Overlooked Dyslexia hinders students’ life
Learning disability affects 25 million Americans
By Shelley Ball
Of The Print
Imagine yourself a student
in grade school again, then ask
yourself these questions: what
would you do if you found you
constantly forgot letters and
words you had just learned?
What if you also realized that
you couldn’t follow more than
one direction at a time, confus­
ed directions like left and right,
up and down, reversed certain
letters whenever you wrote,
such as writing the p for b, the
word was for saw, and the
word girl as gril.
As you grew older and
found yourself having to repeat
certain grade levels over and
over, no doubt you would feel
that you were stupid and would
spend the rest of your life trying
to hide your problem. With
discouragement and failure a
part of your life, you might
even turn to juvenile delin­
quency, for in stealing or some
other form of delinquency you
could tell yourself for the first
time that you were ac­
complishing something, no
matter how negative that
something may be.
As an adult, you would go
through life bluffing your way
through incidents that asked
you to read or write, for your
fear of embarrassment would
be foremost in your mind.
The above situation is the
typical story of a person who
has Dyslexia, a specific learning
disability that affects approx­
imately 25 million people in the
United States today. At
Clackamas Community Col­
lege approximately 10 percent
of its students have Dyslexia,
Adult Basic Education instruc­
tor Bernice Peachy said.
“Dyslexia is not a
disease, it’s a predicament in
which the people involved
have average to above average
intelligence,” she said.
Larry Gillpatrick is one of
the Dyslexics on campus this
year.
“I didn’t know I had it
(Dyslexia) until about three
years ago,” he said. Up until
that time, Gillpatrick said he
“thought I was just dumb, so I
didn’t put myself in a position
where I would have to read
and embarrass myself; what I
couldn’t do I guessed at,” he
said.
“Dyslexia is not a
disease, it’s a predica­
ment in which the
people involved have
average to above
average intelligence.”
For Pearly all of his 45
years, Gillpatrick spent his life
living a masquerade by cover­
ing up his reading and spelling
problems, an act he says
“leaves you half of a person.”
While a Dyslexic has dif­
ficulty reading and spelling, he
often excels in others. Artist
Leonardo Da Vinci, scientist
Albert Einstein, General
George Patton and politician
Nelson Rockefeller were all
Dyslexic.
Throughout his school life,
Gillpatrick said that he would
get by on the assignments he
could handle by simply copying
answers to questions word for
word from his textbooks. Why
in all this time didn’t any
teacher see what he was doing
and offer help?
Staff photo by Rick Obritschkewitsch
APPROXIMATELY 10 PERCENT of Clackamas Com­
munity College students have Dyslexia commented Adult
Basic Education instructor Bernice Peachy.
Wednesday, January 12,1983
1 It seemed to get me by
easier than teaching me to read
and write,” Gillpatrick said.
Dyslexia
was
first
discovered as a problem by
Samuel Torrey Orton, M.D.
back in the mid 1920’s. Since
then it has been discovered that
Dyslexia is inherited, usually
from father to son. For this
reason there are four times as
many males with Dyslexia as
females. There is also a rela­
tionship between Dyslexia and
left-handed people, stutterers
and clumsiness.
Gillpatrick eventually grew
tired of “bluffing my way
through school,” and dropped
out in his junior year to go to
work full time. Gillpatrick
always made sure he took jobs
where he would use his excep­
tional mechanical skills only,
and whatever chance paper
work there was he found ways
to avoid. “I was perfectly will­
ing to work under somebody
else,” he said.
The cause of Dyslexia is
unknown, but it has been
found that the earlier it is
treated the better the chances
of success. Dr. Orton and his
fellow workers were responsi­
ble for designing a special
teaching system for Dyslexics,
which uses a multi-sensory
method made up of visual,
audio and kinesthetic (writing)
skills used together. The pro­
gram is a highly structured one
that has sequential and in­
dividualized teaching.
By learning in this man­
ner, Dyslexics can learn to
master their reading and spell­
ing problems, but the amount
of time it takes is entirely up to
the individual, as there are
varying degrees of Dyslexia.
At the College, Peachy
said she and Harriet Holling
use this teaching method, call­
ed the Orton/Gillingham
Philosophy, in the Adult Basic
Education (ABE) classes that
they teach. ABE is designed to
help students with an eighth
grade or below’ reading level,
and its philosophy combines
the teaching methods of Orton
with the book Remedial Train­
ing for Students with Specific
Disability in Reading, Spelling
and Penmanship, by Anna
Gillingham and Bessie W.
Stillman. The classes also stress
an emphasis on repeating
directions.
It wasn’t until he suffered
an industrial accident which
made it impossible to work full
time manually that Gillpatrick
realized he would have to learn
to read and write. He first came
to the College in 1980 to work
for a GED, and it was then that
Gillpatrick was tested and
diagnosed as Dyslexic, which
he said “gave me a little bit bet­
ter feeling when I knew I had a
Staff photo by Rick Obritschkewitsch
“I DIDN’T KNOW I had it (Dyslexia) until about three
years ago,” prior to that he “thought I was dumb.”
problem, and was not just
dumb.”
Since that time, Gillpatrick
has made astounding progress.
He received his GED in 1981,
and returned this fall to con­
tinue improving his skills
through the ABE classes taught
by Peachy and Holling.
Gillpatrick currently spends
three hours a day Monday
through Friday practicing
vowel and consonant sounds,
English and spelling rules.
“I didn’t even know what a
vowel was until after I quit
school, and I’m just now fin­
ding out that I’m spelling words
wrong that I used when writing
checks,” he said.
Through the ABE classes
Gillpatrick has raised his
reading level from the fifth to
the ninth grade, and his spell­
ing skills are gradually improv­
ing.
“I plan to stay until I learn
spelling, then I would like to get
a job as a foreman and use part
of my old skills with my new
ones,” he said.
ABE is funded partly
through a state and federal
grant and is considered a tui­
tion waiver, making the class
free of cost to students.
Peachy* also mentioned
that the College is “one of the
few community colleges that
has an Adult Basic Education
program that welcomes
Dyslexic students.” She ex­
plained that the College is the
first and eldest community col­
lege to recognize Dyslexia as a
growing problem, and has
helped to inform more people
about it through the forming of
the ABE classes.
Today there is an Orton
Dyslexia Society that has ap­
proximately 6,000 members in
the form of doctors, teachers,
parents of Dyslexics and
university professors in the
United States alone. In the
state of Oregon there are over
200 members.
Anyone with questions
concerning Dyslexia can either
contact Peachy at her office
(Barlow 251) to make an ap­
pointment, or they can write to
the Orton Dyslexia Society.
The Oregon branch address is
P.O. Box 3677, Portland,
Oregon 97208.
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