Re: Way OT: Comic strip Pre Teena

Yup. I have very minor dyslexia and sometimes I just can't remember how things are spelled and if I try them out, none of them look right. So I just admit it and ask for help.

I have a problem with transposing numbers also. If you tell me your phone number is 739-8945, I will write down 739-8495 even while repeating it back to you in the correct order. It's pretty icky.

Elizabeth

I was always near the top of my class in everything except math. Everyone told me not to worry about that problem because I was a girl and girls weren't good in math or science.

Many girls, myself included, went to college for an MRS degree. Even if we graduated with honors, there was a sense of failure if there wasn't a ring on a finger.

True but we don't often agree about something that could be considered controversial! It's STILL history making when we agree about something -- likely puts the rest of the folks in a state of wonderment

-- LOLOL! CiaoMeow >^;;^<

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

Gee, nearly all the girls I know are pretty good at Maths and Science. The ones who aren't happen not to be great at the Arts either but have skills in other areas than academia. Here in NSW, there's been a great push to favour girls' education in the Sciences. It's been going on for quite a few years now and guess what the upshot's been? LOL! Yeah: boys are beginning to fail compared to their sisters and girls are taking out the top prizes in Maths and Sciences!

I ask myself why that happens. Why do boys' brains appear to be hard-wired toward mechanics and physics and stuff like that while girls' brains seem to lean more toward the humanities? Is it *really* simply learned behaviour or is there something about the Y chromosome that makes a difference? We already know that the missing 'tail' of the Y (the part that would have made it an X) makes a big difference in some genetic manifestations. I wonder whether quantitative intelligence is one of them?

It's interesting to note that autistic kids are often highly skilled either in Maths and quantitative analytic skills OR they're quite the opposite and highly skilled in the arts. I wonder why that is? Why is it so often dichotomous and not more dog's-breakfast-y in the way it manifests?

Another interesting thing I have noticed is that there are extremely few children who have no skills at anything. Sadly, many of the skills that some kids have do not translate into 'school'. This means there's a significant under-class that never gets recognised in school for having any ability at all. These are the 'under-achievers' and they are legion! I'm beginning to form an opinion that schools should be teaching these kids to play to their strengths, not persist in telling them how profoundly they failed in their last exam.

Albert Einstein was one such child. His verbal abilities were so questionable they thought he might actually have been retarded! LOL! I've read that Bill Gates was another: ordinary at school - extraordinary once he found his niche and played to his considerable strengths! I've read in a number of places that the most 'successful' children (ie. by today's modern standards of wealth and progress) are usually the ones who just sailed through school unnoticed. Neither bright nor stupid, just happily doddling along, these kids are the ones who are relaxed enough to try anything and make it work. They have no pressure to succeed as the bright kids do and no pressure to do better as the underachievers do. They just work.

Whatever all this amounts to, it will determine which kids earn billions and which ones end up on welfare. Fascinating stuff!

Eons ago, my ex took the CBEST (California Substitute Teaching) test. The English/math/spelling was at a 7th grade level. A good friend took it last month. The English/math/spelling was STILL at a 7th grade level.

If our Teecherz can only function at a 7th grade level, what the bleep are they doing teaching 12th grade?

Reminded me of a news report about a teachers strike where the cameras focused in on every single misspelling and grammatical error on the teachers' picket signs. And then the reporter deadpanned about why our children are illiterate.

Or, as BushBaby asked "is our children learning?"

My cousin is mildly dyslexic. One day when I was there, the kids were sitting at the dining room table doing their homework. Eldest: "Mom, how do you spell ____?" Before Mom can say "look in the dictionary" (because, like Brat, she knows not to trust her ability to spell), the four-years-younger one pipes up with the spelling. Cousin looks at me for confirmation, I nod. She says "Should he know that in 2d grade?" "I don't remember that word in MY 2d grade spelling list." And this kept on the rest of the homework hour.

I remember cat-bat-rat, maybe by the end of 2d grade working our way up to 4- and 5-letter words. This kid was reeling off 8-, 10- and

Aforesaid cousin is adopted. She was raised by a family that reads a lot -- her mother was the child of two teachers and her father was a near-sighted child who could see books better than baseballs. She barely reads. Her eldest barely reads. Her middle child, who was basically raised by Grandpa, reads voraciously. Her youngest (even at age 11) likes to snuggle up and be read to, but doesn't read much on his own.

So, I don't know that expectation entirely explains it, because she was certainly expected to read, and when he did after-school day care Grandpa certainly expected the kids to read. Expectation DOES explain why she graduated (just barely) from high school ... I was calling her once a week from college, coaxing and cajoling to "just finish, please" and she was in full expectation that if she disappointed me and dropped out, I would leave the imprint of my foot on her posterior a few dozen times.

She sure didn't get that attitude toward a HS education from her parents. They always expected that she'd go to college.

There's been a movement to evaluate not only IQ but EQ (emotional quotient). I had a friend who was an excellent People Person. If I had to send a pushy-not-nasty letter to someone, I always had her read over it to tell me if I'd gone too far, and her response was always spot-on, which phrase she would take offense to if she was the recipient. Not the brightest student, but she was very good at what she was good at.

As you said, even the world-class dunces have sports skills or art skills or music skills. They may not be the skills that get you an honors diploma, but they are skills.

My oldest brother is severely enough dyslexic that he did not learn to read until 6th grade and then because my mother sat with him every night reading. I have mild dyslexia and learned early on how to compensate for it. I read voraciously. My brother (who does have a college degree) reads as little as possible. I think that if reading were easier for him, he would read more. So it's not just family history (we're all voracious readers except that brother), it's also about the ongoing difficulty of the act itself and in the late 50s and early 60s, at least where we were, there simply wasn't enough known about it to give him coping skills.

Elizabeth (I don't, btw, sound words out - I have them memorized or on some sort of recognition scheme, so mediocre looks like "medicore" to me, but I still recognize it as "average")

I have the opposite problem - I began to read at an early age and I began to read (and still do read) at high speed. During my 30 years in the civil service being able to speed-read was very handy when ploughing through the minutes of interminable committee meetings and other turgid documents. However, it makes reading a book, particularly a novel, for sheer pleasure quite difficult for me. I tend to skim over what I think is the un-necessary stuff and thus miss a lot of the enjoyment. Bruce

Which is why I tend to race through a book to get the story line, then go back and read it again to enjoy the details.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

Both of our children were adopted as infants. Most of the time, dh and I would rather read - I am what you might call a "voracious reader". Our son did not read much for pleasure as a kid, it wasn't "macho", but he was always a top speller, and good at athletics as well. He is now a lawyer. DD, OTOH, was pretty hopeless in school, a creative speller, and in High School the only thing she studied was her reflection in the mirror. Oh, she minored in Social Calendar. She is now happily married with three children, and until recently was working as a secretary, God help us. Spell check gets her through that, but her letters tend to be one paragraph, no matter how long they are. Oh well, nowadays the bright girls don't become secretaries, they have them.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

I can't do that - having got the story line my brain says "you've already read that, this is boring" Bruce

I find that if a book is poorly written, I'll race through it to find out what happens, but if it's well written, I'll savor the writing and take my time. I think that's why my tastes tend more towards "literature" these days, where I used to read just about anything.

Elizabeth

If you haven't already read it, may I suggest Umberto Eco's _Foucault's Pendulum_? It's densely enough written that it may just slow you down.

Elizabeth

I just heard the scariest thing. The state of Massachusetts has a teacher competency test and supposedly if you don't pass, you don't teach. BUT

OMG (to quote DD), I loved that book

No, according to school grading and evaluation, it's not 'normal'. 2nd grade kids should be functioning at what school calls 2nd grade level. However, some kids just acquire reading and spelling as if by osmosis. I was like that and so were DD and the Ugly Sister. We still don't know exactly how kids actually internalise the process of recognising words, being able to read them, spell them correctly and then write them down accurately. Some kids just 'know' as you describe.

The gun-spellers are nearly always very effective readers and it appears they just decipher words and know them forever afterward. Spelling lists are meaningless agony for such kids because they have no purpose. I think this is where the 'sight word' approach to teaching reading originated. It can be very effective for 'those' kids, but less so for others. Some do best with a phonics (sounding out) approach and at least that's a portable tool that gives a kid some idea of what a word might be.

LOL! I was adopted too. All of my immediate family members read voraciously, except for DD who is a worshipper of the Square Screen. Don't get me wrong: she reads effectively and very quickly but she prefers the instant gratification of moving pictures. I'm continually fascinated, though, by her rich vocabulary and eloquent way of using words. Why is that? How can a kid who doesn't read 'do' words so well? And how come a kid who reads so physically well (ie at great speed and with excellent comprehension) not *want* to read books??? That's just plain weird!

DS, on the other hand, is an ordinary reader. He'll take a couple of weeks to read a book that DD would polish off in a night or two. With his rather strange memory, though, he'll remember just about every word he read. He can recite passages of text verbatim and even, if he concentrates, the credits of a movie he's watched. This memory stays with him for rather a while - he doesn't forget very easily. I wonder about this as well.

The point I was trying to make is that most of these abilities seem to be inborn. When we were given these kids, the conventional wisdom was that babies are a blank sheet upon which the world - and particularly the parents - write. DH and I are both bookworms, neither kid is, although ds was spelling at 12th grade level in 5th grade. We are totally uninterested in professional athletics (I won't tell you my opinion on that subject) but DS was a pretty good athlete. We tend to be plodders, "if at first you don't succeed...." dd was absolutely beautiful growing up, but is still a total featherhead.

I'm not trying to make any invidious comparisons, just relating facts and stating the obvious. They are each individuals, and totally different from either of us.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

Have you ever read about 'Multiple Intelligences'? It's a school of thought that says each child has an overlapping set of skills, some of which might be outstanding, others less so. The bottom line is that many kids are 'gifted' in one way or another and most 'gifted' kids have a hard time being smooshed into the mould that schooling makes for them.

A gifted reader, for example, may not enjoy being forced to read at his age level. This happened to my daughter and I often wonder if this might be why she resists reading now. She had completed 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' at barely six years of age, yet her teacher was giving her lovely picture books with six words to a page. The teacher utterly would not allow DD to be advanced for reading because she (DD) was unable to complete her written work very effectively. Duh! Happens to kid all the time in school!

YES!!! This concept is KEY!!! The thing is, it's *WRONG* to call any kid 'a dunce'. The fact that they have any skills at all precludes that! Aside from anything else, it introduces the possibility of awful self-fulfilling prophecies unfairly. Academic prowess is not a good indicator of anything IMHO. All it means is, you can pass exams with skill and aplomb. Great. But one day, you'll be out in the world and required to function there. It takes more than good grades to get, hold down and excel at a job.

Very few of the brightest kids in my classes are 'successful' today. (I'm a shining example, of course). Two of my classmates are highly regarded doctors, but both have multiple divorces behind them and the woman is still wrestling with her gender identity: she's very unhappy!

Among the 'also rans' are successful businessmen and women, a local entrepreneur who just paid the highest-price-ever for a cliff-side home in Newcastle and a bloke who was thought to be retarded: his stammer was so bad. He's now a nationally-known architect who owns several firms throughout Australia and whose designs contributed to the Oz Olympic effort in 2000. I'd have to say that my class is a great illustration of the fact that it takes a lot more than grades to make you successful! All the grades do is gain you access to the courses that your skills pertain to. After that, Other Things come into play...

I often wonder whether the poor little 'dunce' in the corner might have it in him to be Bill Gates II if only his peers and teachers hadn't labelled him 'dunce' before he had the chance to get off the ground. It takes a lot of guts and stamina to be 'dunce' and guess what? Guts and stamina have real currency in today's world! ;-D