History of Reading News. Vol.XXV No.2 (2002:Spring)
by Joyce M. Morris

A Good Start in Life

Editors' Note: Dr. Joyce M. Morris has played a significant role in reading research and instruction over five decades and remains an important figure in the history of literacy. She is a founder of the United Kingdom Reading Association (1963) and author of UKRA in Historical Perspective (1984). Her most recent conference contribution, published by the Queen's English Society, is entitled What Research Tells the English Teacher and Mr. Blair (2001).

If I had been able to choose my parents I would have chosen mine for their qualities of heart and mind. They gave me a good start in life and the name "Joyce" as an everlasting reminder that my birth was a special reason for "rejoicing." That was because, according to expert medical opinion at the time of their marriage in December 1918, my father's war injuries made it highly unlikely they would have much-wanted children of their own.

My idyllic early childhood was spent in a picturesque English village where the doctor visited his patients on horseback and spread noteworthy information in the local community. Consequently, it was common knowledge that I was the first eleven-pound baby he had delivered and that I had read all the Beatrix Potter books by the age of four.

I made above-average progress towards literacy before starting school largely because of the encouragement I received from my parents and their friends, notably my godmother, a peripatetic teacher. They gave me story and information books to enjoy, some of which remain in my library collection to this day.

At the age of five I began to experience the joy of having favorable circumstances at both home and school. Even now, my first teacher's surname "Butterfield" conjures up for me a picture of the ideal infants' teacher. She welcomed me to her class of six-year-olds with the confidence-boosting statement, "I hear that you can read, and know that everyone would enjoy listening to you reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit."

Like my classmates I loved that wonderful teacher, and spent a happy year learning to do a lot of interesting activities in addition to those involving the "3Rs," for which she gave every pupil a sound foundation. I cried when I was moved to a junior class even though I had been "promoted" to a class two years in advance of my age.

Hopes for the Future

My parents were pleased with my progress at school but not ambitious for me in the everyday sense of that term.

My mother believed in "destiny," expressed simply as "What is to be will be," and "You can only do your best with life's chances." She had been hoping to have a musical career when her brother was killed in action in World War I and her mother became seriously ill. With selfless devotion she put aside her dreams to care for her mother and for her brother's baby son while his widow continued war service as a hospital nurse.

With selfless love thereafter she cared for my father, who was the sole survivor of a leading British tank targeted by shellfire during a battle in France. His near-death experience, lasting injuries and temperament made him an armchair philosopher and a reading addict. In consequence he was my first mentor, and I benefited greatly from his wide-ranging knowledge and wisdom right up to the time he died in 1959, not long after my first major publication, Reading in the Primary School.

One memorable summer's day when I was nearly seven years old, we sat chatting about the books we had recently enjoyed reading including, in my case, stories with the satisfactory ending, "They all lived happily ever after." This prompted me to ask if he knew how I too might do the same. His thought-provoking response was to suggest that we postpone our discussion about "happiness" until I had presented him with a written list of what caused me to feel happy, and what to become unhappy.

Meanwhile, as he had great faith in the power of love, he hoped that all my life I would give love and be loved. Not only that, he wanted me to be lucky enough to have a "vocation." As that word was not yet in my vocabulary, he provided a fascinating explanation from his abiding interest in the structure, history and meaning of English words. An interest, incidentally, which I inherited from him and now is obviously an integral part of my role as Patron of the Queen's English Society.

To illustrate further the meaning of that evocative word, my father gave me a simply-told biography of the illustrious scientist Marie Curie. It showed how having a vocation gave purpose to her life and made it possible to persist in overcoming the kind of obstacles to fulfillment that naturally cause unhappiness and even physical hardship, as was her lot.

On the Wrong Track?

Inspired initially by that biography and knowing intuitively that I was a born researcher, my dream until the age of twenty-one was to have a vocation for research in biological science.

Unfortunately for that dream I was awarded the same grades in all nine subjects examined for matriculation. Therefore, aged fifteen, I could choose to continue my stud-ies in either arts or science as a prelude to a degree course.

Making that choice caused me great distress. My heart was set on a scientific career and yet, knowing that, my headmistress strongly advised me to choose English, French, Latin and History with a state scholarship in prospect. She eventually persuaded me to agree for reasons I later discov-ered were not entirely disinterested.

By a strange coincidence my father was faced with a diffi-cult career decision at the same time as I was trying to come to terms with what I then saw as a vital choice that started me "on the wrong track." I therefore did not worry him with my concerns, and could not take comfort from my beloved mother's philosophy of "What is to be will be." That is until one afternoon when, daydreaming in an English litera-ture class, I suddenly woke up to the sound of the teacher reciting, "Grow old along with me the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the first was made." Those prophetic words by Robert Browning magically revived my spirit and made me determined henceforth to make the most of life's chances.

In 1939 I had to make another problematic decision about my future. This time I was guided by my parents who, with war again inevitable, felt that it would be best to be practical and put my dream career on hold for the time being. In short, I agreed to train as a teacher.

Significantly, for my college course I chose main Eng-lish, advanced music (a hobby shared with my mother) and biology. Considering that I intended teaching to be a tempo-rary career, I did well enough to be invited to meet recruitment officers from the Ealing (London) Education Authority reputed to employ only the most promising young teachers.

Strange to relate, that chance meeting and an immediate offer of employment, without formal application, finally propelled me from my dream career in biological science towards my life's work in education. Strange too, that work began literally with fear on my first day as a newly-qualified teacher in a primary school.

Fear before Dedication

Briefly, on that memorable day the headmaster introduced me to my class of forty children, and assured them they would be safe with me in the school's underground shelter in the event of an air raid. He then left the classroom after vig-orously shaking my hand and wishing me "the best of luck."

I well remember how the children stared at me when I said, "Please take out your books and read while I mark the attendance register." My repeated request provoked no re- sponse and so I asked a boy in the front row of desks why he was not doing as I asked. He replied, "I can't read" and added, "Nobody in this class can read."

My initial reaction to that astonishing announcement was disbelief. This was because a glance at the children's dates of birth in the register revealed that their ages ranged from seven to ten inclusive. Therefore, according to a Government-sponsored report used in teacher-training since 1931, it was unlikely that even the youngest child had no basic reading ability.

At mid-morning break in the staffroom I discovered the awful, spine-chilling truth. Apart from contributing to the school's renowned musical activities, I had been made responsible for the educational progress of its most "backward, virtually illiterate" pupils.

The shock of that discovery was so traumatic that I felt that fate had struck a cruel blow for some reason I could not then understand. Why was I with my fortunate background given a task so alien to my experience hitherto? How could I cope with virtually no knowledge of illiteracy from my childhood or from my academic studies in college? No knowledge of the problem either from student school practice with "scholarship" eleven-year-olds in science lessons, and with secondary school pupils learning to appreciate Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Elgar's music.

Somehow I learnt to cope, with a mixture of advice from sympathetic colleagues, books about backward children and trial and error in the classroom. Nevertheless, fear of failure to meet the desperate needs of my pupils haunted my thoughts until one day, fear of a different kind motivated me to dedicate my life to the cause of literacy which, with hindsight, had been my vocation all along.

Early in the war, it happened by chance that I was helping to evacuate some children from London to safety in the countryside when an air raid warning sounded just as we had settled in a train at Paddington Station. Knowing that we were a sitting target for enemy aircraft and the train would not draw out of the station until the "All Clear" siren sounded, I began to grow fearful as the minutes ticked by.

Children already tearful on leaving their parents began to sob. With the other escorting teacher in our carriage, I tried to calm them while all the time feeling a growing panic like that described by my father when he was trapped in a waterlogged shell-hole in France. Then something prompted me to strike a bargain with the powers-that-be: I would give my life for literacy if everyone was unharmed when the "All Clear" sounded as, thankfully, was the case.

When peace was declared in 1945, I knew that to follow my vocation effectively I had a life of learning ahead. I also knew that I needed to combine learning from both the practical experience of teaching and academic studies.

For the next three years, as English state education slowly began to return to pre-war, "normal" provision, I remained happily at my primary school gaining further insight into the causes of children's literacy problems. I then went to live with my parents in Surrey to be "looked after" whilst studying part-time at London University for an internal, honors degree in psychology and, at the same time, gaining experience of teaching in a local secondary school. Then when I graduated after a third year of full-time study, I went back, as promised, to that same school to teach and to learn more about "backward" readers and writers, aged eleven to fifteen inclusive, for whose diagnostic assessment I was made responsible.

A year later, my parents supported me again in order to gain a diploma in child development at the London University Institute of Education, where the course included observing practice in a variety of nursery schools, thereby completing my professional experience of the full range of state school provision. I also combined that course with registered studies for a Ph.D. degree and, in June 1953, was in line for a university research fellowship.

All went well with my interview for that fellowship and I was hopeful as I awaited the verdict outside the committee room. To my astonishment, when I was recalled the reputedly "formidable" Chairman apologized for wasting my time. He then informed me that the fellowship would have been mine had it not been promised to a candidate interviewed the previous year provided she improved her thesis. Apparently, an examiner's confirmation that she had done so had just been received by telephone.

Amazingly, that bizarre, back-dated promise gave me a researcher's chance in a lifetime and, for the next twelve years, allowed me to follow my vocation in the most favorable circumstances on the staff of the National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales.

Editors' Note: Part II of Morris's memoir, "Serving a Good Cause," will follow in the next issue, beginning with "A Researcher's Chance in a Lifetime."