One of the most mysterious things about a dyslexic reader can be the way that a person may stumble on small words such as "at" or "if" while sometimes reading longer words fairly confidently.
Why 'Tyrannosaurus' But Not 'If'?" is a free 15-part online resource for teachers, mentors and educators generally who are looking for new tools and insights to help bright but struggling learners.
The course, which I authored, draws on the core principles behind the Davis Approach, created by Ronald Davis, author of the internationally best-selling book, "The Gift of Dyslexia".
The course is specifically designed with the busy teacher in mind. Each instalment is short enough to be read - and retained - in 2 - 3 minutes in the midst of a busy day.My intention has been to make each instalment incisive - brief and easy to read, but packed with the crucial insights and strategies that make the Davis approach so successful at liberating trapped learners.
One of our adult dyslexic readers emailed us this fascinating piece about how he thinks. It's reprinted here in full:
My
schooldays were a nightmare, I was bullied by teachers who had no idea about
dyslexia or how it affected the world a dyslexic person lives in. This is an
opportunity to record not only my hell at school but also how my mind works.
Left and right, up and down, sweet and bitter,
love and hate, I’m sure I don’t need to go on giving examples of opposites. As
children we lean all about them at school and like most things we don’t question
what we are told by our “superiors” be them teachers or parents. During my time
as a school boy I clearly remember thinking things weren’t always as they seemed
and on occasions I would question something which was clear and obvious to the
class (my mates) but seemed “wrong” to me.
The way our brains work is unique to each and
every one of us and working with children who suffer/enjoy autism, dyslexia and
learning differences in general has helped me to begin the long road of
unwrapping the way I as a dyslexic person “thinks”. One aspect of how my mind
works relates a lot to my school/teenage years and my ability to dream lucid
dreams, I didn’t realise it then but I now know lucid dreaming was a window into
how I thought.
Let’s start with my brain which I will call my
onion, onion because every now and again I realise something or the “penny
drops” and I’m able to peel off another skin from my “onion” reviling a little
more into the way I think. I’m not going to explain the ins and outs or the
wonder of lucid dreaming as its all well documented, just tap in LUCID DREAMING
on your PCs search engine and all will be revealed. What I realise now is that I
was questioning everything I was learning; I was able to put new knowledge into
shape, form, colour, rhythm, depth and texture but most important of all I could
add emotion to my “dream”.
I can't speak for other people but it seems to
me that what they are taught is never questioned, at least not on the level I’m
trying to explain, as children we were told black is the opposite of white and
it was never questioned, it was obvious, but my onion had to work through it, it
had to see if there was a skin to peel away, I knew it was a fact that black was
the opposite of white but my mind had a mind of it’s own, lucid dreaming was an
insight as to how I was working it all out. I believe I had an idea as a school
boy as to what was happening but was unable to express myself verbally without
making myself sound silly or stupid, few people understood lucid dreaming let
alone how my understanding of thought was presenting it’s
self.
I have not experienced lucid dreaming since I
was in my 20s but I do experience a phenomena while asleep which seems to have
taken it’s place, it has taken years to begin to understand what is happening
and a surprisingly long time to realise it is a follow on from lucid dreaming.
I guess it has to be called a dream because it
only ever occurs when I’m asleep but it’s nothing like a dream at all. It
usually happens when I have disturbed sleep, perhaps a dog barking in the
distance kicks it off or I may be having difficulty to sleep due to the stresses
of the previous day. It is only when I become “aware” of the “vision” that I
realise it has been a reoccurring thing, I am also aware of the time I have been
having the same vision, some last weeks and some a few days. Once I have become
aware of it I never “see” it again, another one always takes its place.
So what is it I “see”…… and why do I think it
has a bearing on how a dyslexic person “thinks” !!
It’s a flash of images, all intertwined with
no top, bottom, edges or sides. It remains still but I’m able to move in and out
as I wish, I’m part of it, we are as one, it has depth like a 3D image. Each
part has a meaning and each part has colour. The colour’s not the same as the
colour you see during the day, it’s more abstract, not at all like normal
colour, the shades of what I see are the shades of emotion, the nearest I can
get to what it appears like is metallic or opalescent, it has it’s own depth
which I cannot explain. I have over the years begun to understand what it means,
some CE (Coloured Emotions) blend into each other, so a feeling of pity within a
shape can effortlessly blend into a feeling of sadness, the feeling of tension
can blend into a feeling of calm and all the feelings between are readable.
Love and hate often blend together, we are
able to love someone yet hate aspects of what they are, love and hate are not
opposites, at least not in my world. The opposite of hate is happy, I have never
seen hate blend into happy, like water and oil they have there own place and
never mix. This is an example of how my mind thinks; it questions everything
before accepting what it’s told.
Trying to explain exactly how I “read” this
phenomenon is impossible, I can only say over the many years I have experienced
them that I am beginning to understand more of what’s happening but I realise
I’m only scratching the surface and many more skins on my onion will I hope peel
away as time moves on. There are many aspects about the phenomena I experience
which I do not understand, why for example when it happens should I feel so
ecstatic?
I do think I understand why it only lasts a
split second in time, once I “see” the “image” there is nothing else to
experience from it, its job has been done and it moves on to the next “image”
which will appear in its own time. I liken it to tasting something, for example
if you put vinegar on your tongue you know straight away what it is, you have no
need to keep thinking about it, your tongue has done it’s
job.
Sometimes during the day I may become aware
that I have been thinking through a problem, it may have stemmed from an
overheard conversation or something off the radio or television. People may have
been discussing an issue where no common ground can be found, a difference of
opinion or an argument. I suddenly realise that I have been thinking about it
unconsciously, my onion has been trying to “sort out” the problem. Occasionally
I found I couldn’t stop thinking about the issue and it would literally make my
headache. More often than not it was about trivial things of little importance,
I have no say in what my onion chooses to worry over, hard as I try to think of
other things it has to take its course. Then, I suddenly realise that I am back
to “normal” but more important than that is that I have worked out an answer to
the problem, at least an answer that is best suited to all parties. For
example….
A while ago a police sergeant was talking on
the radio about the congestion on the
London
roads, he said he didn’t know what
would happen if a solution couldn’t be found. My mind went into involuntary
overdrive, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I had flash CE during the night
and headaches during the day. Then when it stopped I realised I had thought of
an answer, or at least one that could warrant consideration. The answer was
this, any car can park in allotted parking areas for free as long as they leave
there dipped headlights on, that way the owner would do the shopping in a
shorter time as possible, in and out double quick, being in charge of a car with
no dipped lights would make for a hefty fine…..
OK, I realise this is full of holes and would
probably never work in practice but I use this example for two
reasons.
1) It’s a good example of how my onion works
with no input from me, indeed I couldn’t care less about the congestion on the
London roads.
2) I told a few people about the
headlight idea, some people thought it a good idea and said I ought to write and
tell someone about it (who) !!!!
Quite some time after that I was reading a
letters page in a newspaper and low and behold, there was “my” idea sent in by
someone, had my idea spread? I know the same idea can materialise from people
around the same time but I use this as a good example of what has happened in
the past with other “ideas” I have had.
I was diagnosed dyslexic when I was eleven and
my parents were told I would probably never read or write very well. I am now in
my 50s and realise I was in fact quite bright. I was assessed at the Tonbridge
dyslexia institute (I think that’s what it’s called) and was put in the top 15%
of intellectuals of my age group, I was also told my reading and writing was
that of an eleven year old.
Because my onion never let’s up on mundane
trivia the rest of me suffered, it’s like 90% of my brain does its own thing and
leaves me with 10%. I hope the 10% I have used for these notes have been
worthwhile. I realise this must all sound very odd and strange and I hope you
can take it for what it is.
Mick Bean
Mick has written
a short story about how he suffered at the hands of teachers back in
the 50s and 60s who had no understanding of what dyslexia is. For more
details of the book, go to http://www.booksy.co.uk/viewtopic.php?id=64
This article, by Learning People Director Richard Whitehead, was first published in The Green Parent magazine (Oct/Nov 2008), www.thegreenparent.co.uk
A couple of years ago I was giving a workshop to a group of 34
educational professionals and let slip the idea that concentration gets in the
way of learning.
The reaction was one of universal surprise – “What, concentration is
harmful? But surely, learning is – has to be – all about concentration?”
I thought that the best way to illustrate my point would be through an
interactive exercise, and therefore set the group a task.
Their task was to attempt to levitate their glass of water off the table
through sheer force of mental effort.As
the group got going with the task, the room went very quiet and the huge amount
of concentration being exerted was visible on everyone’s face.
As this was going on, I proceeded to take off my jacket, turn it inside
out and put it on again, with the lining on the outside, in full view of the
entire room.
Out of 34 people present, only three noticed.
Mining our Minds
Concentration gets in the way of learning.It narrows your focus down into a small
tunnel, to the exclusion of everything else.It is no surprise that 31 glass-levitating teachers should fail to
notice their workshop presenter turn his jacket inside out.Nor is it surprising that a child squeezing
every last ounce of mental effort into reading a sentence should be left
without the faintest idea what the sentence was about.
At its root, green philosophy is about the application of human
ingenuity to the accomplishment of a task with minimal expenditure of energy,
and in a manner which is in harmony with surrounding natural processes.
Frequently, it is about having the courage and insight to track a
problem back to its root cause.This is
because dealing with the reason why a problem has occurred is more efficient in
the long term than merely trying to block, contain, or combat the symptoms that
the problem has brought forth.
In the field of medicine, this philosophy resonates with many holistic
approaches which apply these exact same principles in the ecology of the human
body.Rather than combating external
symptoms, holistic medicine attempts to track back to the reason why the
illness came about.In an attitude of
profound respect for the human body’s own healing power, it then applies a
minimal, gentle force to the root cause, enabling sometimes dramatic recovery
from severe ill-health.
To date, however, little attention has been paid to the application of
the self-same principles in the field of learning.We mine and plunder the minds of our
children, teaching them that learning can only come at the expense of hard
work.We set them one-dimensional,
linear tasks that make little use of creative expression and lateral
thinking.We tell them to concentrate on
these tasks; and when our most creative and spontaneous thinkers find
themselves unable to comply, we ply them with repetitive exercises and
mind-bending drugs such as Ritalin and Strattera – out of the best intentions,
because we have nothing better to offer them.
Dyslexia – A Gift Going to Waste
My organisation has the experience of working and communicating with
hundreds of dyslexic children and adults.Without exception, our
dyslexic clients display one or more – often several – of the following traits:
Strong sense
of justice
Strong
curiosity about one or more subject areas and/or their environment
Strong
intuitive ability
Vivid visual
imagination and/or spatial awareness (e.g.good at tracking a football across a pitch)
Unusually
high speed of thinking (to the point that some express irritation at the
slow pace at which others think)
Practical or
entrepreneurial skill
Skill in art,
design, engineering, architecture, sports and/or the performing arts
Dyslexia is not a lifelong disability, but a form of intelligence that
deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.Time and time again we watch our clients,
children and adults alike, utilising their natural strengths and talents to
build new skills in a matter of days that they had spent years vainly
struggling to acquire.This in turn
revitalises their self-esteem, allowing them to tackle and achieve things they
never thought possible.Among our
clients we have documented cases of reading ages leapfrogging biological age,
of huge surges in mathematical performance, of handwriting being transformed
after one afternoon session.This is not
because we have some magic wand.It is
because when properly stimulated, dyslexics have it within themselves to
succeed.
Harnessing Dyslexic Talent – the Green Way
Just as green principles can guide us into global harmony and good
health, so they can enable a person to master anything they wish to learn.
What do green principles teach us, and how can we apply them to a
learning problem?
Respect for the environmentA person’s mental environment is their thinking
style and natural strengths.A
visual-spatial thinker will learn well visually, an intuitive thinker
intuitively, and so on.Invariably,
learning problems are about a mismatch between a person’s thinking style and
the way that information has been presented.
Avoid: drill-based,
repetitive tasks – if something hasn’t worked the first time, it is the
approach, not the person, that needs to be modified.
Adopt: an explorative
approach to the problem; become genuinely curious about how your dyslexic student
thinks; find out where the mismatch was and invest time in developing an
approach that harnesses your student’s natural talents.
Energy efficiency Learning should always occur in a relaxed state of focus.If something doesn’t come easily and effortlessly,
it will not go into the long-term memory.
Avoid: concentration,
excessive timetabling of learning, and a culture of “try harder”.
Value: relaxation
techniques, creative games, taking an immediate break at the first sign of
concentration.
Sustainable energy
sourcesLearning is fuelled by the
curiosity of the person learning.Personal curiosity, unless suppressed, is infinitely sustainable and
therefore a renewable energy source.
Avoid: teaching someone
something against their will; this is a fundamental violation of a learning
partnership.
Value: working to your
student’s personal learning agenda; giving explanations through metaphors that
your student can relate to; being excited by the learning material yourself
(enthusiasm is infectious).
Going to the root causeThe root cause of a learning problem is
confusion.The key to resolving it is
finding out where and how the feeling of confusion entered the area of learning
in question; then devising an experience that replaces the feeling of confusion
with the feeling of certainty.
Avoid: Coping strategies,
learning “tricks” and memorisation – these might include the alphabet song for
a person who cannot visualise letters, and memorising times tables without an
underlying understanding of what multiplication is.
Read: “The Gift of
Dyslexia” and “The Gift of Learning” by Ronald Davis for a systematic approach
to creating a state of relaxed focus and identifying and resolving confusion in
learning.
Richard Whitehead is Director of The Learning People, a nationwide
community of Davis Dyslexia Programme Providers.The Davis Dyslexia Programme is an approach
which works with the dyslexic thinking style to overcome difficulties with
literacy, numeracy, handwriting, coordination and ADD.After the main programme, teachers and
parents are frequently involved in a supporting role.Go to www.learningpeople.co.uk
for more information or telephone 08000 27 26 57 for a free telephone
consultation.
Note from The Learning People: The UK Government heavily endorses phonic-based reading instruction for all learners, regardless of their thinking style. While phonic approaches work well for many learners, they tend to be ineffective for dyslexic thinkers.
The following report looks at the catastrophic failure of a US reading scheme, Reading First, that has received over $1billion of federal funds. Reading First places strong emphasis on phonic instruction.
The Beginning of the End of Reading First (Maybe…)
By
Laura Zink de Diaz, Davis Facilitator in Bogotá, Colombia
For those of you who’ve always felt there was a
disturbing odor of snake-oil in the unremitting use of the phrase
“scientifically-based reading research” by supporters of the No Child Left
Behind Act, you now have confirmation that your sense of smell is just fine.
In April of this year, the US Department of Education
released a report on Reading First, the major ingredient in the NCLB recipe for
ensuring that all children read at grade level by the end of the third grade.
This comes almost a year after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued
a report (in May 2007) accusing several people central to the development of
Reading First of conflict of interest.
In
case you missed it, or have forgotten the details, the OIG’s report revealed
that individuals with significant professional and or financial connections to
some of the instructional materials favored by Reading First directors were
involved in the grant approval process. For example, at least three individuals
with ties to the Direct Instruction (DI) approach
to reading pedagogy were named to the peer review panel, which evaluated state
applications for Reading First funding. According to the OIG report, the
individuals in question were involved in reviewing 23 state applications for
Reading First grant money and served on seven of the 16 sub-panels that
reviewed state applications. One of them led five of the panels.
To make a long and sordid
story short, when the applications that states submitted included other
approaches to reading instruction, they were often denied, in some cases
repeatedly, until they were re-written to include use of Direct Instruction. This violates a federal prohibition against
endorsement by the government of specific curricula. In addition, it’s alleged
that the subversion of the panel’s work in this way made a LOT of money for
those panel members with financial ties to DI
and other reading programs favored by the directors of Reading First.
Moving
ahead, this year’s report is titled Reading
First Impact Study: Interim Report, and is available for download on-line.
It’s 211 pages long, but its findings are succinctly expressed in the executive
summary:
“On average, across the 18 participating
sites, estimated impacts on student reading comprehension test scores were not
statistically significant.”
This
is the most damning of the findings. However, there’s more:
“On average Reading First increased instructional
time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by
the program (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and
comprehension).”
So
this stunning lack of impact was achieved not only by insisting that schools
use only the programs the Reading First directors recommended, but also by
increasing instructional time. Reading First schools devote an extra 100
minutes per day to reading, the equivalent of an extra six weeks each year. It
is virtually inconceivable that an extra 100 minutes per day could be devoted
to reading instruction without obtaining any
significant impact, no matter what programs were in use! I suspect that school
children could spend that same amount of time reading and re-reading Captain Underpants to better effect than
slogging through the Direct Instruction drills imposed on them in most Reading
First schools!
Another
finding:
“Average
impacts on reading comprehension and classroom instruction did not change
systematically over time as sites gained experience with Reading First.”
So, practice did not make perfect. And:
“Study sites that received their Reading First grants later
in the federal funding process (between January and August 2004) experienced
positive and statistically significant impacts both on the time first and
second grade teachers spent on the five essential components of reading
instruction and on first and second grade reading comprehension.”
(Executive summary, p. ix)
Essentially, the longer a
school followed Reading First guidelines, the worse their students performed on
tests of reading comprehension.
As I
was putting together this column, more delicious news: June 21, 2008, Alyson
Klein, reported at edweek.org that
Reading First would be “eliminated under a fiscal 2009 spending measure
approved unanimously …by a House Appropriations subcommittee.” Representative
David R. Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, cited as the
basis for this decision the results of the impact study and “mismanagement,
conflicts of interest, and cronyism, as documented by the inspector general.”
The list of defects of
Reading First would fill this entire issue. They start with the unproven
assumption that phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and
comprehension are the “five essential components of reading instruction.” This
recipe for reading came from the National Reading Panel report of 2000, which
concluded that phonics is the answer to the difficulties of all types of
struggling readers. (The panel members came to this conclusion by – surprise! –
excluding from their review any study that didn’t focus on phonics.) And then
there’s the classic example of fuzzy math buried in the goal of the program:
that all children should “read at grade level by the end of third grade.” Since
grade level is defined as the average
of the scores of all students in a
particular grade, it is a Lake Woebegone-eque fantasy to expect all children to
read “at grade level,” no matter what grade you look at.
But these are topics for an
entire volume on the history of education reform in the United States. For now,
I’m content to see that the truth about the snake oil is finally coming to
light.
References and Further
Information:
Reading
First Impact Study: Interim Report. Complete report available as downloadable
PDF document at: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20084016/index.asp
Bracey, Gerald. “DIBELS Earns Bracey Rotten
Apple Award” Available on-line at: http://susanohanian.org/anti-dibels/node/96
Garan, Elaine M. “Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: A Critique of the National
Reading Panel Report on Phonics.” Available on-line at:
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0103gar.htm
Klein, Alyson. “House Panel
Would Kill “Reading First” Funding.” Education Week. Available on-line at: http://tinyurl.com/3jekqq
Medige, Bernadette. “Nonsense Words that Sent Your Kid to
Summer School” Buffalo News, August 11, 2007. Available on-line at:
susanohanian.org/show_nclb_outrages.html?id=3051
Rebecca first came
into contact with Jacqui Flisher – a
Learning People Davis Facilitator – as part of Jacqui’s work as Student Support
Tutor within a police force.
Jacqui and Rebecca
quickly became friends and would meet up over a cup of coffee. It was during
one of these ‘coffee breaks’ that it came to light that Rebecca had always
wanted to seek promotion to a Police Sergeant, but did not feel confident in
her abilities to prepare for and sit the necessary examination.
Jacqui devised a
study plan for Rebecca to prepare her for her exam and she was also given the
Davis® ‘tools’ of Dial, Release, Orientation and Reading for Meaning, together
with using Concept Mastery which enabled her to remember the varying
definitions used in law.
By using these
techniques, Rebecca is now able:
-to relax when confronted by stressful situations
-to regulate her sleep
patterns
-to study effectively for her
forthcoming promotion exams
-to immediately comprehend
written text in detail, and to recall much of the information weeks later
-to retain information needed
for her exams
Rebecca sat the
exam in March and passed, coming 410th out of a total of 9,062
candidates who sat the exam on the same day. Not only that, but she scored
nearly 71%, putting her in the top 5% of all candidates.
When asked if she
would have contemplated undertaking her exam if she had not worked with Jacqui,
Rebecca replied that she would have certainly shied away from the thought of
even attempting the exam as she has done so often in the past.
As a result
Rebecca can now not only look forward to a bonus for passing her exam, plus she
could now be in line for a substantial pay rise as well. Fired up by her success,
Rebecca is now looking forward to the time in the near future when she will
start studying for her Inspector’s exam, confident that she will be able to
achieve and surpass the 60% that she will need to pass, together with the
further rise in salary that this would bring.
Earlier this year, we submitted the following petition to Downing Street:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reclassify dyslexia as a thinking style, not a disability.”
Details of Petition:
“Dyslexia is currently classed as a disability by law. This is
intensely damaging to the self-esteem of dyslexics. In fact, dyslexics
are strong visual-spatial thinkers and often have heightened intuition.
While some find the world of work difficult, many excel in areas such
as architecture, engineering, design, entrepreneurism and other fields
requiring visual, intuitive and/or lateral thinking. There is also
mounting evidence that dyslexics can succeed at all academic tasks when
instruction is appropriate to the dyslexic thinking style. As a
society, our focus needs to be on catering adequately for all thinking
styles, not writing some of them off as disabilities. We urge the
Government to submit new laws to Parliament to reframe dyslexia as a
thinking style, not a disability. Care must be taken to ensure that the
rights and protections currently afforded to dyslexics under the
Disability Discrimination Act are transferred to a new Equality of
Thinking Style law. The dyslexic way of thinking deserves to be treated
with dignity and respect. Note: the term “dyslexics” instead of “people
with dyslexia” is used here intentionally. Dyslexia is not an
affliction.”
Here is the Government’s response
Thank you for your e-petition concerning dyslexia.
The Government is committed to ensuring that
everybody has the opportunity to participate fully in society and
anti-discrimination legislation supports this aim.
The Government considers that the Disability
Discrimination Act 1995 is the most suitable vehicle for protecting
dyslexic people from discrimination based on dyslexia.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995, as amended,
does not define every dyslexic person as disabled. It is the effect
that the dyslexia has on the individual, rather than their being
dyslexic, which determines whether they are a disabled person. In
general, for the purposes of the Act, a person is a disabled person if
they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and
long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal
day-to-day activities. Where dyslexia has this effect on an individual,
that person is a disabled person for the purposes of the Disability
Discrimination Act 1995 and thus is entitled to the full protection
from discrimination that is provided by the Act, including from
discrimination that arises from a failure to make a reasonable
adjustment.
The Act requires reasonable adjustments to be made
for disabled people not just in employment and access to goods,
services, facilities and premises, but also in access to education, the
functions of public authorities and private clubs. A disabled person
who considers that they have been subject to disability discrimination,
including as a consequence of a failure by an employer, service
provider or other duty holder to meet their duty of reasonable
adjustment, may take enforcement action through civil procedures.
Consequently, the Government considers that the
Disability Discrimination Act 1995 provides appropriate levels of
protection from discrimination for people who have dyslexia and it has
no plans to enact legislation specifically for protection against
discrimination based on dyslexia.
The Learning People use an approach known as the Davis Dyslexia Programme. The following short video shows some of the key features involved in a Davis Programme.
The Davis Dyslexia Programme: Monica's testimonial.
The Davis Dyslexia Programme: Phil's testimonial.
The Davis Dyslexia Programme: Marsha's testimonial:
The Davis approach to dyslexia engages a learner's creativity. You'll enjoy this highly entertaining talk by Sir Ken Robinson entitled, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"
Two Interviews with Ron Davis
Ron Davis is the creator of the Davis Dyslexia Programme in which The Learning People specialises.
Interview 1
Born autistic and dyslexic, Ron has had incredible life. From standing in the corner at school with a dunce's cap on, being teased and beaten, and not talking until well into his teens, he started teaching calculus to the engineers working on the Polaris missile system before he turned 20! He went on to become a millionaire through real estate but always felt like a fraud because he could not read or write.
Ron reveals his amazing breakthrough and how he now teaches The Gift of Dyslexia through his network of international facilitators. A truly compassionate and amazing man.
Ron Davis continues his fascinating interview and reveals that over the last decade, the number of children being born with autism has increased by 500 percent - and Ron says this phenomenon is only the beginning. He shares who these 'new people' are, and how our educational system needs to respond, not just for their sake but for the sake of ALL children.
Judi Stewart, chief executive of the British Dyslexia Association, urged caution over such alternative therapies, saying there was no cure for dyslexia.
"The BDA recommends specialist teaching, which is multi-sensory stimulated, as these address all of the effects of dyslexia in learning."
Now I am torn by statements such as these. On the one hand, our organisation would agree that there is no "cure" for dyslexia - for the simple reason that we don't see dyslexia as a disease in the first place, but as a thinking style with untapped potential waiting to be harnessed.
Yet there is a key difference between the approach of many "alternative" therapies and the more conventional approaches adopted by the educational establishment.
Generally speaking, conventional approaches are remedial in nature - that is, they see dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADD as disabilities needing coping strategies. They assume that the answer to the problem is to be found in the teacher, and are based around lesson plans, workbooks, repetitive or drill-based activities, learning off by heart, memory tricks and so on. In the best cases, these approaches are based around multi-sensory teaching of the kind that Judi Stewart describes.
Alternative approaches, however, are explorative in nature. They see each dyslexic, dyspraxic or ADD thinker as a unique individual with as unlimited a learning potential as any other member of the human race. They understand that the answer to the problem always lies in the learner. And whatever their theory as to why dyslexia happens, their focus is to team up with the learner to find out why their natural intelligence hasn't - yet - engaged with the learning area in hand.
Alternative approaches are not satisfied with coping strategies. They look for approaches to learning that come easily and effortlessly to the learner because they engage with their natural thinking style and intelligence.
Instead of a lesson plan, they approach the learner with intense curiosity as to how they think and an open attitude to where the exploration is going to go. They have "long antennae" - keen observational skills ready to pick up the very first signs of confusion in a learner as a "clue" to be explored. They have excellent inter-personal skills and will build up a bond of trust with a learner who will then willingly talk about how they experience learning.
This explorative principle is part of why alternative approaches often see a sudden surge of ability in their clients. We have had clients who have progressed from a reading age two years below to two years above their biological age in a space of months. And while not every client experiences change as dramatic as this, there tends to come a "magic moment" in an explorative programme where the answers start to pour forth as to why a particular learning area has been challenging for a person in the past, and how this can now change.
As far as I can tell, few in the media have taken the trouble to speak to actual Dore Programme clients, turning instead to spokespeople from other organisations for comment.
One of the things that has struck us in many of the Dore Programme clients who have been approaching us in the current turmoil has been their staunch loyalty to the programme and its effects. We experience a similar loyalty in our own clients. A number of our Programme Facilitators, in fact, are parents of former Programme clients who decided they wanted to deliver the same benefits to others.
It is easy to use current developments to denounce the Dore Programme and other non-traditional approaches. Yet the media would do well to heed this loyalty factor, and become curious about why it is there.
Richard Whitehead
Note: A number of our clients are willing to speak publicly about the benefits they have experienced. If you are putting together an article or report on non-traditional approaches to dyslexia and are looking for people to interview about their benefits, contact us at info@thelearningpeople.co.uk
In the UK, dyslexia is covered by the provisions of the Disabilities Discrimination Act, and meaningful protection is afforded to dyslexic thinkers through this means.
However, is the disability framework for understanding dyslexia actually harming dyslexic interests rather than furthering them?
Essentially, there are four distinct challenges involved in creating a dyslexia-friendly workplace, each of which needs to be addressed comprehensively in order to create a workplace culture in which diversity of thinking style can be comfortably accommodated - and harnessed to the creation of commercial success.
First, there is the issue that, as we discovered through our NOP-commissioned research last summer, around 2 million adult dyslexic thinkers are not aware of their dyslexia. This is most likely the result of poor diagnosis a generation ago, but also of lack of clarity around what exactly dyslexia is. There is a huge need for employers' awareness training that is not clinical, but rather gives a direct and subjective experience of what it is like to be a dyslexic thinker - so employers can start to use their intuition to determine when an employee may be a dyslexic thinker, and provide appropriate help.
Secondly, all the dyslexia support in the world will be of no avail to an employee who is frightened or ashamed to own up to being a dyslexic thinker. In our organisation, we have worked with dyslexic adults who had never told anyone about their dyslexia, who woke up with repetitive nightmares about "being found out", and who felt it was easier to "come out" as gay in the workplace than as dyslexic.
And this is the problem with a legal framework that classifies dyslexia as a disability - it intensifies rather than alleviates the immense stigma around dyslexic thinking. We have spoken to dyslexic students who refused to apply for the Disabled Student's Allowance because they were so horrified by the name. Let's not underestimate the psychological effects of calling a bright and gifted thinker "disabled".
The elephant in the room is that dyslexia is not a disability, but a thinking style. Dyslexic thinkers excel in visual-spatial tasks involving whole-picture thinking and finding original and creative solutions to things. In 2003, the BBC's Mind of a Millionaire series commissioned a research piece into the thinking style of British millionaires and discovered that 40% of those polled were dyslexic thinkers. A more recent study by the Cass Business School established a 35% correlation between dyslexia and entrepreneurism in the US.
The disability framework for dyslexia is a convenience, but a harmful one. It is a convenient way of assuring protection to dyslexic thinkers in the workplace - at least on a superficial level. It is convenient for employers and educators because it does not require us to become curious about the dyslexic thinking style and explore its potential.
Yet this is where the disability framework is harmful. For the third challenge that we face in the workplace is creating an environment where dyslexic thinkers can grow their skills. Disability support is essentially a series of props that presents precisely that from happening - because disability theory preassumes a person will never be able to master a certain skill.
Our organisation specialises in an approach which enables dyslexic thinkers to harness their natural talent to any learning challenge. From our work, we know that with the right approach, dyslexic thinking becomes a learning tool, not a learning difficulty. If a school has failed to teach a child to read and write, wouldn't it be exciting if the workplace were an environment where these skills could finally be unlocked? In most cases, this creates an immensely grateful, loyal and eager employee whose new-found skills can be applied to the benefit of the business.
The fourth challenge we face is how to harness dyslexic talent in the workplace. When unsupported, dyslexic thinkers can become "trace-coverers" - fearful individuals who may invest a lot of energy in avoiding or deferring challenging tasks and finding excuses why they cannot be done. When supported, however, dyslexic thinkers can be among the most innovative and original contributors to a company's success.
I know a dyslexic company director who has a flair for designing systems to maximise company efficiency. He works on a consultancy basis to a number of companies where he gradually reduces his own role to a minimum - through the same efficiency principles - then moves on to the next company while staying on a retainer with the previous.
Some of your dyslexic thinkers will have excellent sales and/or marketing skills. Others will be highly empathetic and have great potential on an HR team. Yet others will be good troubleshooters, yet others will excel in workplace design and production processes, and so on.
In an environment where dyslexia is respected as a thinking style, frank and open conversations can take place around a person's natural strengths and challenges, ensuring that each dyslexic thinker is placed in a context where they can excel, both for their own benefit and for that of their employer.
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