Dyslexia
As an educator for over thirty five years, I have taken special notice of the number of children who are labeled “learning disabled” “dyslexic” or are placed in “special education classes”. In most cases the problem is an inability to read.
Professionals tell the parents that a brain abnormality “dyslexia” is the cause of their child’s reading inability.
Dyslexia is a fancy word, that comes from the Greek dys, meaning ill or bad, and lexia, meaning words. It is a term that is used in the United States to describe at least eight percent of school age children.
Dyslexia, say the experts is a problem in the language arts part of the brain that comes to a parent s attention when the child fails to gain literacy in the early grades. What parents are not told is that in over sixty years of research nothing has been able to confirm that a defect of any sort exists in the brain of a child who has been labeled as dyslexic.
Isn t dyslexia a scientific term?
There are no well-defined reading behaviors that can clearly distinguish a dyslexic from other poor readers whose difficulties stem from limitations in experience or developmental delays. There are no distinguishing clinical patterns to determine a dyslexic person.
In 1989 the Council of Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association concluded that “consensus has yet to be reached on a practical operational definition of the disorder and, while an organic etiology is often presumed, clear identification has not yet been made”.
Instead of screening and identifying dyslexia in pre-school and kindergarten and early elementary school children we should examine how these children are taught. Example schools such as the San Diego Unified School District showed an alarming drop in their reading scores. Why? During this period they changed reading methods- phonics was replaced by the whole language reading program. In 1990 51% of the students in San Diego scored above the national median. In 1991 only 25% did. Did an epidemic of dyslexia hit San Diego between 1990 and 1991?
To label someone as dyslexic is convenient. Labeling absolves everyone from any responsibility. The person/victim is blamed not the methodology or lack thereof.
Psychology
Psychiatry and Special Education to the Rescue???
Special education has grown from serving about 2% of the population of children to now serving over 20%. Is this labeling improving our reading or academic scores-no. Why not? Because the focus has been and is on labeling and trying to blame the victim rather than on the problem-curriculum and doing something about it.
You should know that this “disease” dyslexia has never been confirmed and that no test of proven validity to verify it exists is available.
We should demand that all practices and labels which cannot be scientifically validated be stopped.
It is time we look at the real culprits of the cause/etiology of “dyslexia” and that is improper curriculum for teaching many children and lack of knowledge in knowing what readiness activities need to be taught to prepare many of our children to learn how to read. Also improper methods of teaching are contributing to this misdiagnosis.
We need to focus on training parents and teachers how to teach their children and what to use to teach them so they can be successful.
Every child deserves the right to be able to learn how to read!!! They can learn- maybe not all to college or graduate level but they can learn to read. In over thirty years I have not seen one individual with an IQ over 25 that has not been able to read. Is Psychology A Science?
No psychology is not a science. To qualify as a science there must be the possibility of not only refuting theories but also predicting future events. You must be able to reproduce results obtained and control what is observed.
The cause and effect relationship so evident in the physical sciences is largely not found in the “social sciences”. Instead of statistically significant cause-effect relationships the social science relies on covariation/ that is events or relationships which appear together but are not necessarily related.
No one is able to cite even one true expert, that is a philosopher of science, a distinguished professor or Nobel Laureate who will state and write that psychology is a pure science.
If psychology is not a science what is it?
Psychology studies behaviors, attitudes, morals and values. What is that? That is not a scientific study. It is the study of religion. In the case of psychology it is the study of secular humanism.
Psychology is founded on eight false premises that are all humanistic from the core.
I will be writing on this in the next issue.
The faith, the solutions once delivered to the Saints is being displaced today by a substitute faith disguising itself as psychology, Christian psychology, psychiatry but is based upon the above foundations which are in direct contradiction to the holy Bible.
We as Christians sit idle and do nothing while the church is being destroyed from within. The prophets have warned us of this.