It seems that I’ve wound down to about 1 insightful (not inciteful) post a week. All of the driving and being away from family is wearing me down in terms of new ideas for thought provoking posts. Fortunately, all of you are still visiting here and leaving me comments which give me things to think about. And while I’m driving I do get a good chance to think. The issue tends to be more one of having the mental energy to write. For this post, I have to thank Kim who left a comment below. Here is the excerpt of her comment that gave me some food for thought:
… I believe now, that some people need more help than repetition based on their motivation to learn how to do so. It is about 10% of the population and they need spelling guidelines, sadly, which most of us never needed to think about. Sorry to rant, but I just wanted to bring it up because dyslexics are often underrepresented in the homeschooling world.
As is quite often the case with me and a comment the things that come to mind are not really a response to the comment. More often than not my train of thought rebounds from the comment and heads off in a different direction. In my early career, synergy was a buzz word everyone was using to describe it.
I’m going to start by saying I have a very low opinion of repetition as a method of learning. I’m going to differentiate repetition from practice. Practice is trying to do something over and over again until you have mastered it. Repetition is doing something over and over again period. I don’t expect that my children (or anyone else’s) will learn from repetition. They do learn from practice. In this instance, I don’t expect Emma will learn to spell from us spelling for her over whatever period of time. Instead, by enabling her to communicate, we are giving her a skill that she will want to keep. Eventually she will be in a spot where we are not there to be a crutch to that skill. It may take her quite a while (possibly years), but she will work it out.
TBH, my spelling is brutal on first pass at a word. But, I’m a better than average speller because mispelled words do not look right to me. Some words take a half dozen changes before they do look right. I’ve read a few thousand books. I’ve seen nearly all of the words I use in writing in print thousands of times. Up until a certain point in my life if I wanted to write something I had to have a dictionary with me. And I’m confident that as long as my children develop a taste for reading they will be able to do the same thing I did.
For a moment allow me to digress into a little rant on repetition. In one of my programming classes, I would give the students the option of write a program called knight’s tour in lieu of other assignments. The object of the program is for it to be given a spot somewhere on the chess board and the program would find a path for the knight to move (the knight moves in an L) around the entire chess board using each square only once.
There are two approaches to solving that problem. The first is to evaluate the board and based on the things you know about the board and the movement of the knight. Using that knowledge you build into the program a set of rules it will use to determine which of the available moves is most likely to lead to a solution. There are a few sets of rules that work really well and a solution will be found on first try.
The second way is to have the program try randomly until it finds a solution. This does work eventually. It would probably take 5 to 10 minutes on the computers you are using. Among programmers this is called ‘brute force’ programming. And I believe that educational methods which rely primarily on repetition are brute force education. Nearly every math curriculum I’ve seen has been brute force.The thought behind it is that eventually the kid will learn it through sheer repetition. The curriculum itself makes no effort to accomodate itself to the learning needs, abilities or interests of the child.
The other thing that Kim mentioned was dyslexia. I have a few thoughts on learning disabilities (LD) in general. the first one I would like to tackle is ADD. Now, we have to realize up front that children are born with varying strengths and weaknesses. It’s one of the things that make us individuals. In those strengths and weaknesses there are going to be some who have weak control over their attention.
I had a student who I believe was ADD. During the first test I gave him, in the first 10 minutes or so he wrote like crazy on the test paper. Every once in a while he would stare off into the corner of the room for a few seconds while he thought about the question he was working on and then write some more. Somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, he looked off in the corner. As best as I could tell he did not move from that position for over an hour. After every other person had handed in their test, he was still there. I had to say his name 3 times to get his attention. Because of the expression on his face when he looked around, I’m as sure as I’m sitting here that until then he had no idea that any of his 40+ classmates had left. To the point where he stopped on the test, he got 100%. The remainder was blank.
8 months later he was in his fourth class with me. He didn’t miss a thing through any of my 2 hour classes. There were often times I would reexplain things for him or answer questions. I’m convinced that the main 2 differences were that he was interested in what I was teaching and that it was not repetitive. I did not teach the same things twice. It was a transformation that took time as well. Do I think he was ‘cured’? No. I’m sure that he still deals with his weak attention control today.
A second LD which is ‘growing’ is ADHD. I don’t know what your experience has been, but every child I’ve met who had been diagnosed as ADHD had a very active mind that was always on the go. I would expect that an ongoing diet of repetition is a brutal assault on an active mind. The second tidbit I have on ADHD comes from a workshop I attended 3 years ago on LD. There was a study which showed that up to a certain age (8-10) dyslexia was often misdiagnosed as ADHD.
Finally, I’d like to write my thoughts on dyslexia. First, I’m going to tell you some interesting facts about dyslexia and dyslexics. Then, I have a story and I’ll finish with some thoughts I have on the subject.
- NASA recruits dyslexics. The statistic I was given in the workshop mentioned above is that over 50% of their staff are dyslexic.
- A substantial number of children exihibit symptoms of dyslexia at ages 5-6.
- The majority of the children above (I believe about 2/3) lose the symptoms by age 8.
- I have a CD at home of a workshop given by a doctor specializing in learning disabilities. I’m going to paraphrase what she said regarding the studies she had participated in in the study of dyslexia:
Medically there is only one way that she had found that would differentiate between a young dyslexic and non dyslexic child. The fact that a young child showed symptoms of dyslexia was not an indication that they were dyslexic. The medical test consists of monitoring the child’s brain with an EEG while giving it a test. Not a medical test but a school test like spelling. What the EEG shows is the degree and type of stress the child experiences.
The story: A few weeks ago, Emma and I were drawing and writing on letter paper. The marker I was using was a black sharpie (permanent ink). Since we were making them for each other the last thing we did was fold them up so the other person could open it. When Emma opened the one I did for her she opened it up so that she was looking at the back of the sheet. Because I’d done it with the sharpie the ink had soaked through the paper and she could see what I had done. She looked at it for a few seconds and turned to Andrea and said, ‘it says …’ And she was right. Not only were the letters backwards, but the sentence went right to left. Until Andrea told her she had no idea that she was looking at the wrong side of the page. She’s 5. Am I concerned that she may be dyslexic? No.
I think that many children are able to do similar things when they are in that age range. IMO, dyslexia is only a disability in school. I believe that dyslexics can mentally flip things around on the fly and whether it is a b or a d does not slow them down. It’s when they are under pressure to pick the one that we recognize as being right that a problem surfaces. The fact that young children spell would ‘woulb’ doesn’t mean they don’t know how it’s spelled. It might say that they are brighter and more capable than we are.
And that is my 2 cents worth.
From the little that I have read on the subject, dyslexic kids are just about all right brained kids. For right brained kids, the ability to see symbols (letters etc which are 2-D) develops later. They see things in pictures (which are 3-D). Jason at 8 still has trouble remembering which is the b and d etc. But he is not dyslexic. I wonder if pushing right brained kids to read and write too early (before they are ready) makes this issue worse.
BTW, I am NOT saying that dyslexia does not exist! I do think that some kids struggle with it more then others. I do wonder if the approach some schools take makes it worse or creates problems in some kids who just needed extra time.
I have resources for learning more about right brained kids on my blog:
http://throwingmarshmallows.homeschooljournal.net/r-b-resources/
Ah, Stephanie beat me to it.
I read an example, prolly somewhere from the Visual Spatial people, that a lion walking left or a lion walking right is still a lion. A circle attached to a stick is always a circle attached to a stick, no matter which way you hold it, so why are there four names for { b, d, p, q }?
I can read upside down text like riddle answers – I have to cover them with my hand to prevent my peeking. I can read mirror text. I can write backwards cursive if I think about it a little. My mom is amazed that it comes easily to me.
“I do wonder if the approach some schools take makes it worse or creates problems in some kids who just needed extra time.”
Bingo. I don’t wonder about it, I *know* it does. If all of our children had attended school, they would almost all be labelled in some way.
And Ron lives with an ADD spouse, but we just have ways of dealing with things.
I also just came across this:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp
Which relates. The aurthor was an undiagnosed and traumatized dyslexic, and is now a micro-miniature artist.
Imagine if he’d had free reign as a child.
Tigger’s first teacher (in England) had many years of experience and did a very good intro session for parents. This was ‘reception’ class and kids go in that grade in the academic year in which they will turn five. The eldest are the September birthdays. the summer birthday kids are only 4.
This teacher explained that while parents are often asking her about when their kids will read, she focuses on the physical development needed before kids can start to read. One issue she raised was that kids don’t always have a determined handedness at this age and that if they have not determined if they are right or left handed they will not consistently go from left to right when they read but will switch. She also talked about some kids having a different dominant eye to dominant hand which can result in seeing things ‘backwards’. I suspect (though don’t know) that this may be the sort of thing kids grow out of.
She talked about the importance of puzzles for kids. Both the kind where you put piece into a particular space and then jigsaw puzzles of increasing difficulty. These develop the skills of seeing shapes and then seeing shapes within shapes. But she stressed that many of the things necessary to read and right are physical developments which cannot be rushed — control of the eye muscles, fine motor control, etc.
If all public school teachers were like her, I’m sure we’d still be in the system.
The family that introduced my parents to homeschooling and encouraged them to homeschool me came to homeschooling themselves due to their daughter, then a second grader, who “couldn’t” read and was labeled dyslexic. The mother read some things about dyslexia as well as research by the Moores and concluded that the best thing to do was to remove their daughter from school. The daughter excelled in math. She was brilliant at it. Reading came later, around age 12. Today she is an adult and a physicians assistant. Since she was homeschooled the whole dyslexia thing didn’t matter. No one was forcing her to read on their time table and calling her stupid for not (and killing her young sense of self-esteem). It’s amazing what not being forced into a box can do for a kid, particularly a kid who otherwise would be labeled.
identifying with much of your first paragraph, so nothing much insightful to add
Stephanie & Heidi – I’m both right brained and visual spatial. It makes no difference to me whether the writing is forward, reverse or upside down. It just takes me a few seconds to adjust to whatever it is.
JoVE – As early as I can remember I was playing games and doing puzzles. I think they are incredible toward developing many skills.
CA – I love hearing success stories like that.
Jax – Perhaps we can compare notes sometime
Well, that’s a good bargain at two cents.
I agree with some of your points, but disagree with others. Regarding dyslexia, you say it’s only a disability in school. Based on experience with my husband, who is dyslexic, this isn’t true for everyone. He has developed some strategies for dealing with it, but his dislexia still causes him problems today. He has no left/right dominance, which makes following physical directions difficult (which way is left?). He mixes up numbers all the time, even when writing them down. Doesn’t matter if he’s copying them or if someone dictates them — he still puts some of the numbers in the wrong sequence. His spelling is atrocious (if he didn’t have a spell checker…), as is his handwriting (again, thank you MS Word). All of these difficulties are part of his dyslexia, and he deals with them at work and in our personal life all the time.
People who don’t live with him would never know he struggles with these things, but he does and he can still be very frustrated by them.
On the positive side, he has a photographic memory. If I misplace something around the house, I don’t bother to look for it. I just call him, tell him what I’m looking for, and he tells me, “I have a picture of hit [here].” Prety amazing, and very handy!
I finally had a moment to read your excellent post Ron. First, I’d like to say thanks. It is very heartening to see the upside to dyslexia.
Second, I’d like to tell you a story similar to the one you told about a student. About 6 years ago I was a returning adult taking my first ever algebra class. I was a wreck. I went to the tutor center a lot, worried, struggled. After a few weeks I befriended a fellow student (about 18 years old!) who studied with me and helped me do my homework. She walked me through every topic and formula until I could stand on my own and was as good at her at it. Whenever the test time came, she sat next to me and scribbled furiously for about 10 minutes, then threw down her paper and left. She was always more nervous than I was about tests and could not seem to take the time to check her work or slow down and think things through. After every test I’d get an A (thanks to her) and she’d get a D or F for incomplete work, not showing her work,or sloppily calculated answers. She seemed to have no control over a combo of lifelong test anxiety and her own ADD type behaviour spiking under that stress. We were very lucky to have an understanding professor with a liberal attitude about learning. I approached her privately and shared the fact that this girl was a private tutor to me and that she was obviously unable to do tests. The prof. modified her grades and accepted homework and class participation in lieu of her test grades. She still had to take the exams but they weren’t as heavily weighted. Of course, that could have gone the other way, had the Prof decided that the real point was not algebra but learning how to perform under pressure. I was very relieved by that! I think it just brings your point home. Different learning styles.
lori – Among other things, if I try to put a nut on the end of a bolt about half the time I turn it the wrong way. So, to a degree I do understand the position your husband is in. I was not trying to discount that sort of thing in the post. I should have prefaced the sentence with, For a child it is only a disability in school. Children develop different skills at different rates and times. What I was throwing out as food for thought is the possibility that the pressure of school aggrevates a weakness and prevents many chidren from developing good coping strategies for those weaknesses.
Kim – Thank you. I think you have revealed the heart of something that I have been pondering for the last few years which is the last sentence in the paragraph above. I believe tha most of the ‘personal growth’ challenges I’ve faced as an adult trace back to identifable external pressures or expectations in the first 10 years of my life.
Hey, no problem. You know, see me for catharsis anytime. I’m being flip but I am sure I know what you mean. My academic coping skill was to play the game-and hard. How many hours I wasted I do not want to contemplate, let alone put my kids through.