What do you do with "untidy handwriting"?

Caption: handwriting sample of a boy, Xin, 8 years.

A friend's son, Xin was referred to me, for his various learning difficulties. He had problems remembering stuff, he barely scored above three out of ten in spelling, he was poor in Maths. He was also misbehaving in class.

In trying to help him, his parents put him in tuition and enrichment classes four times a week. Those didn't help. What's worse, his little pride was taking a beating and it was costing his self-esteem. (Not to mention the thousand-odd dollars a month spent on course fees.)

Yet, Xin was articulate and seemed reasonably intelligent for his age when I chatted wiPublish Postth him.

One of the complains was his 'untidy handwriting'. His handwriting was a little 'awkward' for his age. A look at his handwriting told me that he was probably dyslexic.

So I referred him for a cognitive assessment. Two months later, the psychologist's report came back affirming my suspicious. With that report, we could explain his condition to the school, the Ministry of Education and the people involved in his education and learning. Most important, we could follow up and implement an effective program tailored to help him. :-)

What do you do with “untidy handwriting” or “poor spelling”?

My parents used to get complains from my teachers about my handwriting and poor spelling.

In those days, I used to get punished for it each time they complained. And punishment usually came, not once, but twice: once by the teachers in school, and once by my parents at home. At times, those cane and ruler marks on the hands and legs would serve as reminders to produce neater handwriting the following days, or so they hoped.

It was a painful learning process. I couldn't spell many words till my university days. In my high school days, the humiliation did bring vivid images of life's ending across my mind.

Naturally, I was elated and extremely thankful then for the spell checker on the computer in uni. (Here's to you, good ol' Steve Jobs!)

Now, from research and practice, we know more about the causes of these 'problems'. When we know the cause, we can  find the solution. Many of the treatments today are much more effective, and most important of all – much less painful. My regret is that these were not known earlier and spared me the agony.

My mission now is to spread these knowledge and treatment to as many people as possible – children and adults – to spare them agony and vindicate them from the pain of their learning difficulties. 

Learning Difficulties

Speaker: Mr Pang Kong Eng
Date: 25th Feb 2011
Time: 7-9pm
Venue: International Plaza, 10 Anson Road

Here are some of the video clips I captured during the talk. They  are not fantastic quality as we took them using still image cameras and my iPhone4. We are looking for volunteer videographers who can help us produce better videos for all to watch and learn from.

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This is a reading exercise in which the letters are systematically coded as an illustration.

In a everyday reading, we have to decode the letters that we read. Then, we make sense of what we read. There is a lot of processing required in the brains and the rest of the body. However, most of these processes are low-level processing, like walking or munching. For accomplished readers, this happens automatically and becomes a transparent process.

A dyslexic person would have difficulty doing that decoding. When you are trying to figure out the cryptic text, what you experience gives a glimpse to what a dyslexic person deals with each time s/he reads.

Moreover, reading ability has as little to do with intelligence as colour-blindness does. You can't read a text doesn't mean that you are stupid. You know that, but the rest of the world doesn't, and treats you like you are. Such is the frustration that dyslexics are going through as you read these lines.

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Quiz:
Kpio boe Nbsz cpui qfut. Kpio ibt b eph.
boe Nbsz ibt b eph.
R: Xip ibt dbu bt qfu?
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hint:b=a, o=n, e=d
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This is what happens, having to decode what you read everytime.
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This is a comic relief, but also an illustration of how some people are not quite capable of contextual reasoning.
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This is about people with weak or overly flexible joints...
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This clip speaks about the effects of squabbling parents have on children's ability to learn.
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MORE LATER... STILL A VERY PRIMITIVE BLOG POST.

Changing Education Paradigms

I agree with his point that we need to reform education due to economic and cultural reasons. I also agree that we need to relook the way we classify human capacity into “academic vs non-academic” and the myth of the “abstract – theoretical – vocational” conception.

Definitely, education should cater to different individuals. But this is not new. About 2,500 years ago, Confucius in China already propounded to “teach according to the material/talent (witty pun too).”

It is true that current public education marginalizes millions of children. While he seem to suggest that all those millions are children with ADHD conditions, I’d like to add that those labeled ADHD are just some of those marginalized, but not the only one. There are others like those with conditions of Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Autistic spectrum, etc.

There may be some cases of ADHD where drugs may not be the best solution, and may be overused. However, in extreme cases, it is necessary for the safety of others. In have come across several children with severe ADHD coupled with violent tendencies that they actually posed a safety hazard to people around them (children and adults alike) on a daily basis. It was only on days they were sedated that the other children felt safe from harm. Fortunately, most cases of ADHD were not like that.

In his presentation, Ken Robinson appear to tacitly privilege divergent thinking and creativity over other capacities. Divergent thinking and creativity per se, without balance from other capacities may not be very helpful. There are also other capacities like the ability to focus, and act, that are also important for work to get done. Thus the value of convergent thinking and deductive reasoning still have their places for survival and daily living.

In the experiment he quoted on the genius in divergent thinking, he noted that divergent thinking seem to deteriorate with age. He attributed the deterioration to education. However, without proof cited, that is just a speculation.

We know from research that influences on the individual from the mass media and peers are just as strong, if not much stronger, than education institutions. Moreover, brain studies show that there are developmental phases in our physiology that our brain cells and their connections go through pruning – a process of cutting down the very connections that is linked to divergent thinking. Perhaps the causes of deterioration in divergent thinking lay elsewhere?

Ken Robinson seemed to contradict himself towards the end. e.g. he mentioned some individuals study best in solitude, some in small groups, some etc... yet, in his closing remark he mentioned that most learning happen in groups.

This may or may not be the case, for we know some of the most important and profound insights were done in solitude. Especially knowledge of intellect and of emotions. wisdom...which is more than both. Jesus spent years in the wilderness. Buddha attained his enlightenment in solitude meditation under the Bodhi tree.

Moreover, learning in groups may be heaven for some of the ADHDs, but it would be a torture chamber for those on the autistic spectrum, or other individuals who just learn best in solitude.

In that case, was he not just imposing another set of ideas onto what is?