[senco-forum] Dyslexia in the Genomic Era

No, that's not what Philip is saying.  He is saying that if people were taught to read initially using the same methods that Shaywitz has demonstrated to be be effective in remediating reading difficulties (dyslexia) that they would not have developed the problem in the first place.

Reading, in the sense of decoding the words  on the page, is a lower order skill and can be taught to anyone, regardless of 'IQ', unless they are severely cognitively deficient.  Zig Engleman's work on Direct Instruction has consistently demonstrated this.

The children most of us encounter in mainstream education are rarely incapable of learning to read if the methods evidenced as being successful by scientific research are used. 

Maggie

brian hepburn <hepburnbrian at hotmail.com> wrote: 

So, what you're really saying is that dyslexia is the brain's way of excusing the fact that some people are too stupid to learn to read. 

Sounds about right to me.

Brain> From: P.Macmillan at exeter.ac.uk> To: lucass at loretto.com; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk> Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Dyslexia in the Genomic Era> Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:54:59 +0100> CC: > > At the risk of upsetting a great many of you. My body armour is on order > and should arrive soon so you had better be quick.> > Gallaburda's findings could reflect the fact that the brain has reorganized > itself to cope with the difficulty so it could be consequence as well as > cause. Work by Shaywitz in the US has shown that the brain changes how it > is organized in response to effective remedial action and this actually > alters its physical structure, remember the research that showed that taxi > driver's brains physically altered as a result of learning 'the knowledge'. > With the Gallaburda's work we do not know what instructional methods were > used to teach reading so it is difficult to come to any conclusions nor do > we know on what basis the label of dylsexia was
 applied. As to the genetic > component, there can be no gene for dyslexia. Reading has not been around > long enough to allow it to develop as a result of natural selection, what > may be passed on is a relative difficulty in segmenting speech and/ or > dealing with the perception of speech. Now to the genetic, Pennington's > data suggests heritability in some 20% of cases, what about the other 80% > where do they come from. As we have no idea how to fix the gene that lies > behind dyslexia, in other words a genetic fix is a long way off, perhaps we > should be expending more effort on finding ways to alter the learning > environment so that those so affected can better learn how to deal with > print.> > Philip EP> > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Stuart Lucas" > To: > Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 5:44 PM> Subject: [senco-forum] Dyslexia in the Genomic Era> > > For slides on the above (nice and colourful!) go to> www.dyslexiascotland.org.uk > > > > Follow links
 to Conference and then to downloads (top of page) -> > > > Sorry do not have the accompanying info - but you can a conference pack!> > > > Enjoy> > Stuart> > > > > > ---> avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.> Virus Database (VPS): 000775-0, 16/09/2007> Tested on: 17/09/2007 17:54:05> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2007 ALWIL Software.> http://www.avast.com> > > > > > ---> avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.> Virus Database (VPS): 000775-0, 16/09/2007> Tested on: 17/09/2007 18:55:00> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2007 ALWIL Software.> http://www.avast.com> > > > 
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