Mon 26 Nov 2007
The Dyslexia Myth (2005) exposes the myths and misconceptions that surround a condition said to affect 10 per cent of the population. The … all ยป Dyslexia Myth argues that the common understanding of dyslexia is not only false but makes it more difficult to provide the reading help that hundreds of thousands of children desperately need. Drawing on years of intensive academic research on both sides of the Atlantic, The Dyslexia Myth challenges the existence of dyslexia as a separate condition; but in doing so, reveals the scale and pain of true reading disability. The programme examines the chasm between evidence and educational practice and shows that, after hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in the teaching of reading, the number of children encountering serious problems has hardly changed.
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Growing up Dyslexic I’m not sure I agree with everything they say in the video. When they describe it as being a little color blind or a little tone deaf I would have to it’s not. I am red green color blind and if you’ve ever heard me sing, you would know I’m a little tone def. I am 35 now and trying to remember exactly what it was like when I was five and learning to read is a little fuzzy. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t sound out the words, it was more that the English language didn’t make any sense. I found learning Spanish in second grade was much easier that English. The rules that went along with the English language didn’t make sense as so they didn’t stick. It was like trying to stick a suction cup to sand paper. When it came to spelling it was a pure crap shoot. I would remember the rules but not necessarily in the right order but I would try to use as many of the rules that I could remember which ended up being a total disaster. I think I grew up feeling like English was a second language, logic was my birth language and English was it’s first and longest challenger. I had an English tutor from second grade through 8th and I went to a school that had special classes for Dyslexics for five years. I learned how to read or I discovered the joys of reading in my junior year in high school. Up til that point I faked almost every book report and any other kind of report that required reading.
If you have a child with Dyslexia or you have it yourself, embrace it! It’s a chance to find doors where no one else is looking. Reading is just a tool like anything else and with every tool, the better you know how to use it the less of a chore the task at hand is.
