Archive for October 7th, 2005

Boy’s-eye view of LD

Published by JohnL on 7 October 2005 in News. 2 Comments

Eight-year-old Chandler Schaak explains his problems with reading and writing to audiences by referring to a “juggler” that mixes up letters and the order in which they appear, according to Sophia Tareen of the Portland (OR, US) Oregonian. It is wonderful to learn that a student is providing advocacy for those who have Learning Disabilities, but the story is so chockful of misinformation that it is very disappointing. Here are several quotes:

[The ‘juggler’ is] the name the 8-year-old Forest Grove boy gives to dyslexia, the learning disability that causes him to write d’s for b’s and mix up letter order when he reads.

We have plenty of evidence that reversals are not diagnostic of LD. I’m sorry to see anyone perpetuating this myth.

Schaak, who considers himself an advocate for dyslexia awareness, is involved locally in organizations such as the Reversals Group.

I hope that this group’s name is not indicative of its focus. If people are focusing on remediating the reversal of symbols in hopes of fixing dyslexia, I fear they will sorely disappointed.

However, the juggler can be trained. Schaak says he has to memorize each word and know it right away, instead of relying on his visual abilities to sound it out.

Uh-oh. If Mr. Schaak has to memorize each word rather than acquiring facility with sounding them out (i.e., mastering the alphabetic principle), he will be forever limited to something on the order of 3rd-4th grade reading. At about that age, the vocabulary demands of English literature, math, science, and social studies expand rapidly, going from a few thousand words to 10s of thousands of words. However, people are only good at remembering a few thousand separate items.

I hope someone will explain to Ms. Tareen the importance of checking her facts. More importantly, I hope someone will explain to Mr. Schaak that his juggler is probably just a metaphor, an explanation that people who do not know better have foisted on him. Of course, people will wonder why I would doubt the personal experience of someone with a condition that I’ve never experienced. I do so because I do not want people to be misled and because I know both personally and scientifically that people are easily misled. Consider the research about recovered memory as a case example.

Link to Ms. Tareen’s article.