I just read this On a site about dyslexia:
Dyslexia makes it very difficult to memorize random facts (like multiplication tables), or to memorize a sequence.
I had ‘remedial’ classes in English and Mathematics while I was at school. The mathematics classes were private lessons that my Dad paid for because he believed his son should be able to recite “times tables”.
I didn’t learn them.
What about the valencies of elements we had to memorise for chemistry so that the socially incompetent Mr Kirk could beat the desk with his fist and shout “prize fathead” at us when we failed to combine sodium and chlorine in appropriate proportions?
I dropped chemistry.
What about bloody french spelling? And gender!
I dropped French after getting 2% and 3% in two consecutive tests.
And I always used to complain that, though I could recall all the places I’d pass on the A47 from Leicester to Lowestoft, I couldn’t put them in order to form directions for someone else to make the journey.
The English classes were arranged in my first year of highschool because the English teachers couldn’t read my handwriting. This class lead to me making friends with the remedial English teacher, who had been bought a Sinclair computer by the school for use in the class, and my O-level Computer Science project turned out to be a reading age assessment program to run on the ZX81.
It the site also said that dislexic people: have extreme difficulty copying from the board.
Due to their poor visual memory for printed words, a child with dyslexia will have to glance up at the board every one or two letters, then look down and stare intently at what they are writing. Their head is constantly going up and down while they are copying, and when they look back up at the board, they may have a hard time figuring out where they left off.
This is the dyslexia story I have told most often and with most sadness. For some reason my junior school insisted on torturing pupils by making us copy the words to twee folk songs, and other notes, from a roller board. The teacher would constantly be asking if he could roll the board up and start on the next panel. I was always the one who was still copying from the top panel. And when I was done, nobody could read what I’d written!
Here’s another one, from the symptopms page:
People with dyslexia are often gifted in math. Their three-dimensional visualization skills help them “see” math concepts more quickly and clearly than non-dyslexic people. Unfortunately, difficulties in directionality, rote memorization, reading, and sequencing can make the following math tasks so difficult that their math gifts are never discovered.
[list of tasks, ending with…]
* Doing math rapidly
They often excel at higher levels of math, such as algebra, geometry, and calculus—if they have a teacher who works around the math problems caused by their dyslexia.
Sounds familiar.
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