Dawn and I were listening to the radio on Saturday and a story came on about a telephone interpreter. People call her when they need someone to translate between English and Spanish. She specializes in medical terminology and is often used by people in hospitals to communicate symptoms or medical directions.
One of the stories she was sharing was about a pair of teenaged parents who just had a new born baby. When a nurse visited them at their house she found the baby wrapped up in all sorts of clothes even though it was sweating. She used the telephone interpreter to ask them why they had dressed the baby up so thoroughly in such sweltering heat. Their answer was that was how baby Jesus was dressed. Solid logic there.
The nurse told the couple that they needed to monitor the temperature of the baby since it had a fever. The couple revealed that they were illiterate. The nurse said they just needed to use a thermometer. The couple reiterated that they illiterate and were unable to even read numbers. The nurse was flabbergasted. The rest of the story is unimportant.
So here’s what surprised me - there were people who couldn’t read numbers. I get being unable to read words – that involves bundling together letters into words and making sense out of them. I even get being mathematically literate…but reading numbers? It seems like the chances to associate the symbols with natural numbers are so numerous that it’s bound to happen if you’re alive and conscious for twenty years. I would think you should at least recognize the symbols for the first ten integers if you’re counting or have ever bought anything with money.
What surprised me even more is the casual way in which Dawn acknowledged that such people exist, and that their existence was less than surprising. She was blasé about it. I was gob smacked. Have you ever known anyone who couldn’t recognize a number I asked? She said didn’t know anyone, but that was hardly proof that such an individual should be surprising. I tried to point out all the different ways that a person would likely become accustomed to numbers and she casually swatted them away. She was unmoved. I grew increasingly more agitated with her stance that people could be completely oblivious to counting and symbols. She argued that they would just stop trying, that numbers would be noise in their environment. I don’t buy it.
So am I underestimating the lack of cognitive ability of my fellow man? Has anyone heard of such a thing as someone who cannot recognize numbers? Is Dawn right (yet again)? I sure hope not. I prefer people that cool and self-assured about their stance to be dead wrong.
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3 comments:
Huh. Never thought about illiteracy carrying over to numbers, but I agree with Dawn that it makes sense. Obviously numbers were a pretty late development in human culture, which means they were too complex for people to innately understand.
But you'd think that people could recognize shapes or colors based on unwritten experience. Would numbers be any different?
Or is it like me trying to read long roman numerals? I have trouble remembering them on the fly, and when they're put together like MCMXCIX, my brain just shuts off.
Our lovely couple probably has a borderline (or lower) IQ. It takes no smarts whatsoever to make a baby. And when you have an IQ that low, you are often oblivious to the fact that A. you are really all that different than anyone else and B. you don't have the skills to raise a baby.
There could also be a lack of exposure issue, which possibly goes back to IQ. Maybe the parents of the lovely couple were also of low intelligence and didn't know to expose the babies to numbers and so forth... Or maybe there was blatant neglect.
orrrrrr... maybe there's nothing wrong with their IQ and they're severely dyslexic.
As you see, lots of possibilities for Dawn to be right.
That said, I've never met anyone who dosn't know numbers.
I came to terms with the fact that Dawn is often right about things a long time ago.
My claim isn't that it is impossible that these folks don't know numbers. I just want people to find it surprising!
It's not something you run into everyday.
Dawn and I have had another long conversation about this since I posted it. It ended with us concluding that we are each using a different definition of what it means to "read numbers." And we still think the other person is still wrong.
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