Dealing with dyslexia

Without fanfare, the members of the Dyslexia Association gathered to hear the report of their chairman Cathryn Kelshall.

Their meeting came as many countries in the world continued to observe October as dyslexia awareness month.

Even if you are not aware of the activities of the Association, you are likely to be aware of at least one person who has dyslexia. According to conservative statistics, about 10 per cent of the population is dyslexic.

But like so many of the markers of human diversity, dyslexia is not well understood by many segments of the population.

Dyslexia is a congenital organising disability that impairs hand skills, short term memory, and perception, hindering the development of a someone’s literary skills-particularly reading, writing and spelling, and often numeracy. In its effects, dyslexia can range from slight reading problems to complete illiteracy.

Another way of looking at dyslexia is as a “different learning ability”.

Sadly, dyslexia is often confused with intelligence. The two are unrelated. In fact, persons of extremely high intelligence may be dyslexic, having successfully developed effective stratagems to deal with their different way of learning and processing information.

Some even go so far as to attribute high levels of creative thinking and effective problem- solving skills to the condition.

But there are some patterns of note. Dyslexia is more likely to affect males than females. And it has many classic symptoms, not limited to the repeated mis-spelling of words.

These symptoms include problems processing and understanding what she or he hears; difficulty comprehending rapid instructions; and problems remembering the sequence of things.

We think it is safe to say that Trinidad and Tobago society does not take dyslexia seriously.

Successive government administrations have paid lip service to the need to identify students with “special needs” in schools, but a coherent, national policy on dealing with dyslexia in the classroom eludes us.

Instead, the approach is more piecemeal, involving individual teachers and schools. We have not heard of much advocacy in this regard from TTUTA nor is there much evidence that PTAs are as active as they could be in lobbying for a national policy.

A good example of what tends to happen was recently provided by TT’s Olympic sailor Andrew Lewis.

“I’m a living example of dyslexia,” Lewis said. During primary school he had found it difficult to follow the teachers’ delivery. “I was super distracted and always wanted to go outside and play.” When his primary school teachers suggested that Lewis be kept back for a second year in Standard 4, his parents realised that something was wrong and took their son for an assessment. Upon his diagnosis, Lewis’ parents moved him to ESHE’s Learning Centre for specialised attention. “It was here I first started to get the care and extra attention I needed to cope with dyslexia. I started to feel like I was normal.” Andrew was lucky that the problem was caught.

Many students do not get the kind of special attention they deserve.

However, groups like the Dyslexia Association continue to work, training teachers across the country in the hope that by instilling greater awareness and skills in the classroom, some students can be helped. We salute these efforts and call for more measures to be implemented to deal with dyslexia.