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Renée Fuller: Realizing Human Intelligence
Let me introduce you to Renée Fuller of Colebrook, Connecticut. As a very bright but dyslexic young child, Renée had not yet learned to read by the time she was twelve years old. Because she was quiet and well-behaved and did well in science and math she got along pretty well in school. Then one fateful day she was given a special reading test. The concerned teacher looked at the results and whispered to Renée--"You really must do something about this!" (That was called remediation in that school.) So, over the summer, Renée went to the library and took out all 30 of the Wizard of Oz books one by one, and somehow found a way on her own to crack the code.
She went on to earn a Ph.D. in psychology, with special interest in researching intelligence. At one point she determined to develop an effective way to teach reading to very bright, dyslexic children using methods based on how she had taught herself to read. Her program, called Ball-Stick-Bird is based on the shapes of a circle, line, and V --out of which you can make every letter of the alphabet. As soon as you can read two letters you can read a word, and as soon as you know four letters, you can read your first story--one of a series of funny, suspenseful, cliff-hangers and action-oriented space odysseys. The program was immediately successful with these populations of kids.
One day, one some staff members of the state mental hospital, where she was chief of psychological services, asked if she would teach her reading method to some retarded inmates. Surprised, she quickly replied that she could not, because she had designed this program for very bright children. "What I know about intelligence, is that this would never work with that population."
They urged her to reconsider but Renée responded "No, I am sure that it would not work--or if it did, that they would not be able to read with any kind of comprehension." On further urging she finally relented. She and her graduate students set up a program with patients all of whom had assessed I.Qs under 70. To her amazement, not only did they learn how to read, but they learned to read with comprehension. They were able to understand and retell stories, and soon they began to tell stories about themselves. This was a key factor in their transformation.
The people who cared for them began to look on them very differently--as people with possibilities! They had a different look in their eyes, they began to take better care of their grooming, their attitudes and behavior improved. In short, they began to behave more intelligently and even taught themselves how to write. Renée lost the top half of her first research study because those individuals were released to an institution where they needed less care.
Along with the joy of success, Renée realized with a shock that the world she thought she knew as a professional psychologist was coming apart.That was the load of lemons for her. A lifetime of learning, research, and teaching had been overturned.
We think we know who we are and suddenly life as we know it changes. Part of us wants to hang on to the old story, but a new story is in the making. In order to get on with our life, we have to let go, and that's just what Renée Fuller did. It was a conscious choice.
"Well," she thought, "as long as we're at it, let's see how far down we can go." They successfully taught reading to the mentally retarded with assessed I.Qs of 60, 50, 40, 30, and down to 20. They all learned to read with the exception of those who could not tell or understand a story. These were people who had uncontrollable seizures that disrupted the connections between ideas.Renée went on to write a book called In Search of the I.Q. Correlation, in which she discussed her discovery that she couldfind no correlation between her subjects' assessed I.Q. and what they were able to do.
Renée Fuller believes that story itself is the basic building block not only of learning but of intelligence. When you think about it, every culture in the history of the world has relied on story to teach its history, mores, and life skills. The great religions all have relied on stories from the pulpit, in images and sculpture, in drama, and in literature. Stories bind us together as a species. Powerful ways of learning--powerful ways of helping the mind to make meaningful, intelligent connections. They also guide our lives.
Renée's program is now being used successfully to teach reading to the highly gifted, the mentally retarded, and every level in between at all ages. It has been used with well known adults such as members of the Harlem Globe-trotters basketball team. At the other end of the age spectrum, a pair of developmentally delayed twins at age nine, learned to read in a few months and went on to successfully tutor and teach a five year old to read. The program is being used with adult prison populations and with juvenile offenders. Some juvenile court judges are assigning the program as part of the rehabilitation program.
From her lemonade stand, Renée says, "We have the chance to enter an era of greater human equality...Instead of looking at knowledge as property to be hoarded in order to achieve status, importance, and identity, this new era would see knowledge as the shared story of mankind."
To read more about Renée and her work:
- Do You Dream in Pictures? If so...
- From the Ball-Stick-Bird website, a wonderful example of a parent's support and encouragement. This family's view of differences in human intelligence is a valuable lesson for everyone with a child who learns differently.
- Understanding Good and Evil in Children's Literature
- When the strong models of good and evil Dr. Renée Fuller had included in her reading series made the books unpopular with commercial publishers she took another look at the content of her stories. She decided not to change the series when she found that the children in her experimental groups seemed to need the security of knowing that good triumphs over evil. They identified with the good, and saw things in themselves that they admired in their heroes. Fuller maintains that it is no accident that stories of good and evil appear in all cultures -- they are essential to the mental health of young children.
To contact Renée Fuller please write to:
Ball-Stick-Bird Publications
PO Box 429, Williamstown, MA 01267telephone: (413) 664-0002
e-mail: info@ballstickbird.comVisit the Ball Stick Bird website:
http://www.ballstickbird.com
Copyright © 1997 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.
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