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The Battle over Dyslexia

theguardian.com

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Re: The Battle over Dyslexia

#81

Post by slg »

Buge wrote: post #56
slg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally getting diagnosed with dyslexia was a huge help to me. Like the article mentions it allows a mindset change when you can put a name to why you can't do something despite a tremendous amount of effort that other people can seemingly do easily. It also becomes a valuable tool to help protect yourself when needed. There were multiple times in my elementary and middle school years in which the ADA needed to be…

Instead of throwing out the benefits that you got from a dyslexia diagnosis, couldn't those benefits be also given to all students with with reading troubles? That's what the article is saying. I bet those bad teachers were also harmful to many other students with reading troubles.

Yes and no. As both I and others have said elsewhere in this tread, with the broad definition of dyslexia "students with reading troubles" who will most benefit from extra instruction have dyslexia whether they are diagnosed or not. Getting those kids properly diagnosed is therefore a better strategy because that comes with added benefits that aren't directly related to teaching like the legal protections and the internal psychological benefits I mentioned and that were mentioned in the article. Without that diagnosis, it is easy for the child and the child's peers to view it as a problem with intelligence which can be damaging mentally.

Re: The Battle over Dyslexia

#82

Post by slg »

shkkmo wrote: post #76
slg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another dyslexic here, I completely agree with your assessment of the situation and while the article mentions it I don't think it fully grasps it. The definition of dyslexia is basically any difficulty reading that isn't associated with intelligence, eyesight, or education. It is an umbrella definition for a wide variety of both named and unnamed conditions. Of course there isn't going to be a universal way to treat…

> Spending extra effort focusing on teaching a dyslexic student is going to help because extra direct teaching to any student is going to help them learn. Nobody is disputing that. The issue is that predicating that extra direct teaching on a dyslexia diagnoses serves to further disadvantage the already disadvantaged. The argument is that extra direct teaching should be provided to anyone who has difficulty reading,…

I basically answered that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24518585

The extra direct teaching is only one benefit of the diagnosis. The better approach is to get those kids diagnosed so they can get those benefits too.

Re: The Battle over Dyslexia

#83

Post by slg »

tssva wrote: post #47
slg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dyslexic here. I don't know how universal it is, but I definitely was receiving eye tests in school before reading tests which lead to a misdiagnosis. I was only 6 or 7 so I don't remember if it was specifically astigmatism or some other eye condition, but I was misdiagnosed as having eye problems a year before I was finally diagnosed with dyslexia.

My daughter has dyslexia and an IEP in place to get her the assistance she needs. Before the school system would designate her as having a specific learning disability, a requirement to have an IEP, they required vision, hearing, reading comprehension and a battery of other reading related testing to help identify her specific reading deficiency After she was identified as dyslexic she began a specialized reading pro…

I'm glad for your daughter and you. The testings to get a diagnosis can certainly be complicated and stressful for both the child and parents. However you are all through the worst of it once you get that diagnosis and your daughter is caught up or exceeded her peers. And while it is true that she will be dealing with some of the challenges associated with dyslexia her whole life, the good news is that modern society has shifted to de-emphasize some of those issues. Spellcheck, text to speech, and speech to text are near universal now and are a huge boon to the ongoing life with dyslexia.

Re: The Battle over Dyslexia

#84

Post by narwally »

auganov wrote: post #66
narwally wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a simplification, many people experience dyslexia differently, but for some people with dyslexia that may be a good way to describe to someone what they experience. It's not actually a medical diagnosis, though can achieve the qualifications to test for it, it's a learning disability that doesn't have a well understood physilogical mechanism behind it. For me I was slow to learn to read, and was in remedial…

> My first job was a short term remote developing contract. My coworkers thought I was foreign for the first few weeks because of my poor spelling in code comments. It's better when I have access to good spelling or grammar checkers, but often times I misspell a word so completely that even the software has no idea what I'm trying to say. I also still mess up you're/your and their/there/they're all the time. In my he…

I actually learned Dutch as an adult, I'm around a B1/B2 level. I did actually notice my dyslexia at least felt like less of an issue in Dutch. Since I learned mostly through reading, I learned new words in their written form, and then had to learn rules for how to translate them into their spoken form. Pretty much the exact opposite of how you learn your native language. It also may feel like less of an issue because I don't use it nearly as often as English, and because it is a second language, so I'm not nearly as hard on myself for any mistakes I make.

Re: The Battle over Dyslexia

#85

Post by keithnoizu »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #63
keithnoizu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was diagnosed, with dyslexia, dyscalculia and disgraphia, although for better or worse I also tested as profoundly gifted. I think it boils down to, is there a structural difference in the brain that if studied can give insights into learning differences and optimal approaches to addressing learning differences and potential areas where a person with dyslexia or some underlying structural difference might have natu…

I am dyslexic When I am writing sql queries other than trivial SELECTS, I visualise them and some times draw out the sets involved.

I find i'm normally a little better at grasping how all of the components work together on large systems than others.

Re: The Battle over Dyslexia

#86

Post by bluGill »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #35
bjo590 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dyslexia also has an IQ component which means those with low IQ are not dyslexic even if they otherwise have the same symptoms. A person with IQ 100 (or whatever the mean IQ is) learning to read slower than average is different than a person with IQ 60 learning to read slower than average. You cannot completely remove the IQ component.

But doesn't the article make the case that both of your example children need the same treatment?

Exactly but some don't get it because they miss the dyslexic diagnosis even though the same treatment would help if they could get it.
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