I came across the following article in The Boston Globe today. Students from The Carroll School, a wonderful local school specializing in teaching children with language learning disabilities such as dyslexia, are performing a musical written by a couple of their teachers that follows the difficulties of a dyslexic student as she navigates through the challenges presented by school. The on-line version appears to be abridged, so read the original article if you can.
What struck me in this article was that it took this dramatization
for many of the students’ families and friends to begin to understand the emotional toll that dyslexia takes on the student. Even more interesting was that some of the performers themselves didn’t recognize how similar their classmates struggles were to their own until they started rehearsals.
I’ve been studying dyslexia for over 20 years, and I will confess to being surprised that awareness of this learning disability isn’t nearly as universal as I would have hoped. We’ve surely come a long way from the time when a child’s ability to read in the third grade pretty much determined whether they would be on a college or vocational track. But it’s sobering to realize that if some of the parents of dyslexics don’t fully get the entire picture of what the disorder does to the emotional state of their youngster, then how out of touch must be the majority of people who aren’t sensitized to these issues?
So while the community of educators, parents, and researchers have done a reasonably good job fostering awareness of the disorder, it is clear that there is a lot more to be done. Surely the play being performed by these students is a great step, but we all must do a better job of understanding all the ramifications—cognitive, educational, emotional, psychological—that accompany this disorder. And we need to a better job not only remediating these kids’ reading problem, but addressing the impact that having an extraordinary brain has on their social development.
If you want to learn more about developmental dyslexia, contact the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). If you wish to support research, The National Dyslexia Research Foundation (NDRF) is a good place to start (Disclaimer: I am chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of NDRF).