Testing for Dyslexia in Children in Schools
Dyslexia has been little understood or noted for most of recorded history. Almost all of the recorded history of dyslexia has been in the last 25 years.
Dyslexics see things differently. Their eyes are the same as those of non-dyslexics, but their brains interpret the signals differently. Because of this they learn differently and need to be taught in the way they learn, not in the traditional mold.
In roughly the last fifteen years, dyslexia in children has routinely been screened for in elementary school. As part of their standard procedures, everyone went through preliminary screening. Those identifies as possibly dyslexic, plus all the teachers identified as having problems with reading, were put through full dyslexia tests which identified whether or not they were dyslexic, and, if so, what type and to what degree was the problem.
Before that, dyslexics were lumped in with the rest of the students and had to take their chances. Most were treated badly by the educational system, called lazy, slow learners, underachievers. They were made to feel ashamed of and embarrassed by their differences and learned to conceal them.
Today there are millions of dyslexic adults still struggling to deal with the world through a dyslexic lens, not realizing that dyslexia is their problem and a simple dyslexia test could set them on the road to life-changing improvements.
One of the problems in helping dyslexics is that there are many different types of dyslexia. Dyslexia takes many different forms; all dyslexics are different. They cannot be readily sorted into categories and then treated the same as a group.
These differences lead to different symptoms of dyslexia in different dyslexic subjects. Some have trouble reading, especially in reading aloud. Others may have difficulty setting a schedule and keeping to it because of differences in the perception of the passage of time. Still others struggle to write down what someone tells them… All are different.
For more info on dyslexia and how it can be overcome, click on any of the above links.
Disclaimer: Nothing in the above explanations is intended to be or represented to be or should be construed to be any form of medical advice. The information herein has been gleaned from medical journals, news articles in the popular press and other freely-available public sources. It is presented here for informational purposes only. For any medical advice the reader is urged to consult with his or her licensed physician or other medical specialist.
By John R. Jones
