Dyslexia And The New Science Of Reading

The first thing Kathryn Nicholas will tell you about her 11-year-old son Jason is that he's a bright, curious kid who can build elaborate machines out of Legos and remember the code names and payloads of bombers. "He has a phenomenal desire to see how things work," she says proudly. But reading, for Jason, was a train wreck. In first grade he was assigned to special-education classes with three mildly retarded children. Two years later, despite extra help, he still couldn't decipher a sentence, and his mother was worried that he would soon become so discouraged that he would give up trying. Then she heard about Virginia Wise Berninger, an educational psychologist at the University of Washington who studies dyslexia, a disorder that makes learning to read extremely difficult. As part of her ongoing research, Berninger tested Jason and then invited him to a summer program for dyslexic boys. The kids didn't just play letter games. They did science experiments, studied biodiversity, met with a geneticist and radiologist from the university-- and learned to read words relating to the science they were studying. Berninger explained that their brains weren't defective, just different. She told them that Einstein had trouble in school, too, until he found one that emphasized individual thinking and discouraged rote memorization. At the end of the program, Jason went up to her and asked earnestly, "Can you help me get into a school like Einstein's?"

Unfortunately, there are no schools like that around the Nicholas home in Kent, Wash. But Jason did make dramatic gains during that summer program in 1997. What's more, he's maintained them. He'll never be a great speller. He still stumbles over new words in a text. But he's an honors student in his sixth-grade class and continues to amaze his mom every day with his creativity. "I look at kids like Jason and think God gave them other things to compensate," says his mother. "They think differently, and come up with creative ideas we've never thought of. They have a gift, even though the world sees it as a disability." Indeed, famous and successful dyslexics include Tom Cruise, artist Robert Rauschenberg and Olympian Dan O'Brien.

Jason is one of the lucky ones--and not just because he's smart and creative. Until recently, dyslexia and other reading problems were a mystery to most teachers and parents. As a result, too many kids passed through school without mastering the printed page. Some were treated as mentally deficient; many were left functionally illiterate, unable to ever meet their potential. But in the last several years, says Yale researcher Sally Shaywitz, "there's been a revolution in what we've learned about reading and dyslexia." Scientists like Shaywitz and Berninger are using a variety of new imaging techniques to watch the brain at work. Their experiments have shown that reading disorders are most likely the result of what is, in effect, faulty wiring in the brain--not laziness, stupidity or a poor home environment. There's also convincing evidence that dyslexia is largely inherited; scientists have identified four chromosomes that may be involved. Dyslexia is now considered a chronic problem for some kids, not just a "phase." Scientists have also discarded another old stereotype, that almost all dyslexics are boys. Studies indicate that many girls are affected as well--and not getting help.

At the same time, educational researchers have come up with innovative teaching strategies for kids who are having trouble learning to read. New screening tests are pinpointing children at risk before they get discouraged by years of frustration and failure. And educators are trying to get the message to parents that they should be on the alert for the first signs of potential problems.

It's an urgent mission. Mass literacy is a relatively new social goal. A hundred years ago people didn't need to be good readers in order to earn a living. But in the Information Age, no one can get by without knowing how to read well and understand increasingly complex material. These skills don't come easily to about 20 percent of kids. Not all of these youngsters are dyslexic. Researchers now think that dyslexia represents the low end of a continuum of reading ability. The teaching strategies that help dyslexics, those most severely disabled, are also helping kids who require only a little extra attention.

These dramatic changes come none too soon. For years people thought dyslexia was rooted in the earliest research. Dyslexia was first described 100 years ago by W. Pringle Morgan, a general practitioner in Sussex, England. In 1896 he published an article in the British Medical Journal about a 14-year-old boy named Percy who was "quick at games and in no way inferior to others of his age"--except that he was unable to read. Because Percy and others like him had problems with written words, not with spoken language, it was assumed that the problem was visual. Dyslexia was turned over to ophthalmologists, who tried to teach dyslexic kids by using outsized letters and words.