Don Potter on whole-word induced dyslexia historic literature: Sam Blumenfeld, Samuel Orton (1929), Rudolf Flesch (1955)

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Don Potter on whole-word induced dyslexia historic literature: Sam Blumenfeld, Samuel Orton (1929), Rudolf Flesch (1955)

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

IFERI committee member, Bob Sweet, flagged up this very important, historic summary compiled by Don Potter via the DDOLL network:

http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/dyslexia-s ... isease.pdf
Dyslexia: The Disease You Get in School

By Mr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Dyslexia is an exotic word, concocted from the Greek dys, meaning ill or bad, and lexia, meaning words. It was invented to describe a condition that affects many normal and intellectual youngsters who, for some reason that seems to baf- fle most educators, parents, and physicians, can’t learn to read.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Don Potter flags up important historic literature: Sam Blumenfeld, Samuel Orton (1929), Rudolf Flesch (1955)

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Bob also brought together historic summaries from one of his 'treasured' volumes in response to a suggestion to drop the word 'phonics' so as not alienate teachers and academics who are opposed to phonics. Bob wrote:
There are those here in the U.S. who have suggested we eliminate the word “phonics” because it is such a pejorative to many in the whole language community. If the color “red” became offensive to many would we consider changing the name of “red” to “blue?” And, if they did, would it change what the color “red” really is? I think not. Phonics is a common term that refers to the teaching of the letter/sound system in English spelling. The challenge, it seems to me, is for those of us who have influence in schools of higher education to have the courage to call out those who still refuse to prepare our teachers with the “tools” to teach all children to read proficiently.

Here is the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language definition of “phonology:” “A treatise on sounds, or the science or doctrine of the elementary sounds uttered by the human voice in speech, including its various distinctions or subdivisions of tones.” Phonics: “The doctrine or science of sounds; otherwise called acoustics.”

Phonics is what it is. No need to avoid it, or to delete it. We should embrace it, and educate those who refuse to accept what it is, and why it is so critical to teaching our children to read.

This evening I have been reading through one of my “treasured” volumes: "The Complete Handbook of Children’s Reading Disorders” authored by Hilde L. Mosse, M.D. in 1982. It was published by Human Sciences Press, Inc., NY,NY. I read this book long before the “big five, or six,” was in common use.

Here are some of the quotes from Volume I of this two volume set:

(p. 31) Testing Letter, Number, word Recognition.

“For this purpose I have made a list of functions so that a reading disorder can be made. This list is based entirely on the clinical method, and was developed while testing and retesting hundreds of children with or without a reading disorder.

Recognize letters and numbers when he sees them as letters or numbers;
Sound our letters;
Name letters;
Find letters when someone else says their names or makes their sound;
Recognize a group of letters as a word and read it out loud;
Understand the word;
Read the word silently;
Spell a word orally;
Keep his eyes on the line while reading and perform the return sweep to the beginning of the net line core toy, without skipping lines;
Copy letters and words;
Write letters and words to dictation;
Write letters and words spontaneously.

(p. 43) “The Organic Basis of Reading Disorders”

“For decades the dominant theoretical trend was psychologic, but this changed to a general organic orientation. The medical term “Dyslexia’ has become fashionable among psychologists and educators. Dyslexia, translated from its Greek and Latin origin, means only reading difficulty; it does not refer to any causation. This term has nevertheless come to be widely used in describing organic reading disorders; it is even more widely misused to excuse the failure of the schools to teach reading properly. For if all reading failures are ‘organic,' teachers cannot be held responsible of them.”

(p. 54) “The Developmental Lag Theory”

“A child is born with the capacity to learn reading and writing, just as he has the capacity to learn to drive a car, or pilot a plane. These capacities do not develop spontaneously like speech, but rather depend on specific instructions. Some children learn to read so fast and at such an early age, sometimes before they go to school, the it seems to be a ‘natural’ development like talking. These children never the less went through a learning process, picking up the necessary information with such speed and ease that neither they themselves nor their parents noticed when and how they learned to read. They figures out the necessary techniques largely on their own and guessed a lot. However, they still need specific instruction to write, spell, and read above the level of simple children's books.”


(p. 89-90) "The complexity of the cerebral reading apparatus means that is it vulnerable, but it also means that innumerable avenues are available to replace a lost function or compensate for it in other ways. In order to find these avenues, we must have an exact, step-by-step knowledge of how this apparatus works. Only then can we devise corrective and preventive measures that have a chance of succeeding.

"The 11 Reading Acts”

Seeing and recognizing the lines seen as a letter;
Sounding the letter;
Finding the letter when someone else sounds it;
Naming letters;
Finding letters hen they are named;
Recognizing a group of letters as a unit, that is, a word;Th
Blending the sounds of this group of letters, reading the word aloud;
Understanding the word;
Silent reading;
Spelling;
Linear reading.

Note: Dr. Mosse explains each of the above items in detail in the following pages. Too much to type out here.

(p. 120-121) The conventional curriculum prescribes that phonetics may only be taught after a child has acquired a “sight vocabulary” of about 70 to 100 words, usually during the fist grade, sometimes as late as the beginning of the second grade. At first only the beginning consonant is taught, other components follow. Vowels are not taught at all. The child is supposed to fill them in when he has succeeded in guessing what the word may be. In this way most children never learn to read or spell correctly, independently, and with a feeling of security. That is why so many high school students cannot distinguish the word ‘beautiful’ from the word ‘because’ for instance. They have learned only the beginning sound and never really understood how a word comes about. Sight word teaching unfortunately persists even in so-called code emphasis methods, a term used by educators to replace, and in this way to avoid the word “phonetics.” For instance, a textbook of reading instruction that stresses “decoding” recommends ‘sight-reading words in isolation” and “passage reading by sight’ in a sample lesson for ‘the beginning reading stage” (Carnine & Silbert, 1979, p 176) All ‘code emphasis’ methods should therefore be carefully evaluated to be sure that they really eliminate all harmful aspects of whole-word teaching…but teachers themselves do not learn phonetics anymore and therefore cannot teach it."

(p. 138) Teaching Methods Enhancing Linear Reading.

"Foremost among methods that enhance linear reading is phonetic teaching. Children who have been taught from the first grade (with foundations laid in kindergarten when most children enjoy playing around with different sounds) to sound out words approach reading differently. They do not need picture clues. They sound out each word as they see it and in this way remain on the line. From the very first they know no other method but linear reading. They acquire a feeling of self-reliance and security sooner because they can make out words they have never seen before and thus read on their own. They can then be taught easily to read whole words at a time, to increase their recognition span, and to read faster.”

I’m sure this is more than most want to read….but I think we need to remain focused on “prevention.” We really DO have the answers to the reading deficit. It is early, intensive, systematic, sequential instruction beginning in kindergarten about how the English spelling system works. It really is logical, although it is more complex because of the words that come from other languages that are now part of the English lexicon.

I will close with a link to an article that someone asked about…it is one written by Dr. Samuel Orton in 1929. I hope this is the one you were looking for:

http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/dyslexia-s ... isease.pdf
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Don Potter flags up important historic literature: Sam Blumenfeld, Samuel Orton (1929), Rudolf Flesch (1955)

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

http://www.iferi.org/wp-content/uploads ... rticle.pdf
Can Dyslexia Be Artificially Induced in School? Yes, Says Researcher Edward Miller

by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

March 1992
Ever since The New Illiterates was published back in 1973 we have known that the chief, and perhaps only cause of dyslexia among school children has been and still is the look-say, whole- word, or sight method of teaching reading. In that book I revealed the fact that the sight method was invented back in the 1830s by the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, the director of the American Asylum at Hartford for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. He had been using a sight, or whole-word method in teaching the deaf to read, by juxtaposing a word, such as cat, with the picture of a cat. And because the deaf were able to identify many simple words in this way, Gallaudet thought that the method could be adapted for use by normal children.
Gallaudet, who believed that education was a science and could be improved by scientific experimentation, gave a detailed description of his new method in the American Annals of Education of August 1830. It consisted of teaching the child to recognize a total of 50 sight words written on cards “without any reference to the individual letters which composed the word.” After the child had memorized the words on the basis of their configurations alone, the letters of each word were taught. The final step was to teach the letters in alphabetical order.

In 1836 Gallaudet published The Mother's Primer based on his look-say methodology. Its first line was: "Frank had a dog; his name was Spot." In 1837 the primer was adopted by the Boston Primary School Committee. Horace Mann was then Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts, and he favored the method. The educational reformers of the time were against anything that smacked of old orthodox practices, and they considered intensive, systematic phonics to be one of them. The American Annals of Education, representing the progressive views of the time, provided a ready platform for the critics of the alphabetic-phonics method. One could find such opinions as the following in its pages:

He [the child] should read his lessons as if the words were Chinese symbols, without paying any attention to the individual letters, but with special regard to the meaning.... This method needs neither recommendation nor defense, with those who have tried it: and were it adopted, we should soon get rid of the stupid and uninteresting mode now prevalent. (Oct. 1832, p. 479)
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