I agree with NHS Blog Doctor on this.
“She’s very intelligent, doctor, but she is dyslexic.” I struggle with this concept. A layman’s definition of intelligence – and I happily admit to being a layman on this – is “the ability to understand and process information.” Just as it is no longer acceptable for children to fail exams, it is no longer acceptable to label them as being of lower intelligence. Instead, we sub-divide intelligence into a number of categories and look at each one individually. Let us suppose that Amanda is very poor at analysing data presented to her in words and is labelled as dyslexic. Surely this means that one area of her intelligence is poor or, in to put it in simple terms, she is not as intelligent as she might be.Because we have the label “dyslexia” Amanda will be given extra time for her GCSEs. Why do we not identify all children who are, for whatever reason, less intelligent and give them all extra time to do their exams? Indeed, taking this to the logical conclusion, we could assess all children’s global intelligence and give them examination times inversely proportional to their IQ.Why not?Whyshould it just be middle-class Amanda who gets preferential treatment?What happens to all these children with “mild” dyslexia when they leave school? Will they be prepared for the realities of life? You do not get “extra time” in the real world.
I used to be surprised at the number of people who told me that "Jimmy is very intelligent but he cannot read very well, that's why he has thirty minutes extra in exams" Surely the two are intertwined? If you cannot read and process information, then you aren't going to be "intelligent". I even know a pharmacist who tried to get extra time in his qualification exam owing to being dyslexic. It seemed to pass him by that in practice, working in the real-world, he would not get an extra thirty minutes to dispense a patient's prescription! Nice try though.
4 comments:
It's Liz from I Speak of Dreams. As nearly as I can tell from this side of the Atlantic, the United Kingdom does a lousy job of remediating dyslexia, choosing to emphasize accomodations over remediation.
The American system of publicly-funded education isn't a whole lot better, but we do have more scientifically-based remediation systems. I'd nominate any of the Orton-Gillingham based programs as being effective remediation. One example is The Barton Method. A list of the features of effective remediation programs can be found at LD Online. Learning to read correctly rewires the brain.
Direct Instruction may not be sufficient to teach dyslexics to read, but it is certainly a cure for dysteachia.
And what happens to dyslexics after leaving school? You might be surprised by high achieving dyslexics--even an eminent surgeon has dyslexia.
I do think people are putting the label of dyslexia now onto anyone with any sort of learning difficulty.
On a side note, I've been told that if you're dyslexic, you get you're course books etc paid for at Uni :-O Does dyslexia somehow cause a problem with ones wallet? Sorry, I'm bitter about having to pay out 12 grand with no help whatsoever over the next four years, lol.
At least some of you get it!
http://www.xtraordinarypeople.com/
I agree with Liz; accommodation is not needed if the student gets proper diagnosis and remediation. I have dyscalculia, which is basically dyslexia with numbers. My teachers would hound me for making "stupid little mistakes" like shifting a decimal point, switching digits, or seeing a six as a nine. I had a very hard time with "scan tron" tests because I would fill in the wrong circle; non-lettered patterns practically swim before my eyes, and reading music was nearly a hopeless task.
Once we figured out what the real problem was (not stupidity, but a brain wiring issue), I was able to train myself to work around it and stop making the mistakes--but I couldn't fix it if I didn't know why I was making the mistakes.
Kids who have a hard time reading because of dyslexia need to learn skills to work through the dyslexia; they may not be able to perfectly function in all arenas (my dyslexic sister cannot, for the life of her, read a map or give directions), but a greater functionality can be achieved.
For what it's worth, we recognized the problem BEFORE I took the major college entrance exams in high school, and I had the highest ACT score in my graduating class.
This miswiring of the brain isn't a lack of intellect, it's just an obstacle in expressing one's intellect. There are very gifted, intelligent dyslexics, and there are some very stupid ones, but dyslexia by itself does not indicate the lack of intelligence.
I was a literacy tutor for underprivileged children, and it drove me nuts that I was trying to teach little Maggie to read, but her teacher kept pushing me to do arithmetic flash cards. So it can be hard for needy kids to get the proper remediation training for dyslexia, even when they're getting one-on-one attention (and I did manage to inform the teacher that I was there to teach reading, and that's what I was going to do).
Post a Comment