News, commentary, and resources about Learning Disabilities
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In an publication called Falkirk (Scotland, UK) Today, there is an anonymous story entitled “Getting to grips with dyslexia: Local help for sufferers” that echoes the important fact that Learning Disabilities such as dyslexia are not the result of low intelligence. Here’s a snippet:
OF all the myths surrounding dyslexia, perhaps the most common is that those affected by it are somehow lacking in intelligence.
However, a quick glance at some famous names who have achieved success despite having dyslexia proves just how wrong that is.
Richard Branson, Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, and Jackie Stewart are some of those who have overcome the problems associated with the condition.
It’s good to have the press bust the myth that individuals with dyslexia are unintelligent. It’s too bad that this story indicates that Einstein had dyslexia. As Gerald Coles notes in his book, The learning mystique: A critical look at “learning disabilities,” (1987, Pantheon Books), Einstein reportedly read serious philosophy books as a young child; that makes the idea of him having dyslexia pretty untenable.
Link to the article quoted here.
“Xtraordinary People.” That’s the name of a group in Great Britain that is challenging schools to do a better job of addressing the needs of students with dyslexia, the Learning Disability that affects reading and often other areas of literacy. Kate Griggs, the parent of a boy with dyslexia, founded the organziation, connected it with the British Dyslexia Association, and promoted the effort in many ways, including get national news coverage. On the BBC Web site, in a follow-up to a television broadcast on BBC One Wednesday 13 December 2006, Ms. Griggs explained why she was angry about schools’ failure to provide needed services and what she did about it.
When my eldest son Ted, now 13, was in primary school he started having problems learning. The school said he was being difficult and could not concentrate, and were suggesting he go to a special school.
I was shocked because I believed he had dyslexia and needed support. So I trained as a teaching assistant to help him but, realised he needed more help than that.
So we moved him to a school where there was good support and he started to do really well. But we were lucky because we could afford to pay for it.
Not all parents can do that and have to watch their children struggling at school with no proper help.
Link to the BBC news magazine article. Link to the British Dyslexia Association Web site. Also see the press release on the show, as available Craegmoor Health.
As employees, many adults with Learning Disabilities elect to conceal their difficulties, according to a story by Eileen Zimmerman of the New York Times. Using several different cases, Ms. Zimmerman explored the effects of Learning Disabilities on people in the workplace. In addition, Ms. Zimmerman conferred with scholars working on the topic of Learning Disabilities among adults, as indicated in the following quote.
Link to Ms. Zimmerman’s article. Search via Google Scholar for articles about LD and work.
The Weblog Awards folks announced the competition for best blogs, including one for the Best Educational Blog. Here are the entrants:
Here’s the link to the page where one can vote.
Fortunately, there’s some press about bogus therapies. In an article entitled “‘Cure’ for dyslexia comes under fire.” Paul Heinrichs of The Age (AU) examined the problems with the Dore treatment program that has been poplular in Great Britan. (I expressed reservations about this prollgram exactly one year ago, as available here. I still harbor those concerns.)
The Dore program, which is sold for about $4500 a child through 11 Australian centres, including one in Melbourne, uses simple physical exercises such as throwing a bean bag from hand to hand and standing on a wobbleboard.
Its founder, British millionaire Wynford Dore, claims the program has delivered “breakthrough” results for dyslexia sufferers and assists children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia (poor co-ordination) and Asperger’s syndrome, an autism-like condition.
Much of the renewed emphasis on the Dore program probably comes from the controversial study published recently in an academic journal in GB. I’ve not personally reviewed that study, so I shan’t comment. However, I plan to do so, as I suspect that it will be a good illustration of how mistakes are made either in the peer review process or the representation by the press of a simple academic agreement.
Link for Mr. Heinrichs’ article.
Over on I Speak of Dreams, Liz Ditz has a post regarding the untrustworthiness of a Web site on ADHD. Liz refers to a post on Drumsnwhistles that took the Attention Deficit Disorder blog to task for making false statements about research and for pushing remedies of ADHD that have virtually no evidenciary bases. I’m glad to see that folks on the Internet are gazing with a sensibly skeptical eye on some of these merchandizing schemes. Hoooray! There’s entirely too much bologna on the Web, so let’s root it out of the garden and flush it into the compost heap (teehee–making mush with metaphors).
Link to Liz’s post about the site. Here’s a link to the post on Drumsnwhistles to which Liz referred.
Fan, Yanhong, Fossella, and Posner (2001) compared monozygotic and dyzygotic twins on the Attention Network Test (ANT), an assessment system that measures three anatomically defined networks related to attention. They found that one of these three appeared likely to be inheritable.
Results: The efficiency of the executive attention network, that mediates stimulus and response conflict, shows sufficient heritability to warrant further study. Alerting and overall reaction time show some evidence for heritability and in our study the orienting network shows no evidence of heritability.
Conclusions: These results suggest that genetic variation contributes to normal individual differences in higher order executive attention involving dopamine rich frontal areas including the anterior cingulate. At least the executive portion of the ANT may serve as a valid endophenotype for larger twin studies and subsequent molecular genetic analysis in normal subject populations.
Link to a the PDF of the Fan et al. paper, “Assessing the heritability of attentional networks.” There’s just boat loads of interesting activity in this area. Check this list of sources.
As regular readers (both of you!) know, one of the things that concerns me is the misrepresentation of Learning Disabilities. I get at least mildly irritated when people perpetuate misinformation about Learning Disabilities because (a) people new to Learning Disabilities are likely to accept the ideas as accurate and, thus, perpetuate them even longer; (b) the misrepresentations compete with and often muscle evidentiarily and reasonedly sound ideas out of the way, thus doing a dis-service to those who need help; and (c) popularization of falacious ideas about Learning Disabilities increases the general level of sketpticism about Learning Disabilities, cheapens the concept, makes it harder for those of us who are seeking demonstrable progress in understanding Learning Disabilities and helping those who must contend with them day in and day out. (Please fell free to suggest other reasons for concern.)
In a post entitled “Friday Dyslexia Woo,” Liz Ditz exposes some more of the bologna that passes as fresh steak on the Internet. Liz has a great track record at catching a whiff of the smoke from the sizzle and telling whether there’s steak under it. Here her critique is simple and direct: “No evidence, just claims and testimonials.” Read it, please.
Teachers with LD
Paige Iseminger, who teaches in a preschool for students with severe disabilities, has a special connection with her students, according to a story by Julie Finley in the Natchez (MS, US) Democrat. Ms. Finley paints Ms. Iseminger as having unique understanding of her teaching responsibilities, because she was identified as having Learning Disabilities during her high school years.
Continue reading ‘Teachers with LD’