Reading Groups: Defining the Masses

Do they still assign reading groups in school? Personally, I think they were an invaluable part of the learning process. It allowed us to quickly and easily identify all of the “slow people” so that we wouldn’t cheat off them during geography tests. Because inevitably, every group had a mascot, a giveaway. It was either the kid who could already count to a thousand by kindergarten, or the kid who was still drooling because he hadn’t figured out how to keep his bottom lip tucked. By association, you were able to pigeonhole every other kid in that group.

Reading groups were always given cutesy animal names based on the textbook you were reading. Since my first grade book was called “Travelling the Trade Winds,” my group was The Trade Wind Tigers. Everyone knew that we were the smart group as much as they knew that The Getting Ready Rabbits (their book was “Getting Ready to Read”) was the “‘tard group.” Hey, we were mean little six-year-olds and they didn’t start teaching sensitivity until third grade. Fifth grade for the Rabbits.

While we Tigers were reading thoroughly stimulating stories about Pedro who had lost his pet snake at the market, the Rabbits were still busy learning their letters and phonetics. At first, we were content to just mind our own business and call them i’jits behind their backs. But then our teacher, Mrs. Alcott did something to incite revolution. It seemed that the Rabbits were having a hard time understanding what sound the letter G made. Mrs. Alcott just couldn’t make them grasp that it was pronounced “guh” not “juh.” After about a week of no progress, she got inspired and gave all the Rabbits a piece of GUH-um. Strawberry-flavored, Bubblicious, GUH-um. She let them chew it in class and everything. Big mistake, Mrs. Alcott. Big mistake.

A powder keg had been ignited under the Tigers. We knew what sound frickin’ G made. She never gave us any gum. We nodded to each other with a silent accord and made it our immediate mission to destroy the Getting Ready Rabbits. Recess was an exercise in genocide that day as we chased the Rabbits, tackled them to the ground and stole their gum. We reveled in our own scholastic aptitude as we threw their GUH-um on the GUH-round and stomped it in the GUH-rass.

It was probably because of kids like the Tigers that the Human Potential Movement started “homogenizing” classrooms and grouping kids of all intelligence levels together. Their reasoning was that it would somehow make the kids with “learning disorders” not feel inferior to those of us who weren’t going to have jobs with paper hats. Oh, but we still knew who they were. Hiding them among the Tigers only provided temporary camouflage. We hadn’t forgotten the gum incident, and we were as persistent as Elmer Fudd hunting our Rabbits. We just had to be more methodical, dangling carrots in the form of questions, like “What is the plural of Moose?” to see if we could entrap them in answers like “Mooses.” (The correct answer is “Meese” of course.)

Unfortunately, by high school, the evolutionary playing field had been leveled and most of these Rabbits evolved into big, scary, Monty Python, psycho man-eating Rabbits. They could tear us a new sphincter had we tried taking their gum again. Stupid Darwin.

What if they split us into reading groups in our adult lives? That’d be great wouldn’t it? Maybe, instead of questions about race and religion, the census could ask us what the square root of negative one is. They could give us cute little names and everything. The Associated Press would release a report stating that, “According to the latest census, Los Angeles is comprised of 6% Mensa Monkeys, 22% Adequate Alligators, and 70% Bricks.”

(In case you’re wondering, the correct answer was “i“, a mathematical concept called an “Imaginary Number” which is only used by über-intelligent former Trade Wind Tigers who now belong to the remaining 2% group called The Too Smart For Their Own Good Gophers.)

Reading groups would make things so much simpler. If we knew that a particular street was populated by Bricks, we’d know to never stop and ask for directions. We’d go one street over to where all the Alligators lived. A poetic thought, though probably too idealistic. Eventually, people would just start abusing the system. They’d rightly assume that many Bricks forget to lock their doors, then break into their houses to steal their gum.