Her comprehension was great, but she wasn’t reading fast enough,” they told her. They advised that she work with me on reading speed instead of comprehension. Vehemently denying this, my mother demanded I be removed from the group, and I was again promptly returned to my normal class.

I was too young for there to be any real damage done, except I wouldn’t actually read unless I was by myself, too embarrassed of how long it would take me to get through the text. That carried on through high school and still has its lingering effects. In class, I would flip the page when everyone else did, even if I hadn't finished reading. My pronunciation of “a” also isn’t quite right, which is an unfortunate habit. In that same group, our teacher drilled into us that even when standing alone, it’s always pronounced “uh,” not “A.” So instead of"A duck," it's "uh duck." Don’t know where that came from, but no harm, no foul. However, it is odd that in 2022-2023, over half the adults in America had a literacy rate below a sixth-grade level, and schools pushed reading speed over comprehension. Again, there couldn’t have possibly been any harm.

Studying for the LSAT or quickly glancing at a sign while driving proves there is good reason to focus on both speed and comprehension. It has just always seemed much more straightforward to learn “speed” if you already have an understanding of what you’ll need to read to comprehend a text. In my experience, pushing this out of order has created a greater disdain for reading, turning it into something to “get through,” and unintentionally teaching that comprehension is the hard part.

Jumping up to fifth grade, we were still taking spelling tests every Friday. Side note: Spelling is such a lost art; don’t get the misconception that I was any good at it, but when I don’t have spellcheck, I feel like I’ve never seen a word before. This isn’t a commentary on “kids these days,” it’s a commentary on myself and a hope that we aren’t losing the ability to spell. As bureaucratic as it feels, spelling improves both vocabulary and comprehension of written media. Unfortunately, I have been told I have the handwriting to rival a doctor, which is to say: bad. My fifth grade teacher took particular displeasure in how I wrote my lowercase A’s. To be fair, they were horrendous, but it wasn’t an issue until she started taking off points from my correctly spelled words for a poorly formed A.

It only made sense in my head to create my own language. I wasn’t taught cursive, so instead, I chose letters that I could draw in only one line; no crossing my T’s or dotting my I’s. There were no different designs for capital and lowercase; they stood apart with a simple underline of the first letter indicating capitalization. My most favorite of the changes, though, was that there were no letters that hung down into the line below. It seems so simple, but this act of going under the line felt detrimental to my younger self. The words on the bottom line were always written through it, and it felt impossible to make any part of my lettering smaller.

The difference between this time and my past alphabet, however, was that this time, I didn’t want anyone to know. I’d show everyone but never translate it. It was like I was flaunting, “Your words are stupid, but mine are unique and make so much more sense.” The funniest part of this ten-year-old act of rebellion is that, to this day, I still use it to write all my handwritten notes, but sometimes I switch in and out depending on what I’m taking notes on. A seemingly fake scrawl will surround an astrophysics term I was unfamiliar with, separating my unknown from the known. It’s like a shout to the world, “Look, this is what’s going on in brain. This is what I don’t understand.” At ten, most of its existence was to fix what I struggled with and keep the meaning of the words hidden from everyone else. Now, despite its illegibility, it forms an almost stronger bridge between myself and people I don’t know. In hindsight, it’s easy to understand why lettering on a spelling test would need to be clear, but it was the final straw for me, and I decided I would forever hate any classes centered around language.

I became an avid reader in seventh grade but wouldn’t read for a class. I read books both above and below my reading level incredibly slowly and soaked up every last word. Any time I thought I might try getting through the book I would be graded on, I decided it was either incredibly dull or not worth sharing my thoughts. Some books, purely out of spite, I’d wait until after the class had finished reading and then choose to pick it up on my own. The truly tragic part about this is that I probably got more out of the content than I would have if I read it with my peers. In every essay I wrote, I tried to find the loop around the prompt to turn it into something unique, only to be given a failing grade. When I followed what the teacher wanted, it wasn’t notable enough to get above a B. The first hundred I ever got on an essay was my first semester in college as a hesitant English major. I exist as a person who has turned the inspiration and love of words into their entire life, but I still function with the demonization of it all that has been instilled in me since I was six. I talk to my friends who hate reading or listen to the people around me and feel a sense of aching knowing they went through the same schooling as me. I’ll never know how many of them rearranged the alphabet or how many more original thoughts could be pooling around if they were taught reading could be more than the regurgitation of a plot for your grade.

The polarization of reading has become so extreme that the majority of teenagers I’ve met have made or laughed at some variation of the “English teachers need to realize that sometimes the door is just red” joke. As an English major, I can take this in stride and laugh at the abundance of literary analyses and interpretations a single story can have, but as a person, I find it deeply troubling that it proves they aren’t getting the point. The door may just be red, but it also could be more. What was the point the author was making? If it was just aesthetic, what emotion is trying to be portrayed? The color red has a lot of symbolism in modern society, from lust to violence and encompassing all forms of passion. Are they walking through the door or turning away from it? All of these things should alter your perception of the plot, setting, or character. Just as each stroke of the paintbrush can dramatically alter the final product of a painting, each letter in a book is a choice that has the potential to change the story from red to scarlet. It’s true that sometimes the door is just red, and the wall is just a wall, but being able to discern when it’s not or even what it could be pushes deeper critical thought and understanding. The importance of media literacy is completely overlooked when it’s more important than ever in our over-connected society; it provides the ability to critically comprehend what someone is telling you. The only way to combat fears of “fake news” or avoid deception on social media is to boost literacy comprehension skills. Without a deeper understanding of what the words, actions, or events in front of you actually mean, you’re destined to be the one walking through a rusty, crimson-red door that was never just red.

No one can change the way they were taught, but they can change the power, or lack thereof, they’ve given to literacy. Rearrange the alphabet all you desire, but don’t fail to learn the importance already so intwined with a single letter.