Book Review: Dyslexia over the lifespan; a fifty-five year longitudinal study. Margaret B. Rawson. Cambridge, Mass.: Educators Publishing Service (Paperback)
✍ Scribed by Elaine Miles
- Book ID
- 101282067
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 25 KB
- Volume
- 3
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1076-9242
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
is unquestionably the guru on the subject of dyslexia teaching. She began her involvement with specific developmental language disabilities (dyslexia) 60 years ago, no less, and has just published this latest book shortly before her 96th birthday. Her first pupil, to whom this book is dedicated, was diagnosed by Orton himself; she knew Anna Gillingham, and she used the Gillingham-Stillman approach to teaching from its early days.
In Britain we particularly know her for the pithy aphorisms in which she summed up for us the essentials of dyslexia teaching. Such teaching was to be 'structured, sequential, cumulative, thorough, and multisensory'. She exhorted the teacher to 'teach the language as it is to the child as he is' (she was never rigid in her approach) and to 'go as fast as you can, but as slowly as you must'. That pretty well says it all. The reader can find more wise observations in these pages.
However it is not her lifespan which is under consideration here, but the life-span, or 55 years of it, of 56 boys from 44 families whom she knew at The School in Rose Valley in Pennsylvania in the 1930s and 1940s. Having placed them on a 'Language Learning Facility Scale' in rank order, she followed them in a longitudinal study, and was able to compare the careers and achievements of the linguistically impaired versus the linguistically able in a book published in 1968*. The present book is a follow-up adding 4 new chapters.
The 56 boys were of similar backgrounds, from small stable families 'for the most part white, American, Protestant, professionally oriented, highly-educated, intelligent, intellectual, upper middle-class, financially solvent, unconventional, and individualistic' (p. 109).
The school itself was an independent school for boys and girls started by a group of educationally progressive parents (including Mrs Rawson) who were closely involved with its development. Realizing the potential of all its pupils was central to its philosophy, and special teaching help was available for any child who needed it, for anything from one to four years, particularly in reading and spelling and handwriting, occasionally in mathematics.
The dyslexics among the group, with such home backing, with a diagnosis of dyslexia made when they were between 6 and 12 years of age, and with such high-quality specialist teaching available, were able, even those most severely affected, to succeed ultimately in their careers and achievements equally with the most linguistically able. This the author is able to demonstrate fully in her study. Such a detailed and extended investigation is never likely to be repeated. The result is heartening news for all concerned with dyslexics. The evidence for this is to be found largely in Chapter IV. Many of the boys still had some residual spelling problems and may have taken a little longer to achieve success.
The author investigates exhaustively the life-histories of all these pupils, their birth order and family background, their literacy levels on leaving school and later, their subsequent education with any interruptions for military or alternative service, the socio-economic status of the boys (and of their fathers), and their careers and interests. Because she knows them and we do not, the details are a bit overwhelming and the occasional cross-references to the same boy in different parts of the book are confusing without names to identify them. She does attach some pseudonyms at last in the new chapters. The reader has to be prepared like the author to think 'an overall appraisal of each student . . . more relevant than reliance on quantitative criterion scores alone' (p. 4).
However some interesting extra findings emerge from all this detail. The only engineer was not dyslexic; there was no architect in either group, and the two most artistic boys, who were relatively inarticulate verbally and preferred to express themselves through art or music, were not dyslexic. One of the artists 'had no difficulty with reading, spelling, foreign languages or the abstract symbols of mathematics (p. 44). No distinguishing bias towards particular careers is to be found for the dyslexics as against the linguistically able.