Gifted Dyslexics

Joan Lash Treland

• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781642986846
• eBook ISBN: 9781642986839
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Joan Lash Treland, forerunner in identifying and remediating students with learning disabilities, focuses on a rarely discussed issue: high ability students who achieve at lower than expected levels. By identifying gifted, successful persons in fields ranging from science to politics, Joan begins the exploration of problems that deprive society of the benefits that the gifted underachievers should be contributing to our world. Joan examines the research into dyslexia, plus low performance not related to other handicapping conditions and brings the need for educators to delve into the necessity of identifying and remediating the physical, social, and psychoeducational conditions that cause individuals with great promise to lead lives of low to mediocre performance. In addition to the valuable organization of research, Joan's work makes public an often ignored waste of talent by educators and society as a whole. Highlighting this issue provides educators with an opportunity to find a societal/educational "fix" to a little understood, but serious problem. In her thesis regarding the learning issues that too often define an individual's ability to contribute to society, Joan Treland has examined the contributions and learning problems overcome by eminent individuals including Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Auguste Rodin, George S. Patton, William James, Hans Christian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Katherine Mansfield, Albert Einstein. The gifts of these "learning challenged, " dyslexic geniuses have brought the world advances in science, beauty, understanding of the mind, and overcome threats to world peace. Ironically, each of these individuals suffered from the shame of learning in a different way, viewing the world through a different perspective. By focusing on the abilities and challenges of these gifted individuals Joan Treland presents an alternate view of learning and teaching to the strengths of the individual students. Educators and those in charge of public policy should read this wake-up call to a society that consistently wastes its most valuable resource: the ignored, gifted, and underachieving student. Dyslexia, depression, and lack of motivation frequently prevent talented young people from contributing to our society at the high level that should be expected given their overlooked talents. Joan Treland gathered the research-now parents, educators, and the political leaders must act.

Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

“Dear Mother - Started the Store several weeks. I have growed considerably I dont look much like a Boy now - Hows all the folk did you receive a Box of Books from Memphis that he promised to send them - languages. Your son Al” (Josephson, 1959, p. 22).

“The name of the stemer was the Chiner and she was a propella and one night it blew prutty hard” (Thompson, 1969, p. 116).

“June 1. Train arrived at Omaha 8:00 a.m. Went through engen repar schop with Mr. Gray the President of the Unyon Railroad. Then we had lunc on his car which was atcth on ours. In the afternoon we rode on the engen… Train arrived at Julesburg, Nebraska, 7:00 Good day” (Morris, 1960, p. 19).

These writings are not samples from children of low intelligence. Thomas Alva Edison, at the age of nineteen and after many years of individual tutoring, wrote the first paragraph in a letter to his mother. The second statement was written by Abbott Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University, when he was ten years of age. The third quotation is from records scrawled by former Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller at the age of twelve when he was traveling with his family.

Thompson (1969) reported of other eminent individuals who experienced similar academic problems: Harvey Cushing, brain surgeon; Woodrow Wilson, statesman; Auguste Rodin, sculptor; George S. Patton, general; Albert Einstein, scientist; William James, psychologist; Paul Ehrlich, bacteriologist; Brooks Adams, historian; Hans Christian Andersen, author; King Karl XI, king of Sweden; Eleanor Roosevelt, humanitarian; Katherine Mansfield, writer; Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt.

The illustrious persons mentioned above experienced specific learning problems, primarily in the language areas (viz., reading, spelling, writing, grammar). Numerous other famous people could be cited as having had other kinds of school problems such as math, truancy, inattentiveness, hyperactivity (Goertzel & Goertzel, 1962). This paper, however, will confine itself to the area of specific language disabilities.

Statement of the Problem

The question posed is how many bright and talented young people are educators, psychologists, administrators, doctors, and parents criticizing as lazy, unmotivated, underachieving, and possibly even dumb. It appears that what seems to be the last possible combination of exceptionalities—bright and learning disabled—has been grossly ignored and often misinterpreted. The gifted handicapped are just now beginning to receive attention, but the primary focus appears to be on sensory or physical defects. It is the bright child who cannot read and spell well, who cannot express himself adequately on paper, and who is unable to apply the proper mechanics of English, who is the focus of this paper. In reviewing the literature, it appears as if earlier professionals were more aware and concerned with this unusual occurrence than are many of the current people in the field. There are a few exceptions—Frierson, Symmes, Rawson—whose studies will be reported in another chapter of this paper. Hewett (1977), in his comprehensive edition of exceptional learners which included the gifted, alluded to the problems of Einstein, Churchill, and Edison, and wrote a section on the underachieving gifted child, but he made no mention of specific language problems of the gifted. The underachieving gifted child’s problems were attributed to inadequate father relationships, authoritarian mothers, or other emotional problems, Myers and Hammill (1976) revised their earlier book on methods for learning disorders in order to “make its contents congruent with our current thinking, to incorporate the results of recent research in learning disabilities, and to discuss the teaching programs that were developed since 1969 or that were omitted from the first edition” (p. V). This writer, however, was unable to find any reference to learning disorders within the superior or gifted population.

It is not the intent of this paper to criticize what has been done, only to suggest that a different perspective be considered when viewing bright children who appear to be experiencing academic problems.

It is hoped that a review of the literature will support this position.

Early History

A brief historical review of the two areas of exceptionality—gifted and learning disabled—might give the reader a dimension of the various directions in which both areas have moved over a number of years. The practice of categorizing the handicapped is a fairly recent practice. “Throughout most of history, perhaps the only categories that mattered were the weak, the odd, and the poor” (Hewett. 1977, p. 13). Hewett also reported that the earliest treatment of the population viewed as different has moved along a continuum starting some half-million years ago when headaches and convulsive disorders were attended to by means of a crude technique called trephining during which a circular area of the skull was chipped away with a stone instrument. Those whose appearance and behavior did not meet the approval of the majority were treated according to whatever particular attitudes and movements were recognized at that moment in history. These treatments included the individuals being starved, exorcised, ignored, sterilized, exiled, exploited, murdered, and worshipped.

Although most of the treatment has been given to those individuals who were handicapped mentally, sensorially, or physically, historians do point to democracies and empires who actively searched for children with superior intelligence. If bright individuals could be considered as different, attention was given to them as early as Plato’s time when he favored the identification and education of young gifted children in order to train them for leadership. In the sixteenth century, Suleiman the Magnificent sought out gifted Christian youth in the Turkish Empire (Hewett, 1977).

Differentiation of Problems

Moving along the continuum, the search began to differentiate intellectual abilities of the less obviously different. In 1904, Alfred Binet, a French psychologist, developed a scientifically reliable means for evaluating intelligence (Hewett, 1977). Thousands of mildly retarded children were identified and special educational programs were established. In 1910 the American Association on Mental Deficiency extended the previously established categories of idiot and imbecile which labeled the more seriously retarded individual to another classification of moron which reflected the upper limit of mental retardation. The new category identified thousands of individuals in this borderline group.

As history moves along, it becomes apparent that, once the obviously afflicted and different individuals were identified, categorized, and given attention, the less obvious differences received consideration. Critchley (1970) reported of early evidences of learning problems in the mystical writings of St. Teresa (1515-1582) when, during her states of ecstasy, words and letters would lose their meaning. The notion of specific learning disabilities emerged around the late 1800’s, according to Critchley, and was called various names such as alexia, dyslexia, strephosymbolia, and word-blindness. In 1925, Dr. Samuel T. Orton, a scholarly medical educator and neuropsychiatrist in Iowa, came across a sixteen-year-old boy who had never been able to read, and, as the boy himself told Orton, “Mother says there is something funny about me, because you could read anything to me and I’d get it right away, but if I read it myself, I couldn’t get it.” (Critchley, 1970, p. 8). About the same time, James Kerr, Medical Officer of Health to the city of Bradford and a pioneer school doctor, was awarded the Howard Medal by the Royal Statistical Society for his essay on “School Hygiene, in its Mental, Moral, and Physical Aspects.” Herein, we find the following note: “But besides the generally dull there are the mentally exceptional, many quite suitable for ordinary school provided the teacher knows their peculiarities.” (Critchley, 1970, p. 6).

Hewett (1977) and Critchley (1970) reported about other unusual cases around the world in the early 1900’s: Lechner in Holland, Wernicke in Buenos Aires, Peters in Germany, Jackson in America, and Variot and Lecomte in France. After 1917, when Hinshelwood, the opthalmalogist, published his second monograph about congenital word-blindness, there was a period of analysis and differences in opinion which resulted in a considerable amount of skepticism and uncertainty.

Controversies Continued

These controversies have continued into an era today of professional disagreement. The field of learning disabilities, although varied, can be conveniently grouped into three categories: disorders of spoken language, disorders of written language, and disorders of perceptual and motor processes. Well-known individuals such as Monroe, Gillingham, Fernald, Kirk, Keller, Spaulding, Lehtinen, Werner, Strauss, Johnson, Kephart, Frostig, Barsch, Cruickshank, and many more have made contributions to what could now be characterized as an eclectic era.

Identifying and Teaching Bright Children

While history was sporadically and controversially moving along within the field of learning disabilities, the first systematic attempt at identifying and teaching bright children appeared in 1886 (Hewett, 1977). In Elizabeth, New Jersey, the schools established a multiple tract system in which students were grouped according to the academic pace they could maintain. In 1891, the Cambridge Plan allowed the superior student to cover the first six grades in four years. Germany, in 1917, conducted school programs for hoffnungskinder—children who show promise—(Hewett, 1977). According to Hewett, gifted child education has...

Table of contents

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4