This letter still seems to be relevant for today. -- TGW
From Thomas G. West -- December 4, 2016
(Minor changes and corrections, May 1, 2024. -- TGW)
Open letter to the Editors of IDA “Examiner” and IDA Board Members --
Please include this open letter in a future issue of the “Examiner”-- as a dissenting view, if you like -- representing the interests of dyslexics themselves rather than those of reading teachers and related professionals. Please distribute this letter to all members of the IDA Board of Trustees and IDA Scientific Advisors. This commentary is too short for a full response, but I felt that I had to say something in reply.
I believe we have a major problem within IDA -- too much focus on reading pathology alone and not enough (or no) attention to the highly valuable capabilities that many dyslexics have, in varying amounts and in complex combinations -- valuable capabilities that appear to be ideally suited, as it happens, to current digital technological and economic trends -- but are almost never recognized by conventional assessment tools.
Many of us believe IDA has been focusing too much on conventional academic weaknesses when it ought to be focusing on identifying and building strengths -- strengths that are real and are seen, in my view, as increasingly valuable in the current visually-oriented digital age.
I hope this letter will provide a basis for a new line of discussion -- one that puts the strengths of dyslexics in center stage instead of reading remediation alone. I agree, reading and related academic skills are important -- but the recognition of the talents may be far more important for self-esteem and success in the life and work.
Furthermore, there is a special role for IDA members. Those associated with IDA are often the only professionals in the educational system in a position to understand dyslexia, in all its variety and complexity -- so it is especially important that they be trained to recognize and develop the strengths as well as help to remediate the weaknesses. A short list of suggested readings and references is provided below. Your questions and comments are welcome.
-- Thomas G. West, author of In the Mind’s Eye and Thinking Like Einstein
* * * * *
Dyslexic Talents and Learning Styles are Both “Myths” Says IDA Website
I was shocked and dismayed to see how backward and out of step are the editors of the websites of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). In February 2016 they published material that attacked as a “myth” the idea that dyslexics have any distinctive talents or capabilities. The gifts that are seen, they say, are merely the random variations that one would see distributed in any sizable population. It has nothing to do, they say, with distinctive dyslexic ways of thinking, learning and working.
Then, in May, these editors asserted that the idea of “learning styles” is another “myth,” citing two papers and a news blog (“The Examiner: News, Information, Updates,” April/May 2016). They assert that such notions are common but are unsupported by hard data and are useless in teaching and learning. One paper says (twice) that education experts “roll their eyes” at the stupidity of these notions -- and (remarkably for a scholarly journal) the paper compares the concept of learning styles to the verbal tricks used by fortunetellers.
These attacks reminded me of the speaker, vetted by IDA conference organizers, who told parents at the 2014 New Orleans annual IDA conference that there was no such thing as dyslexia. Those of us (with many years of experience in the field) sitting in the audience were aghast and dismayed. We could not believe that this speaker had been selected to make such a presentation -- especially since the presentation was scheduled for the day focusing mainly on parents and their concerns.
We wondered, what kind of advocacy, public instruction and parent support was this? It would appear to be the behavior of an organization that had lost its way. (Later, it became apparent that this presentation was part of a long-running “dyslexia debate,” largely about reading -- a debate that may be of interest to academics but of little interest to parents, dyslexic children, dyslexic adults and most teachers.)
Clearly there are many individuals in the IDA organization, working with dyslexic children and adults every day, who do not believe these things. They are appalled by these assertions -- especially when delivered with such self-assurance and obvious disrespect for opposing views -- as well as disrespect for the real abilities of children and adults with dyslexia.
It is painful to have to criticize IDA, to which I owe so much. I attended my first conference in the late 1980s (then the Orton Dyslexia Society) -- as a confused dyslexic adult and worried parent. I first came to understand aspects of the puzzle of dyslexia from speakers such as Roger Saunders, Margaret Rawson, Drake Duane, Al Galaburda, C. K. Leong and many others (including being introduced to the writings of Samuel Torrey Orton).
Norman Geschwind was to have been the keynote speaker that year -- but he had died tragically only weeks before. Fortunately, I was able to hear recordings of his talks and read his articles and books. Geschwind’s perspectives, along with Orton’s, provided the basis and direction for all my own research and subsequent books, articles and lectures. The Orton Dyslexia Society was for me, from the first day, a powerful teacher. Many in this group routinely rekindle hope and rebuild lives as they teach reading and deal with other academic weaknesses. Some are among the greatest heroes I have ever known.
But in recent years, I believe the organizational focus has been massively distracted by an obsession with pathology alone -- while ignoring diverse valuable capabilities and potential. This is why I feel called to point out where I believe it has gone wrong -- and what I think should be done about it. The organization is about dyslexia -- not about reading (alone). The organization should look at the talents and distinctive abilities as well as dealing with the difficulties. The organization should help dyslexics understand their strengths and weaknesses -- and help them to prepare for their future lives and work.
Two Cultures: Recovering a Mission and a Lost Vision
With the avowed “research to practice” mission, something has gone very wrong. Could it be that the obsessively narrow focus on reading instruction and related academic pathologies has attracted a group of reading experts who have no real understanding of dyslexia and the valuable capabilities common among many dyslexics (more or less, within the great variety of this heterogeneous group). This perspective is crystal clear in all the writings of Orton and Geschwind. How could they miss it?
In fact, it looks like we are dealing with a conflict of two cultures -- ones that fundamentally do not understand each another. Perhaps it is time for IDA as an organization to make an effort to bridge the widening gap between these two cultures. One culture sees only what is revealed in conventional tests and measures and assumes that the main problem is reading (and largely only reading) -- while the other culture recognizes high capabilities in areas often not measured by conventional tests and measures and sees how reading instruction (alone) can be a massive distraction from larger issues and potential, reinforcing a sense of failure and hopelessness.
Do these reading experts look at the results of tests and measures (mostly designed to measure those things that dyslexics are, by definition, not good at -- indeed, originally designed long ago to identify those “who would be good at school work”) and assume they really understand how to measure the deep fundamentals of talent, intelligence and capability?
In contrast, many of us, on the other side, have been working to develop a deeper understanding of the distinctive talents and capabilities and to design proper tests that measure the valuable skills and capabilities that many or most dyslexics certainly do have. These skills and talents may be invisible to conventional academic measures -- but they are often extraordinarily valuable in life and work, especially in the 21st century.
It is not easy, but the recognition of these capabilities is extremely important. This is where our attention should be focused. This is something that will help dyslexics to build self-respect based on what they do have -- rather than focusing mostly or entirely on what they do not have. They have many talents and capabilities, large and small, and these need to be recognized and developed. Of course, reading is important. But that is only half the job, and in many ways the least interesting half.
An Epistemological Dead End
There is also another problem that is fundamental. The reading experts, psychologists and others cited by the IDA editors seem to have painted themselves into an epistemological corner -- a scientific and logical dead end.
Given their approach and assumptions, they would appear to be conceptually unable to learn anything useful from looking deeply at the distinctive talents and capabilities seen in highly successful dyslexics. It seems that, for them, all special abilities are immediately dismissed -- by a wave of the hand -- as merely a function of capabilities randomly distributed in any large population. No special connection with dyslexic ways of thinking, they say. How wrong they are.
They appear to be blind to the way success in many fields appears to derive from modes of thinking common among some (or perhaps many) dyslexics but are comparatively uncommon in the non-dyslexic population. Of course, again, as it is often observed, dyslexics are a heterogeneous population -- they are unlike non-dyslexics, but they are also unlike each other. However, there do seem to be many common patterns.
Dyslexics are often observed to think in pictures rather than words. Words are often seen as a pale shadow of the richness they see in their visual imagination -- so important in science and technology as well as art, design and other fields.
They are sometimes able to see over the horizon to see what is unfolding in the future (apparently, an extension of the story-based thinking often seen among dyslexics). They are sometimes adept at integrating information from many diverse sources. (As an example, see the Wally Broecker book in Readings below.) They are sometimes able to use insightful and open-minded observation to create new knowledge -- although they often find it hard to memorize old knowledge.
As Norman Geschwind noted, the great diversity seen in dyslexics might be nature’s ways of creating high variation in brain development as a long-term survival mechanism -- to produce brains that can do things we did not know we needed -- in a continually changing environment. As Geschwind suggested, this may be the reason why, over the long run, there are so many dyslexics in the human population (also see discussion on this point by Brock and Fernette Eide in Dyslexic Advantage).
In our distant past, Geschwind noted, dyslexics seem to have had just the right kinds of abilities to survive and prosper (over the long haul). Then, more recently, for a relatively short time, reading has become important everywhere and dyslexics have had trouble.
However, currently, in a third stage, as it happens, the kinds of high-level skills and abilities that many dyslexics seem to have are, once again, exactly the capabilities of high value in the new digital age, mainly oriented toward visual manipulation and big-picture thinking (where mere reading and conventional clerical skills have little market value).
Samuel Torrey Orton saw in 1925 that his dyslexic patient “MP” could not read but was brilliant with respect to 3D visual and mechanical thinking. Norman Geschwind asserted in the 1980s that Orton had been right, observing, indeed, that he believed dyslexics had a major role in shaping many aspects of the modern world, in science, technology and many other fields.
The Orton-IDA old timers like Margaret Rawson and Roger Saunders were always aware of the distinctive talents and the valuable and distinctive thinking styles. Indeed, when I showed Margaret Rawson early drafts of my book In the Mind’s Eye (which focuses on the talents of dyslexics), she wrote me a long letter explaining that she “had always hoped someone would write a book like this.”
Accordingly, following Geschwind, in my writing and talks I have long argued that dyslexics are not only talented but that these talents are now especially valuable in science, technology and other fields -- because, as it happens, these talents fit nicely into high-level thinking and high-level work using our most advanced visual-digital technologies (where, as almost never discussed, conventional reading skill is convenient but increasingly optional).
Of course, not all dyslexics are “super-stars.” But I believe much can be learned from studying how the “super-stars” think and work -- learning from and respecting the kinds of things dyslexics are good at. For example, some dyslexic scientists say they rarely read much of the professional journal articles in their field. Rather, they mainly read “the book of nature” instead -- with an open mind and keen observation -- (as they say) unencumbered with too much attention to other people’s thoughts. One dyslexic scientist tries to teach his graduate students “to think like a dyslexic” in order to make significant and unexpected discoveries; the rest, he says, is mostly “empty memorization.”
Another dyslexic scientist could use his powerful dyslexic imagination to see how the molecules would fit together in relation to the human immune system. Using data from the instruments he had designed and built himself, he eventually taught a whole field a new way of thinking. After 12 years of giving talks on the subject (to often disbelieving audiences), another scientist did a series of experiments (that were illegal in the US at the time) that proved the dyslexic scientist was right. This other scientist received a Nobel Prize for his efforts. Now the whole field was changed in deep and fundamental ways -- because the dyslexic scientist saw something that none of them had seen -- and taught a new way of thinking.
In the modern global economy, it is becoming clear that basic reading and clerical skills have had decreasing -- or no -- market value. Almost everybody (and many machines) can do most of these tasks. It provides no comparative economic advantage.
In contrast, it is becoming more and more apparent that the kinds of thinking skills seen in many dyslexics have increasing market value. These capabilities can be put to use (if the dyslexic students can survive the trauma of their early education). Clearly, time is on their side. We need to learn from these successful dyslexics -- and not dismiss them and consider that their experience is of no consequence.
In contrast, the world of dyslexia research has moved on and advanced thinkers have been talking for some years about the “dyslexic advantage” -- in major books, articles, conferences and websites.
An example of these new perspectives on dyslexia research and practice is found in the book Dyslexic Advantage by Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide, which asserts: “the brains of individuals with dyslexia aren’t defective; they’re simply different. These wiring differences often lead to special strengths in processing certain kinds of information, and these strengths typically more than make up for the better-known dyslexic challenges.” . . .
“We don’t see the reading, spelling, or other academic challenges associated with dyslexia as the result of a ‘disorder’ or a ‘disease.’ Instead, we see these challenges as arising from a different pattern of brain organization – [which predisposes] dyslexic individuals to the development of valuable skills” (Eide and Eide, 2011, p. xvii). (See the work of Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide and the Dyslexic Advantage websites and conference talks given by successful dyslexics, now available on YouTube.)
Dyslexics endure much abuse in their early years for what they cannot do. And they mostly receive no credit or recognition for what they can do. More than anything, dyslexics need to understand the positive side of their kind of brain and mind -- for their work, for their family and for themselves.
Yet some experts at IDA and elsewhere seem determined to find a rationale and “hard evidence” to demonstrate and prove beyond a doubt that dyslexics (even when half fixed) are forever inadequate and broken. All other positive considerations to the contrary -- positive evidence about how they think and what they can do -- are seen as “myths.”
Successful Professionals Find It Hard to See Talents Hidden Beneath Early Failures
There is an aspect of our situation that is almost never addressed but may be a major point in our considerations. That is, many of the people involved in the study and remediation of dyslexia are not dyslexic themselves and were, in most cases, excellent pupils in their own school days.
Accordingly, it may be very difficult for them to see the emerging strengths and creative powers possessed by the students sitting before them -- who seem such helpless fools in doing even the most elementary academic tasks. Over the years, I have become more and more impressed with the extreme
difficulty many professionals have in separating the concept of intelligence and competence from academic performance and test taking.
Dr. Orton, with his first dyslexic patient, made a point of identifying high intelligence that did not correspond to conventional academic measures. However, since his time, many seem to be like one individual who was head of a school for dyslexics, as described in the book Reversals by Eileen Simpson.
Dr. Starr, she says, was full of good intentions in helping the struggling children. But, apparently, she was completely unable to believe that the children in her school could be highly intelligent. She thought Simpson, who was working at the school, was bright and capable -- indeed, sufficiently able to follow her as head of the school. In the view of Dr. Starr, Simpson was smart -- consequently, Simpson could not possibly be dyslexic herself. It is simply unthinkable. (“ ‘What nonsense! . . . dyslexic? Impossible’ she said”).
We all may wonder how many in the field of dyslexic remediation feel, deep down, the same beliefs as Dr. Starr, in spite of the best intentions and all protestations to the contrary. We may also wonder how many children pick up on these beliefs, buying into a life of low expectation and unrealized potential.
I am not arguing, of course, that all dyslexics have great talents -- nor that all non-dyslexics are blind to the talents of dyslexics. But I believe we do need to consider that the kinds of talents they do have, great or small, may be just the kinds of talents that are invisible to conventional teachers and conventional tests and conventional measures of academic ability. This is why I feel that developing a whole new family of tests and measurement instruments is so critical.
In the ways of the world, it is a simple truth that one cannot be considered to be really bright unless there exists some test on which you can get a top score. And, as we have been trying to show, there are many talents and abilities that are important in life and work that are never measured by conventional psychological and academic tests. This needs to change.
To do this properly, it seems that we may need to get highly successful dyslexics involved in the process -- because many conventional educators and test designers, with conventional training and assumptions, may be quite unable to see what needs to be measured, how it can be measured and why it is important to create new forms of measurement. Old habits of thought are hard to break. But perhaps, once again, we will need to rely on dyslexics themselves to “see what others do not see or cannot see.”
Clearly, it is time to develop new ways of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of students as early as possible. Sometimes great abilities can be hidden beneath striking difficulties. Sometimes, we are beginning to see, the kid who is having a lot of trouble with reading or spelling or arithmetic may turn out to do very well indeed with astrophysics or advanced mathematics or molecular biology or film animation or computer information visualization -- areas where visual thinking and image manipulation are more highly valued than rapid recall of memorized names or math facts or large quantities of data.
One major figure in the field of computer graphics told me that she estimated that half the people in the CG field were probably dyslexic -- and her own extremely talented team, those capable of extremely difficult feature film work, were all dyslexic -- 100 percent.
Sometimes, when the conceptual context and the technologies change in dramatic ways, the high talents that were once marginalized or considered of low value in an old era may suddenly move to center stage, providing the exact set of skills required to do the most demanding work in the new era.
Somehow, we need to be able to observe these changes with an open mind – alert to seeing potential and opportunity rather than only failure and restriction. Sometimes, we might discover, the kids who are having the most trouble should not be held back. Rather, perhaps, sometimes, they should be pushed a long way forward -- if the right area can be identified by a perceptive teacher or some new and innovative screening device or testing method.
There are many examples to show that those who are most gifted in higher mathematics can have persistent problems with arithmetic -- and some of the best writers can never learn to spell. Identifying the right field for each specific student is important. It would help to hold their attention. But more important, it will allow them to use talents rarely recognized. Perhaps it will allow them to learn in ways that are quite different from conventional schooling (and out of conventional educational sequence).
Such changed perspectives would allow dyslexics to gain respect from others for being able to do things that are challenging for other students -- or even challenging for their teachers. For some, the easy things in primary school are quite hard; but the hard things in graduate school and work and life are quite easy.
In many cases, of course, such a new approach could be seen as an administrative nightmare. How can the system cope with such extremes of diversity, with so many different measurement scales? Life is so much easier when there is one scale -- conveniently showing those who are the top in everything and those who are at the bottom of everything.
With some new system, with so many scoring high on at least one of several subtests, how do you know which ones are really bright and which ones are really not so bright? However, it is clearly not beyond our capacity to make it work if we are convinced that it must be made to work -- if we are convinced of the real value of diversity in brains and abilities.
In this new era of interactive computer graphics, simulators and scientific information visualization, we have many new and sophisticated tools at hand. And the need is great. It is high time to give up the illusion of uniformity and begin to take advantage -- for the sake of these individuals as well as the needs of society at large -- of vast differences in abilities in many diverse fields.
When we all are having to compete with many millions of others globally (in an increasingly uncertain and changing economy; with fast transportation and cheap light-speed communication), it is suddenly essential that all of us quickly find whatever special talents we have and develop these to a very high level -- whether or not it is part of the traditional academic curriculum.
True, it is not yet perfectly clear how this can be done. But it is clear enough that it will need to be done -- and in ways that are very different from traditional educational pathways. And most likely it will require extensive use of information visualization and related technologies. Sometimes just listening to the improbable life stories of highly successful dyslexics is enough to give us a few really new ideas about how to move forward.
Of course, not all will be able to move ahead quickly -- but even the most limited student may have islands of strength that no one knew existed -- ones that can be identified and developed early if we design the right tools. We must make it our business to help each dyslexic to find these islands. Sometimes, almost anything will do to start. But in the end, it is really important for them to be able to say “I have a lot of trouble with this but I am the best in my class (or my school) at doing that.” Sometimes, a whole life hangs in the balance.
References and Readings
Broecker, Wally, 2010. The Great Ocean Conveyor: Discovering the Trigger for Abrupt Climate Change. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. (The author explains that his dyslexia helps him to integrate masses of information from many different sources: “As a dyslexic, I receive my most valuable information and ideas from what I hear and diagrams I see rather than what I read on the printed page.”)
Card, Stuart K., Jock D. MacKinlay and Ben Shneiderman, editors, 2000. Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman Publishers, Inc.
Eide, Brock L., MD, MA, and Fernette F., MD, 2011. The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain. New York: Hudson Street Press.
Geschwind, Norman and Albert Galaburda, 1985. "Cerebral Lateralization, Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology: A Hypothesis and a Program for Research, Parts I-III," Archives of Neurology, vol. 42, May 1985, pp. 428- 459; June 1985, pp. 521-552; July 1985, pp. 634-654.
Geschwind, Norman and Albert Galaburda, 1987. Cerebral Lateralization: Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Geschwind, Norman, 1982. "Why Orton Was Right," The Annals of Dyslexia, vol. 32, Orton Dyslexia Society Reprint No. 98.
Mail Online, July 13, 2013. “Dyslexia is Britain’s secret weapon in the spy war.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362793/Dyslexia-Britains-secret-weapon-spy-war-Top-codebreakers-crack-complex-problems-suffer [from dyslexia].
Nicolson, Roderick I., 2015. Positive Dyslexia. Sheffield, UK: Rodin Books.
Tauber, Alfred I. and Scott H. Podolsky. 1997. The Generation of Diversity: Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
West, Thomas G., 1992. "A Future of Reversals: Dyslexic Talents in a World of Computer Visualization," Annals of Dyslexia, vol. 42, pp. 124-139.
West, Thomas G., 1999. “The Abilities of Those with Reading Disabilities: Focusing on the Talents of People with Dyslexia.” Chapter 11, Reading and Attention Disorders: Neurobiological Correlates. Edited by Drake D. Duane, M.D. Baltimore, MD: York Press, Inc.
West, Thomas G., 2004. Thinking Like Einstein: Returning to Our Visual Roots with the Emerging Revolution in Computer Information Visualization. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
West, Thomas G., 2005. “The Gifts of Dyslexia: Talents Among Dyslexics and Their Families,” Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics (New Series), 10, 153-158.
West, Thomas G., 2009. In the Mind’s Eye: Creative Visual Thinkers, Gifted Dyslexics and the Rise of Visual Technologies. Second edition. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (The second edition of In the Mind’s Eye includes a Foreword by the late Oliver Sacks, MD, who said “In the Mind's Eyebrings out the special problems of people with dyslexia, but also their strengths, which are so often overlooked. . . . It stands alongside Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind as a testament to the range of human talent and possibility.”)
West, Thomas G., 2014. “Amazing Shortcomings, Amazing Strengths: Beginning to Understand the Hidden Talents of Dyslexics,” Asia Pacific Journal of Developmental Differences, vol. 1, no. 1, January 2014, pp. 78-89. (A publication of the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS). DAS has initiated a multi-year program “Embrace Dyslexia,” intended to take advantage of the distinctive talents of dyslexic children and adults, as a form of competitive advantage. Long a leader in technology and commerce, Singapore intends to lead the world in this effort as well. In November 2014, Thomas G. West was invited to Singapore to give five talks as part of the kick-off for the “Embrace Dyslexia” program.)
Contact information: Thomas G. West, author of Thinking Like Einstein and In the Mind's Eye (one of the “best of the best” for the year, American Library Association). Research Scholar Study Office 1W-16C, National Library of Medicine, mobile: 202-262-1266. Institutional postal address: Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, Member of the Advisory Board, 4400 University Drive, MS 2A1, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030-4444. Member of the Board of Trustees of Dyslexic Advantage.
Email: thomasgwest@gmail.com or thomasgwest@aol.com.
Blog: http://inthemindseyedyslexicrenaissance.blogspot.com.
Websites: Dyslexic Advantage and Dyslexic Advantage Group on YouTube. New book to be published in 2017: Seeing What Others Cannot See (Prometheus Books).
