Case and point: I wear glasses. In fact, I'm almost blind without them: my effective vision ends at about 3 feet. Though I am able to perceive distinction between large objects and people, everything dissolves into a fuzzy mess. In American public schools (in the northeast US, at least) in the early 90s, schools would test student vision every year during elementary/primary school years. They would use the traditional eye test sheet, with strings of letters in smaller and smaller font vertically stacked, to be read at a distance.
It took them 5 years to figure out that I couldn''t see anything other than what was immediately in front of me. I was a smart kid, and never had problems in the classroom as I sat in the front row and listened very carefully to what was going in.
I would memorize the eye test sheet while standing in line at the nurses office, waiting to be tested. They never suspected anything was amiss, and routinely reported to my parents that I had perfect vision.
I was finally discovered when my father, trying to be clever while we were out shopping, asked me about an ice cream parlor in the distance. Despite the name of the shop being written clearly above the shopfront, I bombed the question and my father realized that I couldn''t see what he was talking about.
I have poor vision as well. We didn't have eye sight tests. I couldn't see anything written on the blackboard for at least a few years. I realized I had poor vision and even timidly asked about it a few times. It went nowhere and just like any kid, I felt like it was my own personal moral failing that I couldn't see well enough. (Every failing as a kid feels like that.)
The result was that I spent a few years not being able to see what was written on the blackboard. I had to mostly figure it out by myself. The worst were the tests that teachers only wrote on the blackboard. I'd inevitably have to quietly ask someone around me to tell me what the questions were. I don't think I failed a single test because of it even though talking was forbidden.
The funny part was that when my parents eventually took me to an optometrist they tried to convince me that wearing glasses won't be that bad. I distinctly remember that situation because I kept thinking "I asked for them years ago!"
Eventually my eyesight became bad enough again that the glasses I had didn't cut it anymore. I fell a little bit back into my old habits, but it wasn't as bad as before. Sitting closer and all of that helped immensely.
I was also 8 or 9 years old, and didn't really understand the big deal. On some level, I knew that my vision was different than other kids, but when it came time to test it, I also had a desire to "beat the test." If it seems childish, that's because it was. :)
That seems excessively strong. There's probably just an assumption about something somewhere I'm not getting because of different cultural context or the like.
I did very well in elementary school, though by 4th or 5th grade I often asked to be seated near the front because of the “glare” on the black board. I did not realize I could not see until a science class about clouds, and I could not tell that the sky was overcast, not blue. I was also surprised to see that street lights were points, not large haloes.
I’ve heard many similar stories from nearsighted friends.
Because despite his illiteracy, he is a clever and resourceful person- with enough cleverness and a bit of luck, its possible to do lots of stuff like this. He was able to circumvent the barriers imposed by illiteracy through deception, careful manipulation, or outright swindling. While iliteracy is definitely a huge concern in the world, I hope I'm not the only one out there to admire him for grifting his way through multiple schools and jobs...!
A combination of cheating, life hacks, folks enabling him, and being labeled as a bad - and then good - student, which diverted people's attention away from his lack of reading.
And to be fair: Some of this was the time period. We catch a few more learning disabilities now (not enough, though) and have more tools to help. We just didn't screen so much in the 50s.
His success at gaming the system has plenty of applicability to modern issues with coordinated cheating, purchasing papers, plagarism and so forth. Sports stars who somehow go through school without learning anything academic is a serious issue in the modern day as well. That higher view of the issue like a more interesting topic than the sensational extent to which he fit the bill by falling short of even literacy.
As for him, he was apparently resourceful and charismatic, good at sports, had adequate innate math skills and was dedicated to gaming the system.
"So I was going to be a teacher's pet and do everything necessary to pass that system. I wanted to be an athlete - I had athletic skills, and I had maths skills"
"I ran around with college kids, I dated the valedictorian - the student with the highest grades who gives a speech at the graduation ceremony, I was the homecoming king"
