Unfortunately, the system of reading we inherited from the ancient scribes —the method of reading you are most likely using right now — has been fundamentally shaped by engineering constraints that were relevant in centuries past, but no longer appropriate in our information age....
and....
While the visual pathways are being strained to capacity by reading, the auditory network for language remains relatively under-utilized. This then suggests the possibility that the auditory network can be used in conjunction with visual reading to create parallel pathways for reading in the brain that can be used to accelerate processing.- Matthew Schneps-MIT
The brain is said to be plastic, meaning that it is possible to change its abilities. Zvia Breznitz and colleagues at the University of Haifa demonstrated that when people are forced to practice reading using a process they call “reading acceleration program” (RAP), people can be taught to roughly double their reading speed, without compromising comprehension. 50% of the unemployed between the ages of 16 and 21 cannot read well enough to be considered functionally literate.
School dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues. Source
50% of successful suicides for children 15 years of age and under had a learning disability. Source
32% of students with dyslexia fail to graduate from high school.
50% of youth in juvenile detention have dyslexia.
60% of adolescents in drug and alcohol rehab have dyslexia. Source
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”Knowledge is love and light and vision."-Helen Keller
▪ 50 percent of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level.
65% of U.S. 4th -graders read below grade level, according to their results on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress reading test. (U.S. Dept. of Education)
64% of U.S. 8th -graders read below grade level, according to their results on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress reading test. (U.S. Dept. of Education)
What if I told you we were not born with the ability to read?
"The human brain did not evolve to read"... John Gabrieli, MIT neuroscientist
What if I told you reading was not prevalent for all of time?
"...literacy has been commonplace only in the last two centuries..."- John Gabrieli
What if I told the world; reading is not a skill which is easily taught?
“Reading is so demanding that there’s not a successful alternative pathway that works as well,” says Gabrieli. It’s like using a stapler to pound a nail—the stapler can get the job done, but it takes a lot of extra effort.-John Gabrieli.
What if I told you, if you can't learn to read then there is not a backup plan?
..."so the brain must repurpose regions that evolved for very different ends. And the evolutionary newness of reading may leave the brain without a backup plan..."- John Gabrieli
There is a backup plan...
What if we knew there was another way to "consume" the printed word?
‘Our’ current methods we use for reading — based on ancient engineering constraints no longer relevant in today’s society.-Matthew Schneps, MIT
What if our brains were built to consume information faster than we can talk?
"The human mind can think at least four times faster than a person can talk." -The Peacemaker by Ken Sande
What is the speed we can listen and understand?
'People' are capable of listening to more than 600 words per minute. - Modern Human Relations at Work By Kathryn W. Hegar
What if I told you with dyslexia, my test scores state, "When Davis is required to read in a normal fashion and comprehend information, his score plummets from 98% comprehension (using Bookshare and 'TTS' software) to at or above the first (1%) percentile."
What if I told you, I received my Masters of Science in Health and Medical Informatics and was nominated as the 2016 Student Marshal at Brandeis University.
U.S. education model is obsolete, and the toll is significant
The gift of reading finally joins information age
November 03, 2017 10:58 AM
“Unfortunately, the system of reading we inherited from the ancient scribes — the method of reading you are most likely using right now — has been fundamentally shaped by engineering constraints that were relevant in centuries past, but no longer appropriate in our information age.”
Matthew Schneps, MIT
Our education system today is measuring our students not by how well they gain knowledge and are able to express the knowledge they have gained, but by how well they read and write. Our current education model is not inclusive. Buckminster Fuller states, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Our education model is obsolete, and at what cost?
▪ 44 million adults are unable to read a simple story to their children.
▪ 50 percent of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level.
▪ School dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues.
Technology has put us at a crossroads where technology has created a pathway, not yet used, to a new digital foundation in education where every word sits on top of the internet of things (IoT). With this new pathway, emergence starts to shed light and darkness on our future and our past.
“The human brain did not evolve to read — literacy has been commonplace only in the last two centuries — so the brain must repurpose regions that evolved for very different ends. And the evolutionary newness of reading may leave the brain without a backup plan. Reading is so demanding that there’s not a successful alternative pathway that works as well,” says John Gabrieli, MIT neuroscientist.
There is a backup plan through technology to a new digital foundation in education. Technology has allowed us to return to processing the printed word in our first language. Our first language is listening and speaking, while writing is our second language and reading is our third language; to read something, somebody must write.
“While the visual pathways are being strained to capacity by reading, the auditory network for language remains relatively under-utilized,” says Schneps.
Almost all individuals can participate in education through technology by returning to our first language, which is the ability to gain our knowledge through our auditory network and to express our knowledge through our ability to speak.
Most use speech to text when texting, which empowers them to be creative by using words they know but don’t know how to spell. Smartphone and like devices allow them to speak it and it is spelled correctly. But the reading acceleration program (RAP) uses our auditory network, which is currently underutilized.
One device has led this digital revolution to the trailhead for the pathway to the new digital foundation. Currently, the only device I know which has the innate ability to speak information in our first language, listening and speaking, is Apple’s iPad/ iPod/ iPhone with its embedded RAP and speech to text.
By allowing the use of RAP, also known as text-to-speech, the hurdles which the printed word has created for so many have now been leveled. Let us as a society, as a state, as a county embrace this technology and empower us to succeed not by how well individuals read and write, but by our ability to retain and express knowledge!
Recently graduating from Brandeis University with honors, my diagnosis is “When Davis is required to read in a normal fashion and comprehend information, his score plummets from 98% comprehension ‘450 words per minute’ (using Bookshare and ‘TTS’ software) to at or above the first percentile, ‘69 words per minute’.”
Davis Graham, a long-time Bradenton resident, tutors professionals and students on reading acceleration programs. Email: daviswgraham@gmail.com Phone: 941-212-0299
From-The Gift of Dyslexia, Revised and Expanded: Why Some of the Smartest People ...
By Ronald D. Davis, Eldon M. Braun:
- They won't read for pleasure, because there is no pleasure in heavy concentration.
- The inability to read and write often seems life-threatening to a dyslexic person.
- They know only the song; the song knows the alphabet. So by using the song, they can appear to know the alphabet. Whenever they want to look up a name in the phone book or a word in the dictionary, the song will be used. It has become a compulsive behavior.
- The gift of dyslexia is the gift of mastery.
- Some brilliant dyslexics become corporate executives because of their intuitive gifts for "seeing" the correct strategy and mobilizing the work force.
- Boredom also plays a role, because boredom often happens to someone whose mind is working between 400 and 2,000 times faster than the minds of the people around them. A dyslexic child who is bored will do one of two things. Either the child will disorient into creative imagination (daydreaming), or will shift his attention to something that is interesting (destructibility or inattention).
- Attention vs. Concentration: It is natural and easy for dyslexic children to pay attention, but difficult for them to concentrate.
- Keep in mind that dyslexics have little or no internal monologue, so they do not hear what they are reading unless they are reading aloud. Instead, they are composing a mental picture by adding the meaning--or image of the meaning--of each new word as it is encountered.
- Trigger words have abstract meanings, and often a number of different meanings. They trip up dyslexics because they do not represent visual objects or actions. They also happen to be the words that occur most frequently in everyday speech and writing.
- The brown horse jumped over the stone fence and ran through the pasture. Once disorientation begin to cause mistakes, the dyslexic child becomes frustrated. Nobody likes to make mistakes, so around the age of nine, in about third grade, the dyslexic child begins to find, figure out and adopt solutions to the problem. Even though this may seem like a good thing, it is actually how the reading problem becomes a true learning disability.
- There are at least 40 different variations of a three-letter word such as "cat," and only six of these are "logical" versions..
- Dyslexic children often get tagged with the hyper label because of the physical effects of disorientation.
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