"Teaching children and adults to read, write, and comprehend is not only our essential duty and investment in America's future; it is also an act of love."
– John Corcoran

The Teacher Who Couldn't Read

by Donna D. Feeney
Biography Magazine - October 1999

biography magazine John Corcoran's throat tightened and his mouth was dry as he spoke to a high powered group of San Diego executives and community leaders in the fall of 1987. How would this group react when the 49-year-old Corcoran told them that although he was a college graduate, former high school teacher, and head of a multi-million dollar business, he had been living a masquerade? Difficult as it was to get the words outs, he admitted to them that up until recently he had been unable to read. He was illiterate.

They gave him a standing ovation.

That joyful moment was a turning point for Corcoran, who is dyslexic. Confessing his life long handicap marked the end of shame, anxiety, and ingenious evasions and the beginning of a crusade on behalf of literacy and education reform. Since then, he's shared his experiences with everyone from prison inmates to Oprah audiences, even testifying on illiteracy issues before Congress. He told Biography Magazine: “I always knew how much I wanted to be able to read, but I didn't know how much it affected my being."

How can it be, you may be thinking, that someone who basically could not read at all got by, even thrived, for so long? Innate charm and intelligence, heavy duty cheating, and Academy Award level acting helped. And why, after I6 years of schooling, hadn't this resourceful man mastered that basic skill? As educator Pat Lindamood, who diagnosed Corcoran some years ago, explains, "John - like some 30% of the population - has problems with "phonic awareness." Until he sought specific help, he was unable to connect the sequence of letters with the sequence of their sounds in words. For example, he could look at the word “book” and read it as “look” or “bike.” In Corcoran's case, the deficit was one of the most severe Lindamood has seen.

The road that led a tearful Corcoran to the Carlsbad California Library Adult Learning Center, where volunteer tutor Eleanor Condit put him on the path to literacy, was a long and winding one.

Born John Waldon Corcoran Jr. on December 5, I937 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Jack and Agnes Leonard Corcoran, he was the third child and only boy in a family of six children. Jack Corcoran, whom John describes as "the best man I ever knew," held down several jobs, doing "whatever it took to keep food on the table." But his chosen profession was teaching. "And he was a great reader," notes Corcoran.

The family moved frequently. Although Corcoran started school in Springfield, Illinois, he had lived in 25 neighborhoods in 6 states before finishing high school. He actually looked forward to these moves, seeing them as a source of new opportunities and adventure - and a way to develop his survival instincts. While some assume the constant relocations were the cause of his not learning to read, he does not: "The reason people don't learn is that they haven't had the proper instruction."

School terrorized him because he felt he could never measure up. Still, he recalls, "I have excellent memories of the details of my childhood. At the core, we were a loving family, and that love that I had as a child helped me function."

As a youngster, John was passed from grade to grade - although with poor evaluations. He couldn't repeat the alphabet but his parents were told he was simply "unmotivated" and "immature" and would learn to read at some point. By the third grade, he'd recognized his ability to read people; if not books, and he was good at math. He knew he wasn't dumb. Still, being placed in the "Buzzards" (non-reading group) in the fourth grade hurt and still rankles him.

By sixth grade, the serious charade had begun. He'd now mastered penmanship, although he didn't know what he was writing. He'd also learned how to compensate for his disability. A natural athlete, he nurtured his talent for sports and began cultivating as friends the smartest, toughest kids in his classes. And "I'd act like an idiot when necessary" to divert teachers from the truth.

He considered junior high a battlefield, but he also began seeking out intelligent, pretty girls who were happy to help the tall, good looking boy with the penetrating blue eyes. Sometimes they allowed him to copy their homework, or did it for him. This practice continued through his high school and even college years.

To avoid tests, he skipped classes or got into fights so he'd be removed from the room. But he was listening and learning from lectures, discussions, and films.

By the time he entered high school, which he attended regularly, he was playing three sports and hanging out with the "in" crowd. He even managed to get elected homecoming king.

At Texas Western College (now University of Texas, El Paso), which he attended on an athletic scholarship, he conjured up a method to avoid courses requiring reading in class and essay writing. He'd simply sign up for more credits than necessary, then drop classes he figured would be troublesome. And he'd cheat in most of the classes he did take. He could pass some without doing so, but most courses demanded expertise as a thief or con man.

One incident was reminiscent of a Seinfeld episode. When he had to take an essay test in a required class and couldn't get an advance copy, he came to class carrying two blue-books: one in which he copied the questions and then passed out the window to a waiting friend, and another in which to doodle.

Corcoran is not proud of what he did, but using one of the metaphors with which he sprinkles his conversations, he explains, "I was like a cat burglar, and the jewels were the degree."

After getting that degree, he became a teacher, hoping to learn to read by osmosis. Still, he maintained the illusion of literacy, carrying a newspaper or book under one arm and listening carefully to conversations in the teachers' room. In class, he had his students take the roll and correct one another's tests. Corcoran created an oral environment focused on discussions and films instead of textbooks. "We teach as we learn," he notes.

Although he also coached sports, his job was teaching English grammar and social studies and he says he never received a poor evaluation in his 17-year career.

All the while, he vainly struggled to teach himself to read by listening to newscasts, then looking at a newspaper and trying to pick out related words. When be wanted to switch jobs, he feigned a sprained wrist (complete with bandages) to get a friend to fill out an application, then copied the application repeatedly.

With a strong, instinctive sense of direction, Corcoran had no problem driving, even though he couldn't read signs (except numbered ones). He'd ask people to provide landmarks such as gas stations or churches when giving directions.

People's names? He'd give them nicknames. Handed a paper to read, he “forgot his glasses." Life was a constant challenge.

For all its difficulties, he believes teaching was his fate. Especially after accepting a teaching job in Corcoran, California - he liked the name - for it was there he met Kathleen Marie Mendes, a senior at nearby Fresno State, on a blind date.

They married in 1965. The couple then moved to Southern California, eventually winding up in the Carlsbad-Oceanside area of northern San Diego county. They now have two children (Colleen, 31, and Johnny, 29) and four grandchildren.

When they were engaged, Corcoran told Kathy he couldn't read, but she thought he meant he couldn't find the time. It wasn't until after Colleen was born that she discovered the truth: One day, she noticed he was unable to read a children's story to the then-preschooler. Kathy, who is a nurse, became John's surrogate reader and writer. She also smoothed over situations when he concedes he acted like a "jerk" in an effort to hide his illiteracy. So the deception continued.

During his teaching career, Corcoran discovered another talent: acquiring rental properties. Always good at home repairs, he began buying and selling real estate. In 1977, he took a leave of absence from teaching and earned tenfold more than the previous year. That prompted him to leave teaching altogether to concentrate on real-estate development. With his brother-in-law, Corcoran created a company called Mencor Enterprises. At its peak, Mencor had 20 employees-plenty of people who could do the necessary reading and writing that Corcoran could not.

But with the 1980's recession and the crashing of the California real-estate market, Mencor hit hard times. Lawsuits bombarded the company, and internal squabbling caused rancor. Corcoran's illiteracy only compounded the crisis. He felt besieged, considering the "literates" to be his enemies. Finally, in desperation, he found his way to Carlsbad Adult Learning Center.

Matched with tutor Eleanor Condit, whom he calls "the second-grade teacher I didn't have," for four years Corcoran labored diligently on his reading Condit, whom he considers a "miracle worker," tutored him for 300 hours. He spent about 1500 additional hours on independent study and daily practice. But he was not progressing as far as he'd hoped. And then he received a phone call from Pat Lindamood. The director of the Lindamood-Bell Clinic in San Luis Obispo, California, she had heard about Corcoran's situation, and all signs told her that he probably lacked a skill known as phonemic awareness.

The diagnostic tests she gave him confirmed it: He was unable to identify individual sounds within words, even those with as few as two sounds, as in "it." Corcoran then spent a month at the clinic, learning how sounds in words are formed in the mouth-even watching himself speak in the mirror. The training was the breakthrough he needed - he compares it to Helen Keller's epiphany at the water pump.

Corcoran's reading ability took off. According to Lindamood, he is now reading and spelling at normal adult levels. He recalls the thrill of being able to read Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes": "Books are so powerful. Not being able to read is more damaging to the individual than we 'fess up to."

Since that pivotal speech in 1987, John Corcoran has devoted his energies to the cause of literacy, crisscrossing the country to "speak to grassroots volunteers, educators, and employers about the need for everyone to read, write, and spell. He meets with other former illiterates, and they converse "like recovering alcoholics." He's been a guest on national TV talk shows, including Larry King's, and from 1992 to '95 served as a presidential appointee to the National Institute for Literacy board (NIFL). There may even be a movie based on his 1994 book, "The Teacher Who Couldn't Read" (written with Carol C. Carlson).

But there have been doubters, too. Some, including education experts, have been convinced that Corcoran faked his handicap. However, the FBI cleared him of that charge during a background check for his NIFL position. Reading specialists at Lindamood-Bell told the agency: "John's profile was typical of a highly intelligent person with severe auditory conceptual dysfunction. There is no way he could have known the profile pattern to fake. Moreover, Corcoran is far from the only teacher or accomplished individual who has sought help from the clinic.”

Corcoran does harbor guilt that he was unable to help the nonreading students in his classes and bewails the fact that many teachers are not trained in proper reading instruction techniques, which he firmly believes are the key to eliminating illiteracy. Before teachers are accredited, he asserts, they should actually teach a child and an adult how to read. He also believes the systematic teaching of phonics (and attention to phonemic awareness) is critical in this process. He's especially emphatic that reading instruction should continue after the primary grades.

"In my heart and spirit, I am a teacher," John Corcoran declares - but today he's a teacher who can read. He and Kathy live in the dream house overlooking the Pacific Ocean that he built 18 years ago, and he proudly serves on the board of the San Diego Council on Literacy, the group that co-sponsored the breakfast speech that changed his life. Now he wants everyone else to achieve the miracle.

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