In China, there is no official data about the incidence of dyslexia, only a sample survey in academic papers: data from Taiwan Province Province show that the average incidence of Chinese dyslexia is 7.9%, while a survey of school-age children in Beijing shows that the incidence is about 5%-8%.
"If there are 30 students in each class, there are more than two students in each class on average? 」
An expert who participated in the investigation confirmed my guess. This reminds me that when I was a child, there were always two or three children in my class who didn't like reading. Some are rated as smart but don't like reading; Others are arranged directly in the last row of the classroom and ignored.
That's one of my junior high school classmates. Never raise your hand to answer questions in class, with black sleeves and long nose. All subjects are very poor, and the only meaning of existence is to be caught by the literary and art Committee to play the blackboard for the class. Yes, he is good at drawing all kinds of lace, and can also draw all kinds of beautiful women with chalk. No one knows where he learned it. Not surprisingly, he failed to get into high school. I don't know whether he is one of the 7.9% or what he does for a living now. Can he still draw?
I can't find such people's voices on the Internet. Think about it, most of these children have found jobs on the construction site after barely completing nine-year compulsory education, and their lives can finally stop having anything to do with reading and writing. A doctor told me, "These children, they won't make any noise." 」
A very small number of dyslexics who speak online generally have overseas study experience. Dyslexia is a well-known concept in western society. There, early identification and intervention of dyslexia are deeply rooted in people's hearts.
A schoolmaster who had been scolded by his teacher and finally got a doctorate complained that in the United States, his tutor advised him to take the exam-"You are too wrong, beyond the normal range." As a result, he was found to have dyslexia. Looking back on his childhood, he said that in the exam, his average error rate was around 10% because of reading disorder, and his efforts were reduced to 5%, but his life could not be lower. "I always thought that everyone was like this, and later found that only I was like this. 」
I try to understand how dyslexics feel when reading.
"Words are dancing. Is it like reading a newspaper on a bumpy tricycle? 」
"Maybe. 」
What about "reading is like sinking into the deep sea", "I get a headache after reading for a while" and "I get tired easily"
"Imagine you are reading an original Shakespeare," I was reminded.
Through researchers, or on the Internet, I searched everywhere, hoping to find organizations of dyslexic patients, or contact groups composed of anxious parents-parents love to hold groups to keep warm.
However, this search is almost fruitless. "When we talk about our children with our parents, we are always cautious," a doctor of psychology who screened children with dyslexia told me. Parents' attitudes are very contradictory. On the one hand, they are eager for ways to help them change the status quo; On the other hand, they don't want their children to be labeled as dyslexic.
In an active post bar, I found the phone number of a dyslexia intervention institution. When I called, the other party told me, "Welcome to the free test, we have advanced methods imported from the United States" (and professionals told me that there are many differences between dyslexia under hieroglyphics and dyslexia under Pinyin, and it is very difficult to directly apply the letter training method to children with Chinese dyslexia).
What are the parents of these dyslexic children like?
Shu Hua told me, "Many parents are in pain, and many people almost give up. Those children can't learn at school at all, and teachers can't do anything about them. The children themselves, at first, may only be poor in Chinese literature, and later they will learn badly, even in sports. The whole mood, state, personality, and the way of communicating with people have changed, and they are always looked down upon. 」
Shu Hua is a researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning of Beijing Normal University. When she first came into contact with the study of dyslexia, the misconception that Chinese characters have no dyslexia was still popular. At that time, researchers were arguing: are Chinese characters "easy to learn and easy to use, difficult to learn and easy to use, or difficult to learn and use?" ? 」
On the Internet, most personal stories about dyslexia are children's memories of loneliness and helplessness when they grow up. Their general labels are: "carelessness", "not studying hard", "bad brain" and "born unable to learn"
In all these stories, I can hardly find parents' attention to their children with dyslexia, let alone all kinds of inspirational or loving diary stories. Among a bunch of stories about Tucao school and family background, Dr. Pi's story is particularly prominent. This is a story about how a mother helped her children overcome dyslexia. As most relevant researchers and doctors told me, there is almost no policy help and professional institutions in China at present. "Children with dyslexia can only get rid of it through their mothers."
Have you ever seen a child who can draw an anatomical map of organs before 10?
At the beginning of the story, Dr. Pi said: "There are always some people who exist to set off the intelligence of the children next door. That's probably what I mean. I was illiterate until I was 8 years old. I can't even write my own name. I just draw. 」
In the primary school art class, the son of the gynecologist carefully drew his most familiar "labia" for the art teacher-his mother's gynecological picture book, which he read best. The child was denounced as a hooligan, the teacher complained to his mother, and the mother went home and asked the child, what else can you draw? The child picked up the pen and drew from the female reproductive system to the bones and muscles.
Probably from that time on, the mother made up her mind to let her son go to college and become a doctor. Since then, whenever the child's teacher tells the mother that there is something wrong with the child's intelligence, the "strict" mother will answer: "My son is very clever. Have you ever seen a child who can draw an anatomical map of organs before 10? Only my son! If you can't teach, we will teach ourselves. 」
Mother makes up lessons for her children to learn pinyin. Because it is difficult to concentrate, after studying for more than ten minutes, the child will run outside for a while and then come back to continue. It took the child half a year's night to finally learn pinyin. Because the memory of words is really poor, the child thinks that "reciting the text is as deadly as cutting my flesh with a blunt knife", so the mother created her own method of drawing textbooks into pictures. So that children can remember the outline of the textbook when they see the picture. "Everything I remember in middle school was painted by my mother, because I only remember pictures." With the ability of graphical textbooks, he was admitted to medical university and became a doctor.
Many years later, the child who has become a dermatologist met a psychologist. He raised his own confusion: "Am I mentally retarded? Why is reading like being executed for me? " ? The doctor told him that his symptoms met the clinical definition of developmental dyslexia.
This diagnosis was condensed into an illustration by Dr. Pi in his public title "Skin and Sex". In the picture, there is a dancing villain, and the bold words next to it say, "Since I learned that I was sick, the whole person has relaxed a lot."
The truth of reading
According to professional explanations, developmental dyslexia is mostly manifested in the difficulty of recognizing and remembering words. The words you just learned are forgotten immediately, and the words you have read are difficult to understand. Often accompanied by hyperactivity, inattention, difficulty in distinguishing distance and direction, poor memory and other symptoms.
In Proust and Squid, Wolff, a professor of psychology at Tufts University and the mother of a dyslexic boy, mentioned the story of a dyslexic boy all over the world: "A clever boy, assuming he is a boy, is full of energy and enthusiasm when he enters school. He studies reading as hard as other children, but unlike other children, he seems unable to learn to read. His parents told him to work harder. The teacher said he "didn't reach his potential", while other children called him "mentally retarded" or "stupid". She said that people with dyslexia are tough and extremely weak. " If a child fails for several years, he is often afraid of life. No matter how many awards he won or how many cars and planes he owned as an adult, he still couldn't really identify himself. Childhood nightmares are really too long. 」
I asked a doctoral student in a related laboratory, "Does your laboratory study dyslexia?" The other party said to me, "Actually, we study reading. 」
Stripping away all cultural connotations, like language and gestures, reading and writing are also a way of information exchange in the process of human evolution. This way appeared relatively late, so that there is no special area in the brain that matures naturally with age.
The reading process is very complicated. Visual signals are first recognized, decoded and converted into sound information. This information is then transmitted to a language-related brain region, called the Bullokar region, for interpretation.
When reading, we are actually mobilizing all the reserved knowledge and applying it to the text that our eyes read. When a skilled reader reads, special areas in the brain run at a very high speed and can be automated. Observing the brain imaging images of children when reading, we will find that their brain activation is not as concentrated as that of adults.
Proust said a wonderful thing about the complex movement of the brain. He said: "Reading is a miracle of communication, and it is still satisfying when it is completely lonely. 」
In the era of the Three Heroes in Greece, Socrates strongly opposed people to use words at will without guidance; Plato faithfully recorded the teacher's words in words; And young Aristotle developed the habit of reading very early. Socrates opposed reading. He believes that although reading greatly improves the collective memory of culture, the price paid is the reduction of individual memory. Do we take notes to remember something or not to remember something?
Today's researchers, such as Wolff, emphasize that "reading not only reflects the potential of the brain beyond the original design structure, but also reflects the potential of the reader beyond the text or the content given by the author." This may also be the main reason why readers always complain that the remake of the book is not as good as the original.
However, all this is difficult for dyslexics to understand. This means that if you have dyslexia, you will not be able to experience real war and peace except studying.
A country that doesn't need to study
Dyslexia is related to many genes. Its pathogenesis has both genetic and environmental reasons. Reading itself is an activity closely related to the whole social ecology.
There is a junior high school Chinese simulation question online, which allows children to express their feelings on two kinds of materials.
Material 1 said: Shu Hua, a researcher at Beijing Normal University, said: Many children's learning problems are caused by reading problems. Many children with normal intelligence have different degrees of reading difficulties, which have seriously developed into dyslexia. Reading difficulties will not only make it difficult for children to learn Chinese, but also affect the study of other subjects. Material 2 says: With the rapid popularization of audio-visual products, "reading pictures" has gradually become an important form for minors to acquire knowledge; According to the media survey, a considerable number of middle school students use movies and cartoons instead of famous books, and many children have become dependent on images, gradually reducing or even losing their interest in text reading. Excessive image intake leads to a sharp decline in language expression ability.
I used this material to consult a girl who studies dyslexia. She told me that according to a research report covering 2,800 children in China published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2065,438+02 by Professor li-hai tan of the Department of Neurolinguistics of the University of Hong Kong, children's reading level did decline, but the reason was the use of pinyin input method and the decrease of writing, not looking at pictures.
On the other hand, children's reading level is closely related to their family environment. In the past few decades, there have been many studies on children's reading ability, language environment in the family, and even family economic situation. When a child is three years old, what his parents discuss at the dinner table and the vocabulary they use will have a great influence on his reading ability in the second grade.
An eight-year follow-up study published by Shu Hua's research group in June this year shows that the early family language environment can only explain 20%-34% of the difference in literacy ability of five-year-old children, which is an exciting result. As long as our school pays attention to reading, school education may make up for the backward language ability caused by the family language environment.
Western scholars use a set of exquisite tools to divide reading into decoding reading, fluent reading and other reading stages. Children who only read "a little slowly" are considered as "processing speed" reading obstacles, and it is difficult for them to reach the level of fluent reading, so they need special help.
In Wolff's book, about 40% of American children are stuck on the eve of fluent reading. Some of them also need intervention. In the book, she mentioned an example: for a child who was considered by the school teacher to be "good at reading, but a little slow", Wolf's colleagues commented after the formal test that "such a child has never been tested, and it takes so long to know letters and read words, and the gap between intelligence and his reading test scores is quite amazing".
And will Chinese reading distinguish these stages? "No, we don't have a branch," the researcher answered me.
Reading stimulates the brain, allowing you to mobilize all your knowledge and experience to reconstruct the world built by words and make your brain think deeper and deeper. And those illiterate children are like "small squid that can't swim". We must teach them to swim, even if they are not fast or good at swimming.
In Europe and America, protecting these children with dyslexia and helping them appreciate the fun of reading have long been written into the law.
According to the regulations, children with dyslexia can enjoy free unbiased assessment and free special education services. These include:
Regular guidance by professional doctors;
It takes longer than normal children to take the exam, and you can even send someone to help you read the questions;
For children with dyslexia, the atmosphere of the whole society is to pay attention to and help, not to laugh or give up. There are screening systems everywhere, ready to help.
In this once "word-oriented" country, from the education system dominated by Olympics and English to the whole society with pigs floating in the air, that kind of in-depth thinking has become an extravagant hope. Our reading experience is getting less and less, and our demand for reading seems to be getting less and less.
Therefore, we didn't think of trying to teach children to read. In China, there are few intervention institutions and almost no standardized intervention methods.
Professor Shu Hua told me that at present, it is embarrassing for parents to diagnose dyslexia. They hope to find the cause of the problem (poor grades) and try to solve it. But the result is often that the reason is found, but due to various constraints-including parents, funds, professionals-the children have not been effectively helped.
Why can the squid that can't swim fast survive?
Without coping methods, dyslexia brings "giving up" to children. First the teacher gave up, then the parents gave up. Finally, the child gave up and accepted that he was a "stupid" and "not serious" poor student.
One of the most utilitarian reasons for not giving up these children may be that the brains of dyslexics are different from ordinary people and have unique advantages while causing dyslexia-this speculation may be reasonable. Imagine why the squid that can't swim fast can survive.
In "Impossible World", escher made many fountains, stairs and buildings that were common at first glance, but could never happen after careful consideration. A research team at the University of Wisconsin once asked a group of people to distinguish between "impossible" three-dimensional images and reasonable images. They were surprised to find that some people can recognize these images much faster than the average person. Moreover, among these people who can quickly discover the "impossible world", dyslexia accounts for a considerable proportion.
A research team at Harvard University found that college students diagnosed with dyslexia and ordinary students served as the control group. Both groups need to remember some blurred images similar to X-rays ―― this feature is very useful in science and medicine. Dyslexia group once again showed advantages in this visual task.
In the documentary "Dyslexia" filmed by NHK, they invited an architect who can imagine the subtle spatial configuration with only one turn with his bare hands, and a scientist who is extremely good at deducing flesh-and-blood dinosaurs from dinosaur fossils. The documentary concludes that most dyslexics have extraordinary spatial imagination.
Jobs mentioned in his biography that he was troubled by dyslexia when he was a child. According to some surviving data, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and others were also troubled by dyslexia when they were children. On the website of the research center for dyslexia and creativity of Yale University in the United States, a large number of living celebrities who are troubled by dyslexia are listed. Besides artists, doctors and scientists, there are five lawyers and 1 1 journalists and writers.
Based on these facts, some people even boldly speculate that because they are more sensitive to graphics and spatial dimensions, in the future digital age, people with dyslexia may be easier to adapt to information with sound, light and electricity as carriers than ordinary people who are suitable for writing information.
However, "the most difficult stage for these children is primary school", Professor Shu Hua said: "If we can help them through this stage-that is, let them follow everyone, without asking too much, but they can make do-they will find their own tricks and strategies to deal with this problem when they get to middle school, especially high school and university. At this point, their specialty, painting or eloquence, can play a role. 」
Professor Shu Hua talked about a child she met. He could not continue his studies in a public school in Beijing, but went to an international school. The child's mother carefully helped him go to middle school to keep him confident.
"The child's oral expression ability is very good. He went to Canada in high school. There, the child with dyslexia but good at oral communication is like a duck to water. A specially equipped psychological teacher meets with him every week to communicate and help. There are widely spaced books for people with dyslexia, rich audio books and corresponding software to help them improve their spelling ability. In addition, he can also enjoy some homework exemptions and extend the examination time. "
At present, this child has applied to Northwestern University near Chicago, and he often contacts Professor Shu Hua's laboratory, hoping to help dyslexic children in China after graduation.
After being admitted to medical university, Dr. Pi drew textbooks when he was a child, and a picture could almost show all the clinical manifestations of a disease. "The leprosy patients who have seen my paintings feel sick, but they all feel lifelike." Finally, he chose dermatology and became a dermatologist-a perfect department for a child who is good at reading pictures. In the field of artificial intelligence, using pattern recognition technology to diagnose skin diseases is a hot direction at present.