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Welcome to "In the Air, Talk About Tuesday" where I talk about something related to Sudbury
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schooling.
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So today I was inspired by a couple of postings from Peter Gray.
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He has a blog on psychology today called "Freedom to Learn" and I definitely recommend reading
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them but in particular, the latest two entries are related to learning disorders, anxiety
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and you know, forced schooling.
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So you know, his first article that I read you know, mentions an actual definition say
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of dyslexia and I don't know, I mean I think it sounded like it was a standard kind of
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definition.
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I'd never heard of it like this before but it surprised me in that what it is defined
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to mean is that it's a person who scores in some normal range for IQ or even better but
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scores in the bottom 7th percentile for reading.
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That's the definition of that.
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So you know, when they've tried to find things that are different in their brains with brain
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scans or anything, they find nothing.
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Now it could be a number of different things going on biologically that you know, all present
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the same symptoms and so you can't get any kind of agreement as to this or that but so
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far there doesn't seem to be a great understanding as presented by Peter Gray.
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His hypothesis is simply that as we are familiar with here at Sudbury School, you know, people
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learn to read at different times.
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They can be perfectly intelligent and just simply not have the pathway to reading at
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the same time as somebody else.
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Why should there be?
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Reading is you know, it's definitely not something that we evolved with.
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We created it long after our primary evolutions unlike walking and probably talking.
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I imagine we've talked for a long time.
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Obviously we don't really know that because you know, before writing there was no recording
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of writing but I would imagine that there is you know, we talked for a long long time
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before we learned to read and the ability to make sound is of course quite natural.
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So you know, it's something that our brains can do but it wasn't an urgent priority to
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get the brain to be able to do it early on, right?
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Being able to communicate with someone else, being able to understand them, that was the
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key.
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Reading is very much a secondary kind of feature.
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Now in that kind of general widespread sort of bell curve on reading, natural reading
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times, you're going to have some people who in the context of conventional schooling,
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you know, they will really really struggle.
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And there's no real reason for them to struggle, it's just they're being asked to do something
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before they're ready.
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And we see that here all the time, students, some of them learn how to read at 4, some
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at 11, 12, even 13 we've heard of, I don't think we've seen that here but I don't know.
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You know, and a lot of times it's just kind of this mysterious thing, just like when students
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learn to walk or talk, I mean there weren't students here at that time of course, but
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you know when they were 1 or 2 years old, they figured out how to do it.
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And the same thing with reading.
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Now sometimes people do need help, I mean I'm sure everyone has asked for help with
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some kind of reading here or there, but for them, you know, I don't know how many actually
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required dedicated instructions as you might see in conventional schooling, I don't think
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I've actually heard of that but I'm not sure that people would tell us about it.
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Nor would it be clear whether or not they would have gained it on their own without
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that instruction.
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So, it's a little hard to know, it's just kind of like, what do you think?
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But in any event, the point here is that, imagine yourself being a student in a conventional
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school who is being told they are bad at reading, or they experience that they're bad at reading,
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I mean, it's not being told.
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And then they're labeled with something, say dyslexia, like ah, okay, so I have an actual
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physical problem or something that is preventing me from reading well.
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And you know, just really imagine, maybe somebody listening to this has experienced it, certainly
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I can bet you if anyone's listening to this and has been through conventional school,
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they've experienced it with regards to math, but you know, it's sort of like saying, okay,
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this is now my identity, this will be what's true about me, right?
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And so, you know, it can be very damaging.
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So regardless of the level of instruction or whatever else, just the idea that there's
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going to be some people, and there will be some people who score that way.
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And in fact, by the definition of, you know, being the low seventh percentile of normal
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intelligence people, well, I guess low seventh percentile reading, and you're in the normal
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range of intelligence, you know, very likely there will be some people by that definition.
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It's just the way the numbers work out.
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So yeah, it's, and yeah, anyway.
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So yeah, now, when I was reading Peter Gray's posts, he actually talked about this study,
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the Tennessee pre-garden, pre-kindergarten study, looks like it was 2018, it was published.
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Lipsie is a name written on it.
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And essentially, this was a study where there was a statewide program to help low income
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families, you know, have children in pre-k programs, and it was an intensive academic
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kind of pre-k.
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And essentially, there were way more people who applied for it than there were spots for.
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So they randomly selected from that pool of applicants, so no filtering there.
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And then they tracked what happened.
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I guess it's not clear necessarily what happened to the people who were not admitted, but I
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think the idea was that they stayed home.
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And so essentially, what they found was that at the beginning of kindergarten, the ones
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who went through this pre-k academic stuff, it started to do better.
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But surprisingly, that didn't last, or maybe not surprisingly, I suppose I'm not terribly
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surprised.
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But you know, there's that kind of like early advantage, and apparently it didn't last.
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What they found was by third grade, those in the pre-k program were 46% more likely
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to have been diagnosed with a specific learning disorder than the controls, and they were
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43% less likely to have been diagnosed as intellectually gifted.
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That's a pretty darn, not good.
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He doesn't list the raw numbers of this, so for all I know we're talking like three kids
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or something, one category or another, but I imagine it's higher.
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I haven't looked at the paper yet.
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But assuming that it's robust, and he does say it was statistically significant, which
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suggests that there was sufficient numbers of students involved in this, but what that
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would be saying is that this program was responsible for those changes, because it was randomly
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selected from this group, right?
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So that's the only thing that should really affect it.
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And I mean, obviously, there could be something that happened on the other side who didn't
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get into the program, but for the most part, it would be reasonable to assume that by forcing
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young kids to sit and listen to these people and master these kind of skills, if you will,
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that they stunted the intellectual development of those kids, instead of being allowed to
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do what we see here, essentially being allowed to play and explore and learn and grow their
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brains in that way.
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So that is a short summary of those two pieces.
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I recommend reading them, and I will try to post links to them.
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And I may have more to say, because I think it's absolutely fascinating.
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All right, well, I will see you when I see you, and I need to figure out how to turn
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this off.
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button.