Questions: How is it that one interprets the same thing differently across time? How is it that one can read a book, have an experience, or observe phenomena and draw completely different conclusions when the only thing different is the time in which it was read, experienced, or observed?

Is time a variable in comprehension or understanding? Is it a variable in constructing meaning?

A book that seemed so insightful at one point, with the passage of time, can become meaningless. Likewise, books that I once thought meaningless can sometimes become filled with insight, interesting, and important ideas with the passage of time. Same book. Same person. Same brain.

There are conditions that tip the scale in favor of some groups and restrict or disadvantage others. There are communities, that seem to get the economic opportunities, good schools, good teachers, health care, good nutrition, housing opportunities, small class sizes, community libraries, well-stocked school and classroom libraries … Go to a 3rd-grade classroom in a poor, inner-city school, or poor rural district. Now go to a 3rd grade classroom in a weather suburb. It's like going to a different planet.

Not everybody has the same opportunities. A person is privileged because of their environment and station in life. Communities that are predominantly white seem to have disproportionately more of these privileges and more opportunities. Communities that are predominantly black seem to have more restrictions and fewer opportunities.

Recently, the Minnesota State Legislature passed the Read Act, sponsored by Democratic representative Heather Edelson. It’s a law based on the fad of the day; the shiny new thing called the “science of reading”. Ironically, this law is based on misconceptions and un-understandings related to both science and reading. This law states that I and other literacy professors in Minnesota must follow, with fidelity, the mandates put forth by state lawmakers. These are lawmakers who have never taught a kid to read, who have never read a research article related to reading instruction, and whose knowledge about reading instruction is reliant on the information given to them by radio journalists and podcasters (present company excepted).

As part of the Read Act, the Minnesota Department of Education is now forcing me, a literacy professor at Minnesota State University, to teach things to my students that a wide range of research has shown to be ineffective in helping young children to become literate (that is, to use reading and writing for real purposes). I am forced to teach the preservice teachers in my literacy methods courses at Minnesota State University to engage in educational malpractice in their future classrooms. The Minnesota Department of Education mandates that these future teachers learn strategies that will impede their future students’ ability to achieve their full literacy potential. I must promote the de-literalization of children by telling teachers to focus primarily on lower-level reading subskills instead of higher-level cognitive functions related to reading and comprehension. Worse, I must teach them how to suck all the joy out of reading.