The Gift of Dyslexia

THE GIFT OF DYSLEXIA
By Lawrence Wilson

Dyslexia is a complex reading, writing and learning condition in which letters and numbers are reversed or even seen and written upside down. Dyslexia affects more and more children and adults. It may contribute to functional illiteracy in an estimated 25 million Americans. It also causes low self-esteem and frustration on a massive scale! This article aims to show that dyslexia is not due to brain damage or stupidity. Many dyslexics are far brighter than average. Treating them as though they are 'dumb' or 'slow' is absolutely incorrect.

A book entitled The Gift of Dyslexia explores a fascinating hypothesis about dyslexia. The author, Ronald D. Davis, is himself dyslexic. He points out that many famous people were dyslexic, including Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison. Perhaps they succeeded in spite of dyslexia, but they may have succeeded because of the unique way that dyslexic individuals think.

The author solved the riddle of his own condition 13 years ago. Since then, he has run a program that has enabled more than 1000 dyslexics to read, write and study normally. He maintains that dyslexics suffer not so much from a learning disability, but from a teaching disability: few teachers know how to teach these children.

SYMPTOMS OF DYSLEXIA

Indications of dyslexia usually begin to show up around age five or six. Symptoms many include:

- Shapes or sequences of letters or numbers appear changed or reversed.

- Spelling is incorrect or inconsistent.

- Words or lines are skipped when reading or writing.

- Letters and numbers appear to move, disappear, grow or shrink.

- Punctuation marks or capital letters are omitted, ignored or not seen.

- Words and letters are omitted, altered or substituted while reading or writing.

- Some speech sounds are difficult to make or mispronounced.

- False sounds are perceived.

- The person appears to not listen or hear what is said.

- One can experience dizziness or nausea while reading.

- There is a poor sense of direction.

- Inability to sit still.

- Problems with balance and coordination.

- Hyperactivity or hypoactivity can occur due to frustration.

- Excessive daydreaming, and trouble being on time.

THE MECHANISM OF DYSLEXIA

According to the research by Ronald Davis at the Reading Research Council's Dyslexia Correction Center, dyslexics view the world very differently from others. You might say they are wired up differently. While most people perceive the world linearly, dyslexics perceive in whole pictures. Also, most people have a fixed point of reference from which they perceive the world outside them and around them. Dyslexic individuals have a peculiar capacity to move the reference point from which they perceive objects.

These differences can be very helpful when examining objects because the dyslexic can view objects from many perspectives very rapidly. However, it is a serious handicap when viewing linear symbols, such as letters or words. The solution to the problem of reading and writing is to somehow represent the symbol as a picture.

Many words, for example, are easy to picture such as house, car, cat and dog. Others such as a, the, and, and have are far more difficult to picture. Most teachers, even in special education programs, do not know how to help a person picture these words. As the dyslexic individual tries to make sense of these symbols, they shift their perspective, or where they view from, and this causes letters on a page to move around, reverse themselves and even to disappear completely.

The author describes a series of events that occur when a dyslexic individual attempts to read or write as a normal person would:

1) The person encounters an unrecognized word, symbol or object.

2) The person begins to examine the object or word from many different points of view. This causes words or letters to reverse, turn upside down or disappear as the person changes their focal point.

3) Incorrect information is collected about the word or object.

4) Mistakes are made in learning or reading.

5) The mistakes cause emotional reactions and frustration.

6) Compulsive solutions are adopted, such as intense concentration.

7) These compulsive solutions inhibit the learning process and lead to frustration and low self-esteem.

THE GIFT OF DYSLEXIA

The gift of dyslexia is the ability to think multi-dimensionally. While the ability to see in pictures and to change one's point of focus or reference point is a handicap in reading, it can also be a source of creativity and brilliance.

The author notes that many famous people have been dyslexic. The list includes Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Leonardo daVinci, Walt Disney, Winston Churchill, Hans Christian Anderson, Woodrow Wilson, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and many others. The question is whether these individuals succeeded in spite of dyslexia, or in some way because of it.

For example, Albert Einstein said he came up with the theory of relativity because he imagined himself riding on a light wave. This task requires a radical shift of perspective that might be much easier for a dyslexic than someone without the dyslexic trait. Recall that dyslexics can see perspectives that a normal person cannot. According to Ronald Davis, dyslexics also process information much faster than others. Both these traits would be helpful for certain creative endeavors.

Dyslexics often excel as engineers, plumbers, inventors and at crafts or artistic pursuits because they can manipulate objects in their head for the purpose of drawing them, designing them or repairing them.

Since the number of dyslexics is increasing, one wonders whether dyslexia could be an evolutionary change in which new brain functions are manifesting in more and more children. The problem for most dyslexics is they are labeled learning-disabled in school and are so frustrated they often don't continue their education to develop their abilities.

TEACHING DYSLEXICS TO READ AND WRITE

Correcting the symptoms of dyslexia, according to Ronald Davis, involves several steps. At the California Research Center, prospective students are first given a perceptual ability test to rule out other conditions. Most who take the test are found to perceive differently, but are not brain-damaged in any way.

Correction involves explaining to the dyslexic individual how his or her brain works. A series of exercises can help the dyslexic person to 1) make a pictorial representation of all words and symbols, and 2) stabilize the point of reference. These two basic skills are usually mastered in about 30 hours of basic instruction, with a few follow up exercises. After the training, dyslexics often make dramatic progress in reading and writing. Some skip up several grade levels in reading within a few weeks.

The exercises are described in The Gift of Dyslexia. Learning to make pictures out of letters and words is most easily accomplished by modeling letters in clay. This is how Ronald Davis first corrected his own reading problem. Once a letter can be seen in three dimensions, it becomes far more understandable for the dyslexic. This technique is not new. One hundred years ago, Maria Montessori taught children to learn reading at a very young age by a similar method. She cut letters out of various materials so that the children could feel them, handle them and of course picture each letter.

Picturing words is the same process. It is important to picture the difficult words, however, such as a, and, and the. These are the stumbling blocks for dyslexics. We rarely even think about the definitions of these words, much less how to represent them pictorially.

Teaching dyslexics to fix their point of reference is done through a series of visualization exercises. These are also shown in the book. The exercises basically consist of helping one find the on-off switch that causes them to shift perspective. When they learn to control their perspective, words no longer jump around and reverse themselves.

CONCLUSION

Dyslexia, autism and idiot-savant are terms used to describe mysteries we know little about. Perhaps we need to shift our paradigm, and realize that these are far more than simple learning disabilities or brain damage. Previous articles in the Arizona Networking News discussed nutritional imbalances and toxic metals, and their effects upon brain chemistry. Perhaps dyslexia is a gift. Certainly the world would be much worse off without the contributions of Einstein, Edison, da Vinci and other dyslexics.

Dyslexic children are not brain-impaired, but they need a different kind of instruction in reading and writing. Their learning disability, frustration and low self-esteem may be preventable and correctable through education that is geared to their multidimensional and pictorial mode of perceiving the world. It is hoped that The Gift of Dyslexia by Ronald Davis will inspire parents and teachers to reconsider their approach to dyslexia.

For more information, call or write the Reading Research Council, 1601 Old Bayshore Highway, #260, Burlingame, CA 94010, 1-800-729-8990 or (415) 692-8990.

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