Throughout Ohio, the United States and beyond, parents and teachers are trying to understand dyslexia. With the focus on the Science of Reading, dyslexia has been more recognized and studied.
However, in my humble opinion, experts are complicating dyslexia and how to treat it. As a reading consultant, our company has successfully been treating dyslexia for decades. I hope this allows me to share my views on the subject.
More than thirty years ago, I served on the Learning Disability Association Board of Cuyahoga County. One year, our keynote at our conference was Dr. Albert Galaburda, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, a pioneer in dyslexia research. I offered to pick him up at the airport so I could chat with him. I asked him, “What is dyslexia?” He said, “A brain has three parts, A, B and C. A typical brain is wired from parts A to B. A dyslexic brain is wired from parts A to C.” It was such a simple explanation.
Cheryl Brown, our former tutor, wrote an article about her dyslexic daughter, “Seeing Things Differently.” Here’s an excerpt, “Soon we were working with a dedicated dyslexia expert, who began by explaining to us that dyslexic people often perceive things in a unique way and think in many dimensions simultaneously, which is what accounts for their frequent superior creative abilities. They, therefore, learn best by using several of their senses at once, rather than simply relying on that of sight, a sense which is totally unreliable to them.”
When I speak with families, I ask, “What does your child like to do?” 100% of the time, if they have a reading problem, they say: athletics, art, music, theater, building things. All of these things require three-dimensional thinking. They see the world differently.
Albert Einstein, Leonardo DiVinci, Thomas Edison and Richards Branson, all see the world differently. They are brilliant but see the world three dimensionally. Simply put, they use their eyes, ears, touch and muscle movement in their world. If we teach our students with dyslexia or even typical students this way, they can learn to read. I’ve witnessed thousands of children and adults learn to read after years and years of struggle using Richards Learning Systems.
KISS: Keep it simple stupid. While I’m encouraged that we are finally recognizing dyslexia, we don’t need to complicate the way we teach them. It doesn’t need to be!