The second and final week of my big project at work is over. While the second week went better than the first, one of my summer interns seemed to have a problem with reading comprehension. There were written instructions to follow and a checklist to be filled out as each step in the process was completed. In some cases there were notes that indicated special treatment that was required. But this one guy consistently had problems with reading and understanding all this stuff and it put us in a bit of a bind. It makes me fear for the future of our country if our college students have this much trouble with simple instructions.

The Waybacks “I Wanna Be Like You” (Louis Prima)
This song comes from the movie The Jungle Book, which was of course a real book before it became an animated Disney flick. The instructions I provided were far from being a book, it was just a few pages to read over. But I get the impression that this guy doesn’t read a whole lot of books.

Peter Gabriel “The Book Of Love” (The Magnetic Fields)
Love is a complex thing that I sometimes have problems comprehending, so I wouldn’t get upset if my intern had problems comprehending the Book Of Love. But that wasn’t what I was asking him to read.

Taxiride “Word Up” (Cameo)
When you’re reading something it all comes down to the words. Understanding what each word means and how the words fit together to build sentences which then fit together to communicate information. That’s the very soul of reading comprehension. But I think that when it came to reviewing the information my intern decided to throw his hands in the air like he just didn’t care.

New Buffalo “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” (Nina Simone)
I thought my instructions were clear. I asked other people to review them and they agreed. I told the summer interns to ask questions if anything was unclear. But alas the written and verbal instructions were misunderstood, largely due to the lack of reading comprehension that I’ve been harping on all through this post.

Skee-Lo “The Tale Of Mister Morton” (From Schoolhouse Rock)
I suppose it would be too much to expect Schoolhouse Rock or some contemporary version of it to be broadcast between the Saturday morning cartoons of today. It’s an artifact of a simpler time. But I did learn a lot about grammar and reading from those cool little cartoons. In my intern’s scenario he played the role of Mister Morton and he was supposed to do what the instructions told him to do. Mister Intern reads. Mister Intern does. Mister Intern follows instructions.