All That Glitters Is Not Gold

When I wanted something that my mother didn't consider especially good for me, she would say, "All that glitters is not gold." Recently I saw some sparkly pyrite for sale at a gift shop in a park museum. Pyrite looks like gold, but it isn't. Some unfortunate people actually mined it for a while, but then found out that they were digging up a worthless mineral. Pyrite has come to be called "fool's gold". Real gold ore, on the other hand, looks much like an ordinary rock with a pale yellowish color.

There is so much in modern life that looks good, but isn't. The supermarket shelves are lined with "fruit snacks" that are really candy, "fruit drinks" that are just sugar water, "wheat bread" that has more brown food coloring than whole grain, green-colored puffs that supposedly have vegetables in them, and many other nutrition-free items that pose as healthy. The TV set spews advertisements that present merchandise in an unreal light. One ad that I saw showed an asthmatic mother playing basketball with her children after taking some pills that supposedly made that possible! I don't think I've ever met a mother who played basketball with her children, much less a person with serious breathing problems.

Some teaching methods, such as sight reading without phonics, have seemed effective because children can read easy books with high-frequency words much faster than if they learned the sound-symbol correspondences first. However, most people who have learned to read by sight recognition have great difficulty with spelling, and many of them never learn to read the long, unfamiliar words presented in science and social studies. Using candy, toys, and punishment to modify the behavior of children works quickly and easily - at first. Overuse of these measures, however, leads to rebellion and overdependence on external control eventually. Likewise, many medications on the market today merely control symptoms without addressing causes. I've known more than one person with poor dietary habits who took antacids to control the resulting acid reflux disease and ended up quite sick. Dietary change banished the problem for one of them, but the other one moved away, so I never knew what happened.

There's really no substitute for eating whole, fresh food, for teaching sound-symbol correspondence in reading, for establishing discipline with positive relationships, or for discovering and correcting problems. No matter how much we might wish that there were happy pills and easy answers, life is just not that way. Those of us who allow ourselves to be fooled, like the owners of the pyrite mine, suffer great losses. Pyrite will never be gold, and substitutes that look good, but aren't, will never be effective.

Readers, please share your thoughts and experiences with me. The comments of many people make this column vibrant and relevant. Contact me at: newskill7@msn.com or call me at: 703-691-0191 (home), or 703-501-9013 (cell). I'm eager to hear from you.

Mary Sue Laing, M.Ed.
Resource Teacher, St. Ambrose School

by Mary Sue Laing, M. Ed., New Skill, Inc. Academic Tutor