In the community of people concerned about Learning Disabilities there are many people with good hearts and faulty facts. I stumbled across a blog entry entitled “Dyslexia a most misunderstood condition” from Yabba Yabba that illustrates this. Alex Rodriguez of Melboune (AU) used an encounter with a youth as a springboard to discuss dyslexia.
Whilst waiting for a bus the other day, a young teenager (that we can refer to as Fred), shabbily dressed, unshaven, came up to me. We had a short discussion and through this discussion he told me he was “Dyslexic.” It turned out, he was one of those hideous individuals who left school early, a high school drop-out. He did not get a long at school and so he left. He told me he was working as well as studying at TAFE (Tertiary And Further Education); I congratulated him for continuing his education, though I did not condemn him for leaving school early - I see there being no reason to further alienate him from the community.
Like Fred (?) above, most people would have heard of someone at school or at work referred to as being Dyslexic or being politically correct, having a condition called, “Dyslexia.” Often, people with Dyslexia are thought of as being stupid, thick or less intelligent than people that are normal, they may be either, but it is not the condition itself that makes them this, though it may enhance the overall effect.
It’s nice that Mr. Rodriguez has provided a sympathetic view of Learning Disabilities (e.g., individuals with LD are not “thick”), but in the remainder of the article, he’s presented a lot of misinformation. He perpetuates the reversals myth and the modality learning styles idea and he recommends meditation as treatment.
Sometimes I wonder whether any attention is better than no attention.
Link to Mr. Rodriguez’s article.
Dear Group,
I will write to you in defence of the Professors comments, an excerpt follows:
“He perpetuates the reversals myth and the modality learning styles idea and he recommends meditation as treatment.”
I am not an expert in this field, so I don’t understand your jargon. However, I stand by what I have written until I am presented with evidence to show otherwise.
Readers, if you suffer from Dyslexia and related conditions why not try medidation (or prayer) as I have suggested in my article here: http://www.elggodo.net/yabba in conjuction with any other methods you are using? It will cost you nothing and it may help you. It is better than a kick in the pants!
Warm regards,
Alex Rodriguez, The Editor
Yabba Yabba
http://www.elggodo.net/yabba
Australia
Alex, thanks for taking the time to comment on this entry. If your primary concern about my critique of the entry on your blog is my skepticism about meditation, please rest assured that it’s O.K. by me for people to meditate or pray. Those are personal decisions. However, I am concerned with parts of the entry on your site that are not quite accurate.
Reversals—The entry on your blog included this sentence: “1. Reading a letter back- the-front or upside-down. For example: a b becomes a d, or a 6 becomes a 9.” I’ve remarked on this matter repeatedly on LD Blog; readers who want to review those remarks can follow this link. The basic idea is that mistakenly identifying letters and numerals as their mirror images—reversingthem (e.g., “3″ for “E,” “was” for “saw”)—does not distinguish people with Learning Disabilities from those who do not have LD. It is true that some individuals with LD make more reversal errors than their non-disabled peers, but that is simply because they make more errors overall. In at least one of the entries available through the link I put in this paragraph one can find the references to the research on which I base these ideas. So, that’s why I expressed concern about perputating the reversals myth.
Modality learning styles—The entry on your blog has these sentences: “If a person was categorised as being a, visual learner, they would learn through images in their mind. Conversely, a verbal learner would learn via an internal dialogue, by verbalisng what is written on the page or via an conversation in their heads.” This is a popular misconception about how people learn. People may say that they are visual or auditory learners, and there are even tests the purport to identify learning styles. However, when one examines these ideas using rigorous scientific standards, they don’t hold water. For example, the tests that are said to distinguish learning styles do not meet standards for reliability and validity. In addition, there have been somewhere between 40 and 50 published studies examining whether teaching reading using putatively more visual methods is better for so-called visual learners, while teaching reading using putatively auditory methods is better for so-called auditory learners. The vast majority of those studies have shown that it just isn’t the case. Meanwhile a substantial body of research has documented what virtually all children need to learn if they are to become good readers (segmenting words into their component sounds, blending sounds into words, letter-sound associations, etc.). This is why I expressed concern about perpetuating the idea of modality learning styles.
So, as a professional concerned with promoting understanding of Learning Disabilities and improving the educational outcomes of student with Learning Disabilities, I want to call people’s attention to the misinformation about LD. As I noted in my comments about the post on your site, I appreciated the sympathetic view expressed in it. I simply wanted to point out that some of the ideas were mistaken.
Dear Group,
No, medidation/prayer that was not my only concern. Prof. Loyd has now addressed my concerns with a proper critique of what I had written and how his view differs (and differed) from mine. I think their is a very fine line here of what is a “myth” and what is the “truth” - even, in science there is the unknown; a point often misunderstood, especially by the public.
With regards to the Reversals Myth. Prof. Loyd wrote, “It is true that some individuals with LD make more reversal errors than their non-disabled peers, but that is simply because they make more errors overall.”
As Prof. Loyd said, “they make more errors overall.” The question is why do they do that? I would say, the reasons why they make more errors is because they have an LD and one of the attributes (among some of which I mentioned in my article) of some people with an LD is that they reverse some symbols more often than the normal population.
To support this idea (rather than myth) think of this scenario. What may happen with some people with an LD is they may have a damaged left side of the brain. So, what the brain does is use similiar areas in the right side of the brain for the same processes. However, what happens is that the lettering is reversed on the right side.
The Prof. Loyd also discussed modality learning styles, i.e., “People may say that they are visual or auditory learners, and there are even tests the [that] purport to identify learning styles. However, when one examines these ideas using rigorous scientific standards, they don’t hold water.”
Readers, this opens up a lot of interesting problems specially relating to IQ testing (1). Personally, I stand by what I wrote in the article on my blog i.e., “People with Dyslexia may have a tendency to be better at visual or verbal abilities depending, I would say, on the circuitry in their brains.” This could be tested by trials using a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) machine. Though, I agree with Prof. Loyd, when he said, “Meanwhile a substantial body of research has documented what virtually all children need to learn [phonics]if they are to become good readers (segmenting words into their component sounds, blending sounds into words, letter-sound associations, etc.).” I would agree that Phonics should be used to teach all children learning to read and in fact, visual methods should also be used - whatever works for that child/adult!
From this discussion it seems clear that what constitutes or what is used to measure a person with LD is not clear. What I wrote in my orininal article was an attempt at that and a suggestion of how a person with those symptoms can do to help themselves to reduce their distress and improve their ability to learn - the end result of these discussions.
So in conclusion,
- Before dismissing another point of view outright you should explain your position in relation to the disputed view; this was the thrust of my discontent with Prof. Loyd’s origninal comment
- The Reversals Myth should not be called a “myth”, but rather “a disputed idea”, though that is a matter of choice. I support the Reversals Idea as one of the many pointers to a person with an LD if it occurs on a regular enough basis to cause distress to the sufferer
- Modality learning styles are another disputed idea. I still support this as one of the indicators for a person who has an LD. I support the use of IQ tests to be used to judge whether a person has a tendency for one learning style or another or if a person has an LD. However, I strongly dispute the validity of IQ tests for measuring a persons intelligence especially if that person has an extreme preference for either visual or verbal learning.
___________________________________________________
Footnotes
(1) IQ tests are often used to test whether a person has an LD or not. Though, if you consider, that a person with an LD may be either a visual or auditory learner, thus skewing the IQ test in either direction; though this is often compensated with the addition of 10% to account for the deviation - what crap, especially in the extreme cases! IQ tests, give an interesting insight for people wishing to improve themselves - but that is all. IQ and related tests should never be used to judge whether someone is fit for employement or anything else.