establishment psycho-bunk 3 —

‘dyslexia’

a briefing document

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‘dyslexia’

The word, ‘dyslexia’, is widely used as a euphemism for poor teaching and slow learning. ‘Real’ ‘dyslexia’ is quite rare and probably involves actual brain trauma. Its symptoms tend to be highly specific and ‘bizarre’ (e.g. spelling with only a very few of the letters, for instance, kangaroo spelt as kgo).

However, such anomalous classification of this educational disfunctionality (and of other behavioural phenomena) is generating some interesting ways of tackling, what are essentially behavioural problems, as if they are physical. (Of course, the brain is physical and it learns, there is no substantive distinction. But one does not normally teach reading by means of brain surgery.)

This new investigation, unintentionally, highlights a very widespread logical error in this type of approach.

Naturally, if the individual does not know how to read, the appropriate areas of the brain for processing written language will not be active when reading ability is assessed!

The link between university funding (in this case Stanford University) and the commercial product described in the article should be clearly spelled out. While there are notes related to this at the end of the item, I regard those notes as insufficiently detailed.

The software details referred to can be accessed here (with 3 subsidiary pages).

The company concerned are attempting to license this product to schools at $850 a go, as far as I can follow from their rather coy site. They are also attempting to sell a tranche of related items.

These items describe skills that any high-grade teacher should already use.

However, such software is a potential substitute for widespread, inadequate teaching skills. The obscure claim that it is ‘patented technology’ is odd. Just exactly what it is about their ‘product’ that they are claiming as ‘patented technology’ is (possibly purposefully) unclear.

associated documents at abelard.org:

how to teach a child to read using phonics a phonetics chart for british english Reading and vocabulary tests, and related information

email abelard at abelard.org

© abelard, 2003, 28 february

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the address for this document is http://www.abelard.org/briefings/dyslexia.htm

320 words
prints as 2 A4 pages (on my printer and set-up)