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Week 4: Dyslexia

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Today  I would like you  to discuss the problem of  dyslexia.  Is it, in your opinion,  just an excuse or a serious problem? Maybe it is an opportunity?

Probably many of you have heard about this disorder and most probably when some "not-so-smart" kid has wanted to excuse him/herself from getting  bad grades. This word often is associated with "clever" kid who just wants to have higher grades and have more time for the school leaving exam. In some cases it is true; still, it is difficult for teachers  to decide if somebody is just cheating the system. It is not as simple as being blind or being deaf. Besides some parents want their children to have this little "yellow paper" and privileges related with it.

According to the Wikipedia:
 "Dyslexia is characterized by difficulty with learning to read fluently and with accurate comprehension despite normal intelligence. This includes difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension, and/or rapid naming"


In other words you can say that a person with dyslexia can have for example problems
with reading:
- they can get lost in a text (missing one line of text or reading one line twice)
- they recognize words by guessing not by reading
- they cannot read fast out loud - problems with intonation or reading fast understanding the meaning 

with writing:
- they make orthographic mistakes because of lack of sight memory,
- are slow writers
- they have problems with writing just  hearing words
- they have terrible handwriting

and unfortunately many others...

By now you could think that a person with dyslexia is unsuitable to learn at school and will achieve nothing important and for sure you do not know anyone with it! Let me introduce you a short list of great people with this disorder:
-Leonardo da Vinci
-George Washington
-Hans Christian Andersen
-Thomas Edison
-Albert Einstein
-Pablo Picasso
-Agatha Christie

Are you surprised? You shouldn't be, because having a dyslexia also gives you many abilities which normal people have problems with or even could only dream about:

- thinking with pictures not words. It means you literally see pictures when someone is talking to you, you instantly imagine it. The same with reading, you do not see words, but whole pictures. (That is why people with dyslexia learn to read "properly" - using they natural abilities)
- creativity and lateral thinking
- vivid imagination ( when you are able to create any or very complicated scenarios in your mind )
- realistic feeling of yours thoughts
- great intuition
- greater sensitivity to the environment

I know that these abilities in most cases are useless at school, for example when you have to write some text just hearing it. 

A dyslexic person hearing words can instantly (try to) imagine what someone is saying and then try to write down what their imagination sees. When it comes to complicated topics it is pretty difficult.
So what can they do? Practice, practice and practice! It is possible to learn how to write or hear "correctly" but it requires a lot of work, teacher and parent forbearance is also very important. Living with this disorder is not really difficult if you are aware of your disabilities and you know how to fight with them and on the other side you are aware of many advantages  which it brings  for you.


1. What do you think about this disorder? Do people with it should have any privileges at school? If yes, what about work?
2. Do you have dyslexia? If yes, how do you feel about it? Does it interfere with your work/ daily life or maybe it helps? If no, maybe you know someone who has it?

Sources:
http://dysleksjarozwojowa.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/slawni-z-dysleksja/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100115151205AAaJg2j
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysleksja

Comments

Sergio Cosentino said…
I have dyslexia, but for me it has always been more of a medical records than a problem. What I mean is that I never felt any drawbacks of this fact or that I am somehow "different" than people without this disorder. I am sure this is a real thing, but I never felt like it's very serious. I never took advantage of all those "privileges" that you get at school when you have such a disorder (you are allowed to some grammar errors or stuff like that), mainly because I never wanted to. In my opinion we won't have the possibility to have "handicaps" or special treating in life whenever we want, so it's best to deal with who and how we are and make the best out of it. Or to put it in a less drastic way, because the last sentence might sound a bit extreme: I believe we can't expect everybody to make things easier for us. Surely some people will, but definitely some people won't care about out problems. And we have to be ready to deal with this fact.
Dyslexia particularly doesn't seem like much of a deal to me. As it has been said in this presentation, practice makes perfect. Maybe I need more time than others to learn how to solve certain math problems. So what? I will learn it eventually and be as good as any other person at it. All it takes is the will to do it.
I must also say that I learned a new thing from this presentation: I never knew that dyslexia actually has also its "benefits". Nobody never told me that dyslectic people can be more creative or have a particularly vivid imagination. And I think I am actually a prove to that theory, since my hobby involves inventing new scenarios for my friends every week. Each time I try my best so that the plot has something new or is somehow unexpected and (according to my friends :P) I usually manage. It's not like I want to boast or something xD. Just thought it might be interesting to share, since it could be a prove to what has been said in the presentation.
27 October 2013 at 13:08
Natalia said…
@Sergio Cosentino Thank you for your comment! I agree with you that many people, especially employers, will not care about dyslexia people problems, so it is better to be prepared for that and do not use any privileges.
Thank you for sharing yours experience! I'm glad that you have some benefits and you are aware of them :)
27 October 2013 at 14:38
diana said…
I believe dyslexia is indeed something that can be medically diagnosed, which means it's kind of real disfunction, not just some excuse to have easier way at school. But on the other hand, I'm not convinced about giving people with dyslexia special treatment at school like ignoring (in grading/assessment) their orthographic mistakes. Why? Because it would not be consistent. There are many other disorders which make it difficult for students to cope with some areas of study like math (abstract thinking involved), history (memorizing skills involved), PE (some physical predispositions involved) etc. All those predispositions and skills which affect the easiness/difficulty of doing something can be properly measured just like dyslexia, and if I, for example, did very very poor at every PE because of some physical predisposition (for every exercise it took me much longer time and much more effort to achieve the same results as others), and there weren't any different/special criteria or scales in assigning grades for people like me, I don't see a reason why dyslexia would have to be treated differently. It's just a disorder like many others, and just like there are many people with many different kinds of disorders, there are also as many people with great skills and talents, and they are assessed the same way as their not so skilled/talented peers. Therefore I don't think it's fair to take into account dyslexia in grading but ignore other disabilities (or talents).
And the matter of proper handling students' talents/disorders while assessing them is another question :)
27 October 2013 at 16:57
Seisyll said…
I think that in most of the cases people are just lazy. I don't say that dyslexia isn't a problem but mostly people just take advantage of it even if they don't have a serious case of dyslexia. In my opinion there shouldn't be any privileges, especially when most of the time you write using computer, and there are tools to correct your mistakes. In case of school, teachers should spend more effort trying to help kids with this disorder and encourage them to put some effort.
I don't have dyslexia, but my friend has and in his case it's rather serious thing. I admit that sometimes I can't understand his problem and it is strange for me that he might not know how to spell or write some words correctly, but I try to be tolerant and helpful.
27 October 2013 at 17:48
Unknown said…
In Poland few years ago was this thing in elementary schools to get every person with orthographyproblem a dyslexia paper. I had some problems with this but my mom didn't want me to have a dyslexia paper. When i started reading books problems with orthography got smaller. It is the solution in my opinion.
People with dyslexia can have some privileges at school but there is no way to have any privileges in work. We have internet and Word. Everyone can just check orthography.
27 October 2013 at 18:18
Natalia said…
@Konrad Sosnowski thanks for sharing your experience! I'm aware that some teachers/parents want their health children to have dislexia paper and in my opinion this is the worst what they can do. I agree with your solution - hard work is "cure" for this kind of problems.
27 October 2013 at 19:29
Natalia said…
@Michał Wągrodzki I agree that there are many "stages" of this disorder. Some people have bigger problems with reading or spelling others can live their whole life witout knowing they have dyslexia. Tolerance and help is very important with many kind of disorders like dysphemia or autism. In my opinion this is good to have in society diversity in human ways of learning or thinking, becuase people can learn one from another :)
27 October 2013 at 19:36
Natalia said…
@Diana Thank you for this depth analysis with I can agree, but in addition to this we can't ignore people problems and live them alone with them. There should be special treatment, but not by giving more time at tests or something like that. Special exercises and teachers engagement, about which Michał Wągrodzki said would be much better.
27 October 2013 at 19:45
armandstanczak said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
27 October 2013 at 19:51
armandstanczak said…
I’ve had dyslexia when I was younger, around 4-5. I had problems with “pretty” (wiggly letters, skipping some letters in a word) writing in kindergarten, but my mom made me take extra lessons (in the kindergarten itself) until I improved on it. Never had any bigger problems with it anymore.
So, is dyslexia a thing of XX-XXI century? Sometimes it’s really hard to explain what this is. In my opinion, it’s more of a made up disorder, more of a one’s inability to focus on writing part of everyday life. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing, we are not equal. If someone focuses his or her attention to different parts of life, great for them! There are dyslectic writers that are very popular. Some are great in singing, some in writing, some in coding, some in drawing “design views” and some in origami. We are not equal and we don’t have to be perfect in every way. Heads up. Cheers.
27 October 2013 at 20:25
Paweł Jóźwiak said…
I don’t have dyslexia so just don’t know how does it feels. And I think I don’t know anybody with dyslexia (even in my school times). But I understand those who has difficulties, especially during education in schools due to dyslexia. Those people should definitely have some facilities during exams etc. they are just sick and it is not their fault so why they should suffer for it.
But facilities in work (after they finish education) is a totally different thing. First of all I don’t really think that any employer will bother himself about why his employee can’t manage some of his responsibilities. He won’t simply hire him (I know it is sad but it is the truth). But in nowadays whe we have computers and most of the work is done by typing on a computer, rather than by hand dyslexia is less relevant then for example 10-15 years ago.
27 October 2013 at 20:38
Tomek Niezgoda said…
Personally, I would't call it a disorder. I do believe that people with dyslexia tend to solve problems differently, not worse. Unfortunately, I've usually seen the darker side of this at school. Like you've mentioned at the beginning, students want to get an edge during exams or not have their spelling judged after claiming they have dyslexia. The same happens with physical education. It's too easy to get exempted from having to work. I can't believe the parent of kids allow/encourage such behavior.
27 October 2013 at 20:40
Unknown said…
I think dyslexia for some people with this disorder is a huge problem and they should have basic privileges like more time on test simply because they need it but for those who abuse this yellow paper I have no mercy. I once knew guy who had dyslexia but only on paper and what was worse he spoke about it like it was his best achievement in his life… so my point of view is damaged because of that on the other hand I know Sergio and he never used his disorder at all what is more he never complained about it.
27 October 2013 at 21:51
diana said…
Yes, I'm all for more personalized schooling, and that would have to lead to a totally different assessment style, something which I'm afraid cannot be introduced without serious effort (maybe even on legislation level). Considering current state of public education, which is tremendously horrible, I don't see such change coming soon though.
28 October 2013 at 13:49
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