{"id":749,"date":"2026-04-23T23:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/23\/whats-the-deal-with-literacy-these-days\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T23:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:22:10","slug":"whats-the-deal-with-literacy-these-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/23\/whats-the-deal-with-literacy-these-days\/","title":{"rendered":"what\u2019s the deal with literacy these days?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Let’s take a moment to say something out loud:
there’s a lot of terrible writing in the world;
and a lot of terrible writing is one of the reasons
many of our kids are not excited<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

to sit and squint and parse, under fluorescent
lighting, at desks that wreck their bodies, in rows
of kids, not allowed to wiggle or whisper
or pat a beat to read along to. Somewhere,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

someone decided that rhythm and rhyme were not
important enough to take the time to craft.
Here’s what that someone wasn’t paying attention to:
Rhythm and rhyme unlock the neurotransmitters;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dyspraxics, aphants, dysgrahics, and dyslexics
are often able to entrain to a rhythm, or find
a rhyme, if they know that one is coming:
(you’ve hopefully had that experience, haven’t you?, when<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the person reading leaves out the last
word of the poem, and the word pops in your mind?)
(If you haven’t, you should try it with a friend).
When you recognize that the Odyssey and the Iliad<\/p>\n\n\n\n

were part of an oral tradition, encoded in rhythms
and rhymes, and familiar phrases, that invited
memory to do the work of storytelling,
passed from tongue to tongue for about as long<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as Europeans have occupied the Americas\u2013
you might start to wonder which skills we should be
focusing on, when passing information
along to our kids, that we hope will be memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can do the human math\u2013(I’ve done it,
and with confidence can say what I’m going
to say)\u2013I guarantee you: many, if not most
of the poets and writers of ages past were people<\/p>\n\n\n\n

who would have, today, been branded as neurodivergent;
for whom encoding a human event in a rhythm
was just the way they knew their brain would remember it;
and in doing so, made the event accessible<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to shared, collective memory. ’cause if you listen,
you’ll hear the way these bite-sized pieces flow;
the calming force of human expectation,
and satisfaction of expectation, over,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and over, and over, and over, and over again,
like a crocheted blanket, wrapped around your shoulders,
that your grandmother made in a ridiculously short amount
of time. (who has time for that, these days?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s take a moment to say something out loud:there’s a lot of terrible writing in the world;and a lot of terrible writing is one of the reasonsmany of our kids are not excited to sit and squint and parse, under fluorescentlighting, at desks that wreck their bodies, in rowsof kids, not allowed to wiggle or … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"what\u2019s the deal with literacy these days?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,27,28,8,5,14,26,16,15,9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicle","category-didactics","category-ethos","category-literature","category-musicology","category-neurodiversity","category-personal-narrative","category-poem","category-politics","category-reflection","category-zen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paor1p-c5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":555,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/08\/what-were-working-with\/","url_meta":{"origin":749,"position":0},"title":"what we’re working with","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"August 8, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"We're living in a world where we're all witnessing the same symphony, with all of its nuances and variations and development of themes and variations of timbre and tone and iterations of rhythm and rhyming ends of lines, and some of us are only hearing the pitch and timbre and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":693,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/24\/iamb-whoamb\/","url_meta":{"origin":749,"position":1},"title":"iamb whoamb","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"December 24, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"If action turns the world within,Then who knows where the world begins? If sitting still should make one smart,Then who can make a piece of art? when breadth and height themselves are clear,what then, when depth and time appear? when space and time the self erode,where, then, is found a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":438,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/29\/waiting-for-yes\/","url_meta":{"origin":749,"position":2},"title":"Waiting for yes","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"June 29, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Oh, come on Ryk, you're being so persnickety with language again. Why don't you just lighten up and hear what we mean, and not worry so much about how we say it?\" Why, thank you for being brave and vulnerable, and for speaking up when you feel the need arise.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":558,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/08\/%f0%9f%8c%96%f0%9f%8c%95%f0%9f%8c%94\/","url_meta":{"origin":749,"position":3},"title":"\ud83c\udf16\ud83c\udf15\ud83c\udf14","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"August 8, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"on viewing the full moon, i see three moons. should i attune myself so that I see a single moon, and continue seeing one moon? or is my gift to see three moons, and continue seeing a multiplicity of moons? or is my gift the gift of inner blindness, that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":494,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/28\/emotional-processing\/","url_meta":{"origin":749,"position":4},"title":"Emotional processing","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"July 28, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent conversation about emotional processing with my neurodiverse community got me thinking about putting language to my experience of my emotional ecosystem. I have realized for a long time that my emotions work differently from many people that I interact with, and it's only recently that I have had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/img_0376.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/img_0376.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/img_0376.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/img_0376.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/img_0376.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/img_0376.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":542,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/02\/different-specialties\/","url_meta":{"origin":749,"position":5},"title":"different specialties","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"August 2, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A shout out to all my relations, especially the ones who have called me out for the ways I have spoken of we, (or written of we, more precisely, as written and spoken are mostly the same for me\u2013I feel safer, mostly, in writing, but they are mostly the same\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0385.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0385.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0385.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0385.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0385.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0385.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":751,"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}