If only it were simply an addiction to drugs that had seized her husband, Trudy Maurer found herself thinking. If only it were an alcohol problem, an obsession with gambling or any other conventional monkey on the back. “Then there would have been intervention programs,” she said. “Then people would have understood.”
But no. Marshall Kaminsky, her husband of more than a decade–a good provider, a kind, intelligent man and attentive father, she said–was hooked on phonics.
Several years before the expression gained currency as the name of a commercial learn-to-read program, Kaminsky lived it.
In the early 1980s, as I detailed in yesterday’s column, he invented a series of simple, playful educational games based largely on the sounds made by individual letters and common letter combinations.
He and his son, Daniel, played them together about 40 minutes each evening when Daniel was a toddler. And, as Kaminsky explains in his floppy-disk book “Cybertots,” ($15, write TheTermite@aol.com or call 847-677-4001 for details), Daniel became an astonishingly skilled reader by age 4.
Kaminsky, then a prosperous accountant, thought he’d found his true purpose in life. He would become an “underground educator,” a multimedia crusader who would make his mark and earn his living by persuading parents and educators to learn from his success with Daniel.
He quit his job. He wrote voluminously, lectured to any and all who would listen and made instructional tapes. He “put all his energy into his project, to the detriment of his family and everything else,” said Maurer.
“It was inconceivable to me that once he saw he was destroying our family, he’d stop,” she said. “But he couldn’t stop. Nothing I said made any difference.”
“She used to say to me, `I married a CPA, not a classroom Elmer Gantry,’ ” said Kaminsky. “She had a point there.”
They separated in 1989 and were divorced in 1990 when Daniel was 10. Both pin the blame on phonics.
“He’s not a crackpot,” said Maurer, a medical economist who still lives with Daniel in San Francisco. “Even though they destroyed him, his ideas work,” she said. “If people would use them, they’d see fabulous and positive differences in their kids.”
Daniel, now 18 and a college sophomore studying computer science, “has become an incredibly smart, capable, well-adjusted young man,” she said. “He benefited greatly from all that wonderful time he spent with his dad.”
“I can’t begin to tell you how much I loved that child,” said Kaminsky, now 54, divorced again, living in Skokie, earning money as a gardener and pushing his notions on reading and the perils of whole-life insurance. “(He) ended up with a 148 IQ and no father. . . . This is the price I paid to indulge my outrage over illiteracy.”
The father is now totally estranged from his daughter, 29, and from Daniel. Daniel did not return my call, but his mother related that he is still very bitter that his father “loved his crusade more than he loved him.” She said, “Marshall often said he had to do it. But he didn’t. He chose to do it. He chose to do it, no matter who it hurt”
“I had it all and threw it away for an idea,” Kaminsky said. “It wasn’t worth it. I’d gladly trade it all in for a hug from Daniel.”
It is a poignant sentiment, but Maurer said she doesn’t believe it and, indeed, Kaminsky himself quickly contradicted it: “I had something to do and I wouldn’t let anyone or anything get in my way. I still won’t,” he added. “I cannot stop what I am doing, no matter the consequences.”
I wrote yesterday about Marshall Kaminsky’s educational ideas and his experiences with his son because I believe that the story contains at least some insight for parents regarding their interactions with their children and the choices they make.
I wrote today about the pain that resulted from his single-minded pursuit of his goals for roughly the same reason.
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MORE ON THE INTERNET: Read Part 2 of an on-line interview with author Marshall Kaminsky, an excerpt from “Cybertots” and yesterday’s column at chicago.tribune.com/go/zorn, where you also will find an assortment of links on phonics vs. whole language, home-schooling and other issues in education.
