Seeing the big picture

For many of the people this article is about, the words will look like gobbledegook, with twisting sentences making little to no sense at all.

And they will be in good and widespread company - one in 10 people are believed to suffer from dyslexia. Members of the club include Walt Disney, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell and Sir Richard Branson.

They also, less auspiciously, include more than half of New Zealand's prison inmates and, by all accounts, a large number of bored, frustrated and ill-performing school students.

The latter of the lists would suggest that dyslexia is a problem and, while that may be the case in a social sense, those who live or work with it agree that it is an educational rather than mental or health issue.

Serious cash is about to be pumped into New Zealand's education system in an effort to help the estimated one in 10 people with dyslexia. For the people who battle persecution, low self-esteem and a class-dunce label, it couldn't be too soon.

Mapua woman Rose Symes-Earle has not just had dyslexia all her life but has spent a lot of time helping others with the problem that she believes can be a great blessing - "Indeed, a nation's blessing" - if it is dealt with properly.

She talks about different types of people.

First there are the left-brain, logical thinkers who clog up bureaucracies and office blocks with "in-the-square-box thinking".

They are contrasted with the right-brain thinkers, the "global or multi-conceptual thinkers", the dyslexics, she says.

"The New Zealand education system is trying to process everybody's thought process into a thought process which is logical, but no inventor within history has ever thought within the square.

"All these people who are dyslexic, they think outside the square - creative people, inventors."

She points to business entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who was told he would end up in jail, or Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb, as two dyslexics who overcame the condition.

Symes-Earle bemoans the decline of apprenticeships in New Zealand.

The problem-solving element of trades tends to suit people with the ability to think outside the square and use their hands, she says.

The loss of such careers can lead people with dyslexia down a path of drugs, alcohol and crime, and has created a "nation of illiterates" because they feel hopeless about their future, says Symes-Earle.

"Too often they end up in jail or needing rehabilitation help, costing the taxpayer twice."

Since 1979, she has battled the system for better, more adaptive education for dyslexics, and has represented New Zealand to speak on dyslexia at a world peace congress.

Now retired, she spends a lot of her time helping and diagnosing dyslexics, all for free.

If people do want to express their thanks, they can buy some of the gift or resource cards she makes. But a donation box is out of the question - she describes herself as "calculus dyslexic", meaning she still has trouble with things such as counting money and the decimal system.

Her education method involves finding "something to re-trigger the curiosity to get the children to learn".

"So I look for any subject - it doesn't matter how diverse it is - to help regain their confidence and determination to succeed and mature into responsible citizens.

"What does matter is I bring in something the child wants to learn.

"At that stage you don't worry about the syntax and grammar. It's about vocabulary and about healing their emotional traumas and overcoming rejection resulting from misunderstanding their difficulties."

Dyslexia is virtually impossible to describe to those who don't have it.

Symes-Earle says it is the ability to see things in a much larger, global context - "multi-conceptual ideas (which are) difficult to hone into square-box logic".

For example, rather than looking at a problem and finding a solution, a dyslexic person will throw it into an all-encompassing context and come up with a better and long-term solution, she says.

A further example of the way dyslexics think can be seen in the art of the Roman Empire, and in the finger-painting Symes-Earle practises - and has covering the walls of her home.

In her art - and some Roman stone etchings - the whole picture can be turned upside down to create a new picture, complete with fresh characters.

From her home above Marahau, Konstanca Friedrich-Palzer has already helped about a dozen dyslexics learn to read and write, using the Davis technique - one of the plethora of dyslexia remedial techniques.

She says dyslexics have problems even at the starting point of conventional education, as they are taught the alphabet from illustrated A, B, C cards.

Whereas a standard pupil might see "G" for goat, accompanied by an illustration of a smiling goat, a dyslexic child will likely take the whole picture into account.

For them the letter "G" will be associated with the yellow handkerchief around the goat's neck, the blue sky behind - the important "G" point of reference gone, replaced by a confusing picture every time the child encounters "G".

"A lot of amazing people around us have these amazing talents," says Friedrich-Palzer. "They have these talents and the same source of the talents is the source of the reading problems."

She began her journey into the dyslexics' world when it became "pretty obvious" one of her five children was having profound trouble with learning, three years into his primary schooling.

The family tried home schooling for a while and, while it was "great fun", her son Philip still didn't learn to read or write.

The family then tried out two separate techniques to sort out his learning problems and, despite intensive training and about $2500, neither worked.

"He was absolutely exhausted afterwards, but no progress."

Philip was 12 when the family discovered the Davis Dyslexia Correction Programme and they saw a dramatic turnaround.

"He did one week and the change we saw in him was absolutely stunning.

"He was certain about the talents he had - he realised he was not dumb.

"Life was just easy from there. After that I thought this was too good to know about and not do something about it."

This case of dyslexia has a Hollywood-style happy ending: Philip, now 15, is an achieving and happy student at Motueka High School.

Friedrich-Palzer has since done a course in teaching the Davis technique and has helped about 12 students, ranging in age from seven to 57, to read and write.

One of her clients - and this shows that even uncorrected dyslexics can achieve - is a successful Tasman millionaire.

Friedrich-Palzer says the Davis method - named after Ron Davis, who invented the technique in the early 1980s to overcome his own severe dyslexia - is startlingly in its simplicity.

"We look at it as a thinking style and that does create a disability when dealing with symbols like letters or numbers," she says.

"Each dyslexic is different in the same way each person is different from another. There are students there who can read or write but can't do maths."

Friedrich-Palzer teaches the Davis technique one-on-one in a course that lasts between 30 and 60 hours, depending on the individual.

The basis of the technique is getting the student to form about 220 "trigger" words into three-dimensional clay forms. This helps them to associate the word with something they have personally made and is a correct mental image for a word - not a confusing one such as a goat with a yellow collar.

According to one Davis technique website: "This procedure draws on the unique learning style that picture-thinkers possess - experience and creativity - "we know it because we made it".

Artist Jude Hivon is one of Friedrich-Palzer's students. She says her life has been turned around by the Davis technique.

Even though the 57-year-old didn't realise she was dyslexic until she was 41, and faced various types of abuse as a result, she says she is glad to be dyslexic.

"I have had a very interesting life and dyslexia has given me abilities to be creative in lots of ways and that's my lifeblood."

Hivon says she was accepted into the Elam art school, and also started a degree in architecture, fine arts and civil engineering, but family reasons meant she had to stop.

She also tried other techniques of dealing with her dyslexia and, while not wanting to dissuade anyone from trying alternative methods, swears by the Davis prescription as a way for "picture-thinkers to access the non-picture-thinking world".

"I was amazed at how that changed my perception in lots of things - not just to do with reading and writing."

Furthermore, it actually helped her come to terms with how the "non-picture-thinking" world had been confused with her way of doing things.

"Dyslexia wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the world was dyslexic."

Social interaction has became better, tasks that took three hours now take just one.

Tasman homeopath Linda Peat knows a lot about the self-esteem issues associated with dyslexia - it only became apparent about a year ago that her 13-year-old daughter Samantha is dyslexic.

Before that, Samantha lacked self-confidence, was depressed, anxious, "basically illiterate" and having nightmares.

Doctors and teachers had put her slow learning down to a childhood illness, says Peat, but since Samantha's dyslexia was recognised and she started the Davis programme, the symptoms have been reversed. Samantha is now in her final year at Tasman Primary School and looking forward to going to Motueka High School next year.

Dyslexia Foundation of New Zealand chairman of trustees Guy Pope-Mayell says between 4 and 7 percent of people are severely dyslexic, with up to 20 percent having it to some degree.

Ten percent is a good working number, he says.

It was only in April this year that the Government and education system started to recognise it as an educational, rather than health, issue, he says.

"Self-esteem is the real disability issue."

This is a point that came up again and again in interviews - that self-perception suffers as dyslexics try to figure out why they are unable to learn conventionally.

"New Zealand is in a position to make some fundamental changes and that's very much the agenda the Dyslexia Foundation has with the Ministry of Education, says Pope-Mayell.

"Last year the rest of the Western world was ahead of us, but they always talk about it as a disability, meaning it competes for funding with other disabilities.

"It's going to come out worse off."

With recent changes that were being hammered out this week, Education Minister Chris Carter is expected to anounce next week a "substantial" increase in funding for dyslexia in education.

It follows on from moves that have been flowing from the ministry all year, a "whole range of initiatives", says its deputy secretary Anne Jackson.

These include greater support for schools, research and analysis, and literacy initiatives.

The ministry's curriculum, teaching and learning design group manager Mary Chamberlain says it has completed a review of international research into dyslexia and was using that to re-focus.

"This is relatively new territory for education agencies internationally. We are focusing on ensuring our work to address dyslexia is based on robust research and evidence, and we're working closely in this field," she says.

That's good news, says Henley School principal Chris Ryan.

"We have got children with difficulties but the difficulty is trying to get it diagnosed."

The Government's recognition and moves towards greater funding mean the schools will have guidelines to recognise dyslexia and ways of dealing with it.

Nayland College special educational needs coordinator Kerry Budge moved to New Zealand from the United Kingdom, where she had specialised in educating dyslexics, five years ago and says she was "absolutely blown away" at her new home's lack of resources.

Nayland College got a dyslexia programme under way about four years ago to give dyslexic students appropriate education and exam conditions.

The innovation, which is funded with the school's budget, had heightened teachers' awareness and attracted more dyslexics to the school, which was probably the most pro-active in the district, she says.

The Government's eventual recognition of dyslexia as an educational issue this year is long overdue and, while a "fantastic first step", it still goes nowhere near far enough.

She estimates at least one in 10 students in the school are dyslexic, to varying degrees and, of those, 70 to 80 percent had been diagnosed prior to getting to the college.

There were a number of different therapies for dyslexia.

"There's been a bit of a push with the Davis therapy," she says.

"It's just got a foot in the door and it's doing really well for some dyslexics but it doesn't suit all dyslexics."

 

 

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