Posted on 07/07/2011 12:15:33 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Dyslexia turns out to be a lot like the President’s birth certificate. There are a huge number of claims on each side. They can’t all be right. Either the thing is real or it isn’t.
You can find on the Internet an extraordinary number of people who talk about dyslexia as if it’s not only an ultimate reality but some sort of gift from God. (Oh, your brains may be scrambled but somehow it’s a wonderful thing because you see the world in a new way!)
On the other side, you can find people saying that dyslexia is a lie, a hoax, nothing but nonsense. I’ve seen a video of an English politician declaring flatly: “It’s a wicked excuse to cover up bad teaching.”
So what is this crazy thing that people can describe as both night and day?
First of all, there’s no question that the dyslexic kid has a reading problem. The question is whether the kid was born with this problem and brought it to school? Or did the school take a perfectly normal child and create a disability by using bad instructional methods???
The Education Establishment, of course, wants to blame everything on the kid. Hey, they complain, we can’t be expected to teach defective kids.
So this is a huge debate, with vast educational, legal, psychological, neurological, and financial implications.
My own conclusion is that dyslexia is mostly a myth.
A year ago I put a graphic video on YouTube called “The Strange Truth About Dyslexia.” Only about 4 minutes, it covers the main debate fairly well. A big portion of it is given up to quotes from Siegfried Engelmann. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeFLLnRWROQ )
But in four minutes you can’t delve into all the issues. The Education Establishment wins all their victories by making everything so complicated that no ordinary citizen has a chance. So I decided to write a long, thorough analysis. Not exactly light reading, but for people involved in the Reading Wars or damaged by the Reading Wars, this article might be helpful.
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Dyslexia: The Evil Myth (a report from Improve-Education.org) -- www.fastpitchnetworking.com/pressrelease.cfm?PRID=64894 )
They see everything the other way?
And stuttering is just a different manner of speaking.
Oh so in your world someone must have a Master’s degree or be a doctor in order to have an opinion. And then you go on to compare those with dyslexia to Holocaust victims?
You then go on to claim that it is obvious to you that they are real though I see no claim from yourself to have a Masters or that you are a doctor so I guess you are alright with your own opinion.
Do you think at all before you post or just go into a rage when you disagree with something you read? Maybe you could go and get yourself diagnosed with some new made up condition.
Knock it off!
“It could have some basis in how the eyes track in western writing, that is from left to right and top to bottom; instead of languages that read from top to bottom, like Chinese, or right to left, like Hebrew.”
Bingo. I could read very well. Just could not even print it or write it without mixing up the letters. Numbers too. I could be looking at a calculator and write the answer down wrong. Had trouble with telephone numbers. LEARNED Hebrew when I was 5 years old and never had a problem. I could also mirror read, and did it frequently until someone told me how abnormal it was. I thought everyone could do it. I also learned how to be silent.
I think that explains my wife (whom her teachers though was dyslexic at one point) and her cure.
I don’t think she went for classics though. She’s an SF fan like me.
Can Learning Japanese or Chinese Help Dyslexia?
It was originally posted on the Wall Street Jounral but since you have to subscribe to the WSJ to read the entire article, I posted this link instead but for those who have an online subscription to the WSJ, search for it and read it.
Your posting history, though short, shows that you are a particularly nasty piece of work:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:madmaximus/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change
You like to call your betters names.
You make assumptions based upon nothing.
You make pronouncements based upon ignorance and emotion.
Make your time.
I like the way you explain dyslexia.
I’ve had it all my life, I can read in mirror image as easily as normal reading. I also have degrees in 4 different engineering fields. It’s not a problem for me. It’s a problem for those who don’t understand and want to put labels and victim status on everything. I’d bet that Da Vinci was dyslexic. He wrote his notes in mirror image as a code, and he certainly was no dummy.
I suspect class envy on those who deny these conditions. People tend to hate those who are smart, more educated and make more money than them(doctors, anyone with a college degree and wealth)
Also, hating those who are different in anyway.
Denying those with disabilities, saying their disability is “made up”, is just another way of bullying, throwing them aside, saying they are not worthy of life. A lot in common with the abortion/eugenics.
I don’t see them offering any help or solutions. It’s all about “me,me,me” and money,money,money. Real selfish backwards mentality. No morality at all.
But we DO question physical diseases. We ask, for instance, if cancer is one disease or several. We ask if cancer is related to heredity and/or environment.
It’s not wrong to question courteously and with real intent to find the truth. Personally, I think it’s wrong to assume questioners are “uneducated,” greedy, and “have no idea what they are talking about.” Look at it this way: you may be absolutely right that dyslexia, for instance, is exactly as you think it is. If not, maybe we’re onto something new that may enable us to help the millions of people who have symptoms of what we now label dyslexia.
I’m not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but the ingestion and production of information are two distinctly different processes. With stuttering, the speaker fails to correctly translate their own thoughts into words as they intend - the stutter isn’t the intended manner of speaking, yet it comes out.
In reading, the brain is decoding symbols on paper that are intended to represent words. Most people are taught only one or two decoding methods, while there are many that can be used. Not having one suited to the actual internal brain mechanisms that do the decoding work can be vexing.
Again - I am operating in conjecture, but this is the way I see the world. (But at least I admit I am speculating - LOL)
Both of us being engineers - I have to correct your use of the word “explain”. I’m simply offering my analysis of the issue, which is formed solely from my own learning and experience, and shouldn’t be confused with scientific fact.
It’s just my viewpoint.
But I’m glad you can accept it as a useful analysis. Take care!
Right. Folks envy those with disabilities. Smoked much crack today?
People tend to hate those who are smart, more educated and make more money than them
You're right, the disabled folks are smarter, richer, more educated.. we poor schmucks are envious of them.
You may have a disability yourself.. in that your mental processes don't seem to be working well.
Is there a disability category for "Idiot"?
I reckon you would qualify easily.
(s) we had problems with my child, they would act up and not do their homeworks. The stress was unbelievable... so the doctor gave us special pills called PLACEBOS to help with focus. Coupled with controversial methods. No TV until homework done, parents must help children with homework, acting up results in time out, and the like our child has improved.....(dripping sarcasm off)
I stand corrected. I am very obviously passionate about these and all other social/moral/cultural issues. My passion tends to get the better of me a lot.
I do not doubt there are those in the mental health and disability profession who have a leftist, liberty-hating agenda, after all the left has managed to infiltrate and dominate almost every institution and industry in America for the past who knows how many decades now.
Obviously, real or not, conservatives would have the better solutions than any on the left.
I think there is some sort of difference in the mechanisms associated with reading that's a large part of it. The optic nerve, the brain, whatever, but least in some cases the problem can be cured. Some people have told me I see things differently than other folks but so what? That's not really good or bad, just differences between individuals.
JMHO
Regards
I was talking about doctors.
In any case, I’m done fighting with you.
We should both cool our heads, and not be so rude.
Have a good day.
Welcome back, Madmaximus! We all get wound up over things that matter to us.
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