Courtesy: Medical Miracles, from Readers Digest 1981.
November.
From the frontiers of science and the far horizons of
personal courage, these stories of medical triumphs and miracles will reaffirm
your faith in the awesome powers of the human spirit. Dramatic victories and
human triumphs.
Selected and edited by the editors of Readers Digest
One child in every ten has it, to some degree, often with
tragic impact on his schooling and life.
It probably kept inventor Thomas Edison, General George S. Patton and
President Woodrow Wilson crom coping with ordinary schoolwork when they were
young. It made Hans Christian Anderson
an atrocious speller all his life, even though he became a magnificent
storyteller. It most likely accounted
for the nickname “Mr. Dullard,” give a schoolboy named Albert Einstein.
The specific problem these people have in common is called
dyslexia (from Greek roots ‘dys’, “difficulty,” and ‘lexia’, “pertaining to
words”). Although it is unrelated to
basic intellectual capacity, the disorder causes a mysterious difficulty in
handling words and symbols. Some subtle
peculiarity in the brain’s organizational pattern blocks out an otherwise
bright child’s ability to learn how to read, to write legible, to spell pr.
Perhaps, to use numbers. Letters in
words perversely transpose themselves, ger reversed or even topsy-turvy—“dog”
becomes “god”; “b” changes identity with “d,” and may even masquerade as “p” or
“q”; a sign saying “OIL” flip-flops into “710.”
Many dyslexics also have difficulty orienting themselves in the three
dimensions of space, which results, sometimes, in boldly awkwardness.
Ever since dyslexia was identified late in 19th century by
German and British ophthalmologists, it has been studied and debated. Because it is unaccompanied by outward scars
or detectable neurological damage, and because its bizarre symptoms vary from
victim to victim, some professionals insist that the problem doesn’t really
exists as a separate entity. Educators
in particular have shown a preference for herding this problem along with
others under the broad, vaguely defined umbrella of “learning
disabilities.” Yet frustrated classroom
teachers, agonized parents and humiliated victims know that something—something
unique devastating—is there.
The late Nelson A. Rockefeller was one of lthe most eminent
dyslexics. “I often see letters and
numbers backwards, “he once said, ‘or even think them backwards.” A few lines from his boyhood diary, written
when he was 11, include such revealing notations as “lunc,” “picknick Lunch,”
“Uncle Harold,” “engen repar schop,” “parak”(for park), and three tries at
recording the disease his sister Abby had come down with –“mealess,” “measless”
and “misless.” Rockfeller never mastered
spelling. Yet he graduated cum laude
from Dartmouth College, and earned a Phi Beta Kapp key.
There was no secret cure behind Rockefeller’s success in
overcoming his handicap. The key was
simply learning to cope. Coping to him
meant concentrating very hard when something had to be read; he let aides fix
up his spelling and he rehearsed speeches carefully before delivering them.
Other dyslexics also achieved celebrity status by adapting
to the realties of their difficulty.
Woodrow Wilson did not learn the alphabet until he was nine, didn’t read
until he was 11, and was considered by relatives to be dull and backward. At Princeton University, his grades were only
fair, but his brilliant oratorical style began to blossom at the same time, paving
the way for his two distinguished presidencies—of Princeton and of the United
States.
General Patton had even harder sledding. At 12 he still could not read. It took him five years to get through West
Point, and at that he made it only by laboriously memorizing his textbooks word
for word.
Not all dyslexics are so fortunate, or so tenacious. Taunted by classmates, treated as lazy,
stupid or mentally disturbed by teachers and parents, humiliated by schoolwork
other children do so easily; many of them not only fail miserably in class but
also become filled with frustration, rage and pain. It is liter sting to note that the telltale
signs of the problem can be detected in the diary of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Trying to pin down the precise cause of dyslexia involves a
number of basic riddles. How, really, do
our minds work? How do we learn to read
and write? How can intelligent child—or
even an adult creative genius—look straight at a word and interpret some of the
letters backward, upside down or transposed?
Why does the problem appear to turn up three times as often among boys
as among girls? There are a dozen
theories to explain dyslexia, but final verdict is not yet in.
Ever since the turn of the century, one guess has been that
defective vision must be to blame. This
idea was based in part on the fact that poor readers employ inefficient eye
movements. But experts now regard faulty
eye movements as the result, not the eye that learns to read. So the question remains: what goes wrong in
the brain?
Some early experts thought brain damage was responsible,
since it was known that some victims of head injuries lost their reading and
writing skills. But autopsies and
brainwave studies tend to rule out injury as a common cause of dyslexia.
If detectable brain damage is not the cause, shat about more
subtle insults to the prenatal of infant brain?
Some studies seem to show that lead in the air, physical trauma or
oxygen deprivation during birth can sometimes affect language-learning
capability. However, careful tracings of
family trees suggest that the problem may more often be a matter of heredity.
A sizable body of opinion clings to the “late-bloomer”
theory, which holds that for no particular reason some children simply do not
mature the reading-readiness stage as early as others.
The theory that still probably comes closest to explaining
dyslexia was developed many years ago by Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton, then director
of the lowa State Psychopathic Hospital.
While screening mental-health problems, Orton became interested in
children who not only repeatedly reversed letters of words, but also had a
talent for “mirror-writing.” Some of
them could actually write better from right to leave, with letters oriented
backward and in reverse order, so that a mirror held alongside would show the
words as they are normally written.
Orton knew that mirror writing came more naturally than
regular writing for many left-handers or partial left-handers. Leonardo da Vinci, who was ambidextrous,
often sket5ched with his right hand, while setting down notes mirror-fashion
with his left hand. Orton, an expert
neurologist, reasoned that while each half of the brain controls various
natural activities, only one side becomes dominant in the use of language. If, in learning the artificial skill of
recognizing symbols and translating them into words, both hemispheres persisted
in taking part, they might somehow compete and interfere with each other,
leading to reversed or jumbled perception.
Orton concluded that it was not being left-handed that caused the
problem, since many dyslexics are right-handed; rather, it was confused or
mixed dominance of the brain’s hemispheres.
But recent examination of the brain a dyslexic revealed an
abnormality in the left hemisphere, which is now believed to have predominant
control over the language function. This
examination is part of a long-term, systematic study, now underway, of the
anatomical differences between the dyslexic’s brain and that of the non0dyslexic. Dr. Albert M. Calaburda and Dr. Thomas L
Kemper, who are conducting this study, hope to determine the causes of dyslexia
so that proper therapy can be prescribed.
Fortunately, even the victim of severe, classic dyslexia can
now learn, with the proper help, how to read at a decent speed and to write
legibly. But parents should be
wary. Still-unproven methods, as well as
thoroughly discredited techniques, are also being offered, including everything
from bouncing on trampolines and avoidance of food additives to psychotherapy
and elaborate eye exercises.
The experts’ consensus is that the best solution is
educational: careful, systematic, on-to-one tutoring on a regular basis to
teach the dyslexic child the principles of phonics—the letter sounds that make
up words. What the dyslexic child needs
is to be shown how to decode the sounds for which single letters and
combinations of letters stand, and how to fit them together into words. Since every dyslexic child’s problems are
different, individual tutoring techniques must also vary. Often, modern phonics specialists reinforce
the child’s familiarity with the shape of a letter or the sound of a word
fragment by putting to work more than one of his senses. They might have a child look at a letter, say
it aloud, trace its shape in the air and on the blackboard, and feel a 3-D
cutout of the letter. Once the skill of
decoding (and the reverse process, encoding) is mastered, a child can read and
write any word.
The encouraging prognosis for properly tutored dyslexics was
firmly documented in study by language consultant Margaret Byrd Rawson. She carefully followed a group of 20 boys
with moderate to severe dyslexia, all of whom had been given structured, multi,
and sensory language training, to see exactly what happened after they grew up. All but one went to college; 18 earned
degrees, then went on to obtain a total 32 postgraduate professors, on a school
principal, three teachers, two research scientists, three owners of businesses,
three junior business executives, one an actor, one a skilled laborer and one a
factory foreman.
Not all properly tutored dyslexics no longer need fail
simply because of language problem.
Does Your Child have Dyslexia?
Your child may need specialized help in overcoming the
handicap of dyslexia if he or she shows some of these signs: Reading
difficulty; persistent spelling errors (especially misspelling the same
familiar word different ways; reversed or upside-down letters, or reversed
sequence of letters within words; uncertain preference for right-or left- handedness
after age five or six; badly cramped, scrawled of illegible handwriting;
confusion about left and right, up and down, tomorrow and yesterday; delayed
mastery of spoken language, trouble finding the “right” word when talking;
inadequate in written composition; personal disorganization 9losing or leaving
possessions, inability to stick to simple schedules, repeatedly forgetting).
Few dyslexics show all these symptoms; and children who are
not dyslexic may show some. But a
pattern of these signs—especially a reading or spelling problem—means you would
be wise to get a professional opinion.
Talk with your child’s teacher, school psychologist,
learning-disabilities specialists or pediatrician as soon as possible, and
request a full battery of diagnostic tests.
If your child is definitely dyslexic, he or she will probably heed
careful, long-range one-to-one tutoring on a regular basis. But avoid signing up for remedial help—particularly
any non-tutoring scheme—without first getting trustworthy expert advice.
For further information on dyslexia, write:
The Orton Society, inc.,
8415 Bellona Lane, Towson, Md. 21204;
Or
The Association for Children With Learning Disabilities,
4156 Library Rd., Pittsburgh, Pa. 15234,
Please enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope and a
check for $1.00 to cover handling and mailing costs
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