Essay/Term paper: Dyslexia

Essay, term paper, research paper:  College Papers

The problem that effects one out of every ten kids
in the United States of America is dyslexia. Although to some people this
disorder may be very noticeable, it can really sneak up on you. Most of
the time kids with dyslexia aren't recognized until they are about eight
or nine. The most important thing to remember is that is takes time to
solve, and sometimes cannot be cured at all. Dyslexia develops during the
first six months of gestation . Neurons are churned out in the brain's
ventricular zone. Attached to fibers, the neurons travel to the cerebral
cortex, which contains the language centers. Here they hit a barrier,
stop and take their place in layers above previously deposited neurons,
(which is normal). In the brains of dyslexics, how-ever, there are
breaches in the barrier and the neurons enter them, leaving clumps of
nerve cells called ectopias, which appear to interface with the brain's
ability to receive and transmit certain messages. They are now finding
that dyslexia can run in the family. If you or your other relatives have
dyslexia that means that there is a chance that your own child could have
it. Unlike what most people think, dyslexia is not to be blamed on the
parent for negligence in teaching reading and writing. Dyslexia is not
any ones fault it simply occurs when the barrier in the language center of
you brain cracks. In some experiments done by the University of Montreal,
they are comparing good adult readers to dyslexic adult readers. In most
cases the adult dyslexics were at about the high school level. When the
adult dyslexics were compared to third graders in matching sounds with
letters, they scored below the eight and nine year olds that were tested.
It's not just a visual problem, actually they can see the letters fine, it
is more of a comparing problem. Dyslexics usually cannot spell simple
words by just hearing someone speak them to them. Some of the most
confusing words for them are cat and dog. Although over time the symptoms
can be fine-tuned, they never go completely away. As said before dyslexia
is not a disease it cannot be cured with any pill or medicine. The only
cure so far is many long and slow classes of multisensory sessions. These
sessions go through each letter, sound, syllable, etc. until other parts
of the brain help the person to recognize the letters in another helpful
way. The fact that you child may have dyslexia doesn't mean that they will
be unsuccessful. Some examples of people who have to live(d) with
dyslexia are people like Whoopi Goldberg who is famous for her many roles
in the movie industry, another person is Albert Einstein who is famous for
the theory of relativity, and Winston Churchill the former Prime Minister
of England. As you can see these people were very successful and
influential in their life. In conclusion I have found that children are a
real threat to this disorder, especially in the United States of America.
We may not have the highest illiteracy rate in the world but the children
still need all the language and speech classes that they can fit in their
schedule. Children usually find the ability to read very boring and
unimportant. What we need to be teaching them is how much the skilled
reader is important to the world around them and that they cannot do many
things without being able to read. They also need to learn that they
should treasure the fact that they can read, because the children of the
world with dyslexia are much worse off than they are. Dyslexia is a very
serious problem and needs to be researched further.