Wednesday, December 26, 2007

NY Times Article on the Benefits of Dyslexia

So Dyslexia has it's advantages after all as this article in the NY Times a tests too...

Is the benefit being dyslexic being some one who overcame dyslexia? Ny Times Article about Dyslexia at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06dyslexia.html

Does finding a silver lining mean the cloud is not all bad?

As a entrepreneur am I better situated to build a successful business then other people who may not be as willing to get help as needed? Read the article and tell me what you think.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Is Dyslexia the result of Bad Teaching?

Someone told me that they thought that a lot of children who were diagnosed as dyslexic were in reality suffering from a lack of teaching.

I don't think so - most children are over taught and the more I am involved with working with children the more I think that they need a gentle hand.

You don't teach two year olds how to read - unless they ask for it. So why do we insist on teaching at grade level so much? Studies show that it takes an adult thirty hours to learn to read at an adult level. So why do we spend years on it in childhood?

We do because the lesson is not reading - the lesson is to tame the spirit and squash the soul.   A free people can not be ruled or conquered with out there implicit permission either through non-action or lack of imagination. If the ruler can kill the idea of freedom that what need has the emperor for the sword or the boot?

Dyslexic people are people who have less toleration for the crap that the rest of us call learning by route.   A throughly discredited form of learning that has no business being in the same room with small children or adults - unless invited by there passion and sheperared by there own desire.

With  Love

Eric Wolf

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Truth is Harder then You Think

All of this effort to get my brain functional.  The herbs taken.  The delirious brain concoctions my wife has made.  Mean time every night my wife and I took baths in the old claw foot bathtub.  My wife herself tested for heavy metals a few months ago and she tested high for lead.  She bought one of those lead kits for the house and brought it home and left it in a drawer somewhere.

My 16 year old home-schooler, was wandering through the drawers, found the lead test kit and just for fun he started testing stuff - including the tub.  Turns out that the tub is in fact glazed with a lead based glaze.  Makes me wonder how much of the memory issues I have been having are not dyslexia, but old fashioned lead poisoning.

Of course for the purposes of this blog - I am in fact dyslexic as proven under the tests given my in 1985 at the age of fifteen.   Of course my dream is to successfully find a way of curing myself of the symptons of dyslexia through health, herbs and fitness.  I think that lead poisoning maybe easier to deal with.

Friday, December 7, 2007

The gift of Success

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who is also dyslexic and she was struggling with writing and I asked for my assistance in creating successful methodologies to create written material. At some point in the conversation I asked her; does she have any examples of success in her writing practice and her answer was: no.

I was astonished.

I always underestimate my ability to be speechless. I was astonished that she had never had a writing teacher who recognized that success breeds success and that you have to start where the student is at – instead of where the standards say you should start.

Statistics and the teaching to the middle of the curve have done more harm to more people then almost any other idea in teaching. I find myself upset (again) that my friend who went through 18 years of public education has not one example of feeling successful with a piece of writing.

But then a very strange feeling come over me – I realized that I was grateful for a little piece of the MS I Education, BA in Human Ecology and HS degree that I have hammered through. I am grateful for those handful of teachers who saw that I clearly could not create written material on level with my peers, but I could write at my level and my ability and that would do very nicely thank you.

Sometimes is felt like I was a thirsty man walking through a desert – just looking for a place to drink. Thank God for compassion - thank God that I missed no child left untested. I call on writing teachers every where challenge yourself to challenge your students to their next level, not grade standard and not the middle of the curve.