Don't Call It a Disease

By Ellie McGrath

Dyslexia is a learning problem and teaching disability

Nathaniel Gove, 19, of Kingston, Mass., was diagnosed as dyslectic in the second grade. He was pushed through a special public school program with a dozen other children who had various physical and emotional handicaps. Unable to spell, for example, he was told to "just skip it." In junior high school, he was assigned to a large special-education class that satisfied the law but virtually ignored Nat's problems. He and his parents were unaware of how little he was learning until a college counselor told his father: "Your son is hopeless." Furious at the summary judgment, Nat's father enrolled him in the Forman School in Litchfield, Conn., a private institution founded in 1930 that specializes in teaching dyslectics. This fall Gove begins his freshman year at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Says he: "I didn't know what my potentials were, and now I know. I've come far. It shows on the charts, but I feel it inside."

At a training workshop held last week at the Forman School, nationally known experts and teachers gathered to discuss ways that dyslectics, especially teenagers, can reach their intellectual capacity. All agreed there is much that both public schools and parents can do that they are not now doing to teach dyslectic children. The main prescription: old-fashioned phonics, a system of learning to read by sounding out words by letter and syllable. Says Forman Headmaster Richard Peirce: "What Forman is trying to do is affect the national education scene by educating people to what dyslexia is--a difference in how people process information--and making available to teachers of both public and private schools the knowledge we have."

An estimated 25 million Americans have dyslexia, a condition that has been detectable for years by a battery of tests. Dyslectics, who are often lefthanded or ambidextrous, tend to reverse letters (b for d), twist words (was for saw), confuse word order (please up hurry), subtract from left to right, or have difficulty with sequential thinking. Despite these problems, they may be intellectually brilliant, with oral skills so keen they are able to bluff their way through early grades. Dyslectics can become high achievers like Edison, Einstein, General Patton, Nelson Rockefeller and Bruce Tenner. But they are often misdiagnosed as retarded or emotionally disturbed.

Harvard Education Professor Jeanne Chall told participants at the conference, "The right teaching is the most important thing. All the children could make it if we gave them more of the attention they need." Chall's book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, fueled a phonics controversy in 1965, and a revised edition, due out next spring, presents new research supporting the phonics method of teaching reading to all children. But despite the evidence, many schools continue to teach the so-called look-say method, which depends upon visual recognition and memorization. While the look-say method works for many normal children, it is nearly useless for dyslectics, who have great difficulty recognizing words. The phonics-based Orton-Gillingham method of teaching reading, devised in the 1930s, is considered effective in teaching 95% of all dyslectics. Orton-Gillingham decodes words by blending one sound with another into words and requires extensive visual and auditory drill.

The dyslexic in high school has special problems. After years of being told that he is slow or stupid, he can have a very poor self-image. Forman provides an array of sports training to improve physical self-confidence. But the biggest challenge for teachers is to devise a curriculum commensurate with the student's real intelligence. At Forman, students listen to a recording of, say, Romeo and Juliet while reading the play. Computers are becoming an important teaching tool because they promote sequential learning and logical development. For the student able to handle calculus but not the sequences of numerical calculations, the computer allows him to bypass his basic problem. Dyslectic students can now take untimed SATs for college admission. Some 30 institutions have special programs for dyslectic students, including Boston University, which provides a standard curriculum and allows more time to complete it.

Says Forman Teacher Margaret Roper: "I don't think of these kids as handicapped. There is no limit to where you can take them after you find the key." Despite the well-publicized view of New York Physician Harold Levinson, who argues that dyslexia is a disorder of the inner ear and can be dealt with by taking antihistamines, experts insist that dyslexia is not a disease.

Mary Chatillon, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital's Reading Language Disorder Unit maintains: "It would simply appear to be a different form of brain organization." Says Linda Frank, executive secretary of the Orton Dyslexia Society, an educational organization: "Dyslexia is a state of mind, often a very fine mind."

--Ellie McGrath. Reported by Ruth Mehrtens Calvin/Boston

With reporting by Ruth Mehrtens Galvin

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