Should people with Dyslexia (or anybody for that matter) get extra time in exams?

[HotelUser]

You're right, a calculator will not give you high marks in a Maths paper, you need to know your stuff to be able to actually use a calculator efficiently.

---------- Post added 05-12-2012 at 09:04 PM ----------



It depends what sort of question you have, in your question for example, you would first need to know that you could apply long division. More time does not equal more marks all the time, because you still need to know your stuff, and once again, dyslexics aren't just getting 30 minutes of free time, they use this extra time comprehending the question.

There can be 10 different ways to solve the same math problem and you might not know any of the 10 ways, but you might stupidly stumble upon one of them if you have enough free time.

Or given enough time, if you don't know any of the 10 ways to solve the problem, sometimes you can legitimately figure out a way on your own.

If you solve math by simply memorizing formulas then you're doing it wrong. Math isn't like certain other subjects where you can just memorize lists of things. Often times when you screw up in math if you put your nose to the grind stone you can figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The more time you have the better you can do this.

[Kardan]

There can be 10 different ways to solve the same math problem and you might not know any of the 10 ways, but you might stupidly stumble upon one of them if you have enough free time.

Or given enough time, if you don't know any of the 10 ways to solve the problem, sometimes you can legitimately figure out a way on your own.

If you solve math by simply memorizing formulas then you're doing it wrong. Math isn't like certain other subjects where you can just memorize lists of things. Often times when you screw up in math if you put your nose to the grind stone you can figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The more time you have the better you can do this.

Well in all my years of Maths, I haven't ever stumbled across a correct answer by randomly guessing when I have free time, I either know it or I don't. And of course, even if a person was to randomly stumble across the correct answer (which all students can do, not just dyslexics), this is assuming they had any free time left. You're assuming that dyslexics would finish in the same time as non-dyslexics, so this extra time is giving them too much of an advantage.

[FlyingJesus]

Firstly this has nothing to do with dyslexia. I've never known any dyslexic to get to go on special trips... I assume you're on about the children with behavioral difficulties? No incentive to work hard? Right okay... I'm sure there is? The prospect of getting a good job at the end of it all, where do you think the kids who got to go on all those special trips you're on about will end up?

In college and uni dyslexics get hundreds upon hundreds of pounds in special bursaries, to such advantage that I was actually advised to take a dyslexia test and fail on purpose. "I'm sure there is" is about as valid an argument as if I'd just said "no you're wrong" with no explanation - and the prospect of a good job is not all that high considering it's pretty common knowledge that those kids on the special trips are likely to end up in manual labour jobs which pay far higher than the average white-collar worker, who also has debts and loans behind them for that wonderful privilege of going through intense education systems in order to get a mediocre job that they probably won't enjoy.

I have a family member that is dyslexic, and not only that, but his reading and writing skills aren't very good in general. His profession is a floorlayer, and he's bloody good at it. If you give him a written exam about floorlaying, I would probably do better than him, but if you gave him an exam where somebody asked him the questions in person, he'd ace it. So is he a bad floorlayer because he can't do a written exam in it? No.

You seem to have missed my post where I stated that the exam system is crap. I have no doubt that your relative is great at laying floors, but that has exactly 0% to do with sitting an academic exam

[Kardan]

In college and uni dyslexics get hundreds upon hundreds of pounds in special bursaries, to such advantage that I was actually advised to take a dyslexia test and fail on purpose. "I'm sure there is" is about as valid an argument as if I'd just said "no you're wrong" with no explanation - and the prospect of a good job is not all that high considering it's pretty common knowledge that those kids on the special trips are likely to end up in manual labour jobs which pay far higher than the average white-collar worker, who also has debts and loans behind them for that wonderful privilege of going through intense education systems in order to get a mediocre job that they probably won't enjoy.



You seem to have missed my post where I stated that the exam system is crap. I have no doubt that your relative is great at laying floors, but that has exactly 0% to do with sitting an academic exam

I would agree with you that the exam system is crap, but under the current system extra time is probably the best method. Of course, it would be totally better if they managed to revamp how it works. If everyone is so up-tight with other people getting extra time, then give everyone the extra time - but I'm sure we'll get many complaints of people having to sit in silence for an hour and not be able to leave the exam hall

I just disagree with the fact that more time = more marks. That's suggesting that if there wasn't a time limit on exams, everyone would be able to get 100% because they would keep guessing until they figured out how to do it.

And yeah, my relative wasn't a great example because it's more of a pratical thing, but it would totally reinforce my point if it was about an academic subject

Oh, and as for bursuaries for dyslexics? I don't think I agree with that, I mean, it's not as if more money is going to help?

[-:Undertaker:-]

You may think that some people are feigning dyslexia as an excuse for their poor reading/writing but in many cases it's because - like you with your maths - no matter how good the teaching is, people can't simply learn their way out of their thinking style. Dyscalculia is actually a very real disability that affects many with maths and, if diagnosed, you too could have had extra time in your exams to give you a little more of a chance to comprehend the problems you were presented with. If you were told from an early age that your maths problems meant that you were entitled to more time in maths exams would you not take it, if you thought it might level out the playing field between you and those that aren't innately inhibited by such a disability?

It isn't a disability - I am just and at mathematics, as simple as that. To label people who are bad at subjects as disabled is ridiculous excuse making at it's finest, they're just bad at it - end of story. Our brains are all a mix of chemicals which influence what we like, how we act..... it's just how it is. Those who are bad at English are bad at English, and those who are awful at Maths are bad at Maths - why would I seek to excuse myself and blame it on being disabled when i'm plainly just not any good at it.

The same with Science and History - I was good at Science in late Primary school and not really at History, after which both changed places as I changed what I liked and was good at. Did I suddenly become disabled in those few years? no.

Perhaps in England where you have such a great population concentrated on a small plot of land (or in other highly populous regions) it might be more practical and less expensive to have a government funded educational facility that could reach out to as many dyslexic students as possible.

We are broke.

Anyway to everybody, this may be an interesting read along with the other work he has done on the topic (can be found via the link and under the Index of his column); http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co....yslexia_e.html

The subject is far from as simple as backers of the 'condition' like to believe.

Does Dyslexia exist?

As I expected, by Sunday evening my e-mail inbox was throbbing with angry messages denouncing me for casting doubt on the existence of 'dyslexia' in my Mail on Sunday column. As I expected, almost all these messages were roughly the same, telling me how ignorant and horrible I am, urging me to do 'research', as if I hadn't done, and asserting as fact that the writer ( or the writer's child) suffered from 'dyslexia' and that it therefore existed. Do people really not grasp that this isn't proof? One mother rang me up and peremptorily demanded that I prove that 'dyslexia ' doesn't exist. All accused me of ignorance, some of personal cruelty.

Several, baselessly, accused me of mocking or otherwise criticising the children who have been classified as 'dyslexic'. Some correspondents severely and misleadingly misquoted Professor Julian Elliott, whose remarks in the Times Educational Supplement sparked off my article. I'll deal with that later.

It is amazing how you can mesmerize so many people into accepting that something is scientifically proven by conferring a pseudo-scientific name, packed with Greek or Latin expressions, on that something. Once it has such a name, its defenders tend to believe that there is no longer any need to explain or justify it. They demand that I somehow disprove its existence, when it is up to them to prove that it exists, since they are the ones who urge that highly-expensive and questionable public policy, diverting resources and attention from the real problem, should be based on the idea that it exists.

And yet, like its cousin 'ADHD', 'dyslexia' is a vague, subjective thing. There is no single agreed diagnosis, let alone an objective one. There are at least 28 different descriptions of it. Many of its supporters believe it involves such things as 'reversing' letters, which others say are not symptoms of it at all.

Above all, it is 'treated' by methods which would work equally well on anyone who couldn't read properly. Go, I beg and urge you, to the website of the British Dyslexia Association and study the list of supposed 'indications'. Well, I know of children who have displayed most of these, at one time or another, and have learned to read without any difficulty at all. I suspect I was one of them. The "I think I might be dyslexic" checklist for adults is also pretty alarming, if you believe in this stuff. Does the fact that I almost always type 'dyslexia' as 'dylsexia' mean I might be 'dyslexic'? Or does it just mean that I cannot type? Let us thank heaven nobody has devised a pill for 'dyslexia' .

Virtually none even began to deal with my counter-assertion, that 'dyslexia' has grown hugely as a problem since schools abandoned the systematic teaching of reading according to the method which is known to work ( and has been known to work for centuries) nowadays known as 'synthetic phonics. The curious decision of teachers to abandon this method in the middle of the 20th century was analysed more than 50 years ago in Rudolf Flesch's best-selling, powerful 1955 book 'Why Johnny Can't Read'.

Flesch's argument, for the immediate resumption of teaching by phonics, was largely ignored by the teaching profession in Britain and America until very recently - when undeniable research in Clackmannanshire made it impossible to ignore the truth. It showed that Synthetic Phonics (SP) was highly effective in teaching children to read.

But even then, many British schools( I am not sure of the current state of affairs in North America) continue to resist. Where they do use synthetic phonics, they often use it only as part of a 'mixture of methods', which simply confuses the children.

It is interesting, in that case, to note that advocates of the existence of 'Dyslexia' say quite openly that one of the (many) theories of 'Dyslexia', (and here I quote their own pseudo-scientific language from the largely pro-'Dyslexia' entry on Wikipedia) "stems from a deficit in phonological processing or difficulty in recognizing that spoken words are formed by discrete phonemes (for example, that the word CAT comes from the sounds [k], [æ], and [t]).

As a result, affected individuals have difficulty associating these sounds with the visual letters that make up written words. Key studies of the phonological deficit hypothesis include the finding that the strongest predictor of reading success in school-age children is phonological awareness, and that phonological awareness instruction can improve reading scores in children with reading difficulties."

Oddly enough, that is a pretty accurate description of precisely what SP does - breaking down the sounds in the language, and associating them with the letters that express them. To that extent - and to that extent only - I agree with the 'dyslexia' lobby. Some children will not learn to read unless they are taught using SP.

Others will mysteriously and miraculously learn to read however badly they are taught. There is therefore an argument that some children learn in different ways, which may betoken a physical difference. This explains why some children emerge from bad schools able to read, whereas their brothers and sisters may go to the same school and come out functionally illiterate. But if all were taught SP properly, all would learn to read. The teaching of SP certainly won't harm those who don't need it to learn how to connect letters with sounds.

However, this difference is not necessarily a disability, especially since teaching with SP puts it right. It is just a difference, a difference made much more important by a major failure of teaching in our schools, affecting a significant minority of children who are thereby stuck with a disadvantage for their whole school career, and possibly for life. You might suggest, therefore , that 'dyslexia' is the product of the bad teaching of a significant minority of children.

How would a sensible society deal with this? Many teachers and many parents know perfectly well, from experience, that there are some children, especially those who have been read to a lot at home, who pick up reading skills by a sort of magic, and don't need to learn systematically. These will survive even the most terrible reading teaching, the worst of which relies on children remembering the shapes of words, and is tested by getting them to 'read' passages they have effectively memorised.

But the large number who do need phonics teaching will fail and remain more or less illiterate, unless taught these "discrete phonemes" . Thanks to the 'literacy strategy' and the incessant tests and drilling for tests which result from it, many of these will be assessed as being able to read when they can't really, and passed on to their secondary schools to face years of misery, frustration and nightmare - classes in which they are assumed to be able to read well, but cannot. What is baffling is that, given the clear evidence in favour of SP, so many schools still don't use it exclusively. I suspect this is because many modern teachers regard it as 'old-fashioned' or 'authoritarian'. I also wonder, after so many years of bad schooling, if some teachers themselves have difficulty in reading, writing and spelling.

Given that our society is rapidly becoming more and more post-literate, with even the signs on the lavatory doors now in pictogram form, and reading eclipsed as a leisure activity by TV and computer games, the only real pressure on many of these children to learn to read comes from school, and if the school is undisciplined or chaotic, and many are, a lot of these mistaught children will drop out or misbehave, a terrible waste of talent, since often such children have great potential.

This could be why 'dyslexia' is often seen as a middle class problem, since the working-class children who cannot read disappear off the national radar, and their parents are often inarticulate and powerless, or themselves suffering from a bad education. Some of them turn up later in prison, where illiteracy ( or is it still 'dyslexia' behind bars?) is common.

So it is mainly the middle class children - whose parents believe government propaganda about improving schools, or who buy poor-quality private schooling in the sad belief that the writing of a cheque guarantees quality teaching - who get involved in the great 'dyslexia' fantasy. They know that something is wrong. The 'dyslexia' lobby persuades them that it is their children who are at fault. This helps relieve parents and schools of any responsibility for the problem. The children, too, are led to believe that they are in the grip of some force that is beyond their control. This is why so many people willingly co-operate in their own victimhood.

Now here's the interesting bit about Professor Elliott, whose original article was summarised and reported on in 'The Times' of May 28th by Peta Bee.

This is a passage from her report: "For parents, in particular, a diagnosis that their child is dyslexic can be a relief, says Elliot. He believes the diagnosis serves an emotional, not a scientific, function. "There is huge stigma attached to low intelligence. After years of working with parents I have seen how they don't want their child to be considered lazy, thick or stupid. If they get called this medically recognised term, dyslexic, then it is a signal to all that it's not to do with intelligence."

This was misrepresented by some of my pro-dyslexia correspondents as Professor Elliott having described those who claim to suffer from 'dyslexia ' as "lazy, thick or stupid". As is clear from the quotation above, he said no such thing. Nor did I. Yet I have no doubt that among supporters of this campaign the suggestion will be spread that I have done so.

Inability to read has nothing to do with intelligence, and a lot to do with teaching. Nobody is more concerned than I am that children should be taught to read properly, and those who have been failed by primary schools should be rescued as quickly as possible. The ability to read is essential to education - and in my view to a civilised life. But the dyslexia industry prevents a proper reform of reading teaching, by blaming the children for the failings of schools and teachers.

That is why I am so concerned to counter the 'Dyslexia' lobby. As long as this absurdity is widely believed, the real failing will not be dealt with, and huge numbers of children will emerge from years of school with poor, inadequate or non-existent reading skills. The resources and manpower now devoted to 'dyslexia' would be much better spent on bringing proper reading teaching back to every primary classroom in the country.

..or a summary.

At long last, some sense on dyslexia

Hurrah for the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Their verdict that ‘dyslexia’ can’t be distinguished from other reading difficulties gives the game away. It can’t be distinguished because it has no objective, scientific definition. And that is because it doesn’t exist.

What does exist is an awful lot of needlessly incompetent teaching, by teachers who think synthetic phonics (which work) are beneath them. In this argument be warned. Howls of rage are no substitute for hard facts.

I myself struggled to read or write until I was taught by an older teacher who taught in very old fashioned ways - I remember after years of being in the bottom set, I started to pull myself up surprisingly well. Perhaps Mr. Hitchens is on to something when he links it with the change in teaching methods - meaning it's part of our education system failing, not a medical condition.

[HotelUser]

Well in all my years of Maths, I haven't ever stumbled across a correct answer by randomly guessing when I have free time, I either know it or I don't. And of course, even if a person was to randomly stumble across the correct answer (which all students can do, not just dyslexics), this is assuming they had any free time left. You're assuming that dyslexics would finish in the same time as non-dyslexics, so this extra time is giving them too much of an advantage.

To re-quote myself:

Or given enough time, if you don't know any of the 10 ways to solve the problem, sometimes you can legitimately figure out a way on your own.

Have you ever taken a math course where all you do is mathematical proofs? If so then you would know that the above happens all the time.

But even in lower level math courses just by applying mathematical rules you do know, you can often figure out a solution. You make it sound like there was a 1 / 2348723458742587 chance that you can guess and get an answer right, but often times (I've found this especially with Physics and Mathematical Proofs), you can re-arrange and apply math rules you already know, and in the end figure out a solution.

What if you were asked to find the expansion of some binomial (a + b) to the power of 10? If you know pascal's triangle or the binomial theorem you can do it very quickly but if not you can literally just write out (a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b) and brute force your way through it. You can't brute force that in one minute but if you had 5 or 10 extra minutes to spare you could!

Again my responses to you are only to explain that if you have more time in math you definitely can improve your marks. As to whether or not that's fair to folks with dyslexia that's still left to be said.

[Kardan]

To re-quote myself:



Have you ever taken a math course where all you do is mathematical proofs? If so then you would know that the above happens all the time.

But even in lower level math courses just by applying mathematical rules you do know, you can often figure out a solution. You make it sound like there was a 1 / 2348723458742587 chance that you can guess and get an answer right, but often times (I've found this especially with Physics and Mathematical Proofs), you can re-arrange and apply math rules you already know, and in the end figure out a solution.

What if you were asked to find the expansion of some binomial (a + b) to the power of 10? If you know pascal's triangle or the binomial theorem you can do it very quickly but if not you can literally just write out (a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b)(a+b) and brute force your way through it. You can't brute force that in one minute but if you had 5 or 10 extra minutes to spare you could!

Again my responses to you are only to explain that if you have more time in math you definitely can improve your marks. As to whether or not that's fair to folks with dyslexia that's still left to be said.

I'm in my second year of my Mathematics degree for what its worth.

And yes, a dyslexic could brute force binomial expansion, and so could a non-dyslexic, and under ideal circumstances both of them would finish their exams with a few minutes to spare and if they didn't know how to solve it, they would both try brute force. What I'm trying to put across is that everyone is under the assumption that dyslexics are working as fast as non-dyslexics and that non-dyslexics will finish with 10 minutes spare, whilst non-dyslexics will finish with 40 minutes spare. What needs to happen, as I said in ideal conditions, is that the extra time is calculated so that they both finish with the same amount of time remaining - so there is no advantage to people with or without dyslexia.

Of course we both know that you wouldn't get full marks if you were asked to find a binomial expansion using the binomial theorem by brute-force. You would simply get a fraction of the marks for the final correct answer.

[HotelUser]

I'm in my second year of my Mathematics degree for what its worth.

And yes, a dyslexic could brute force binomial expansion, and so could a non-dyslexic, and under ideal circumstances both of them would finish their exams with a few minutes to spare and if they didn't know how to solve it, they would both try brute force. What I'm trying to put across is that everyone is under the assumption that dyslexics are working as fast as non-dyslexics and that non-dyslexics will finish with 10 minutes spare, whilst non-dyslexics will finish with 40 minutes spare. What needs to happen, as I said in ideal conditions, is that the extra time is calculated so that they both finish with the same amount of time remaining - so there is no advantage to people with or without dyslexia.

The only bone I had to pick with you was about the fact that even without knowledge of how to do something in math, sometimes it IS possible to figure it out on your own. The reason you gave for dyslexics having more time to answer problems is fine by me.

Of course we both know that you wouldn't get full marks if you were asked to find a binomial expansion using the binomial theorem by brute-force. You would simply get a fraction of the marks for the final correct answer.

If you had to resort to brute forcing through the binomial expansion of something to the tenth power, I would imagine you would be pretty screwed to begin with

[Kardan]

The only bone I had to pick with you was about the fact that even without knowledge of how to do something in math, sometimes it IS possible to figure it out on your own. The reason you gave for dyslexics having more time to answer problems is fine by me.



If you had to resort to brute forcing through the binomial expansion of something to the tenth power, I would imagine you would be pretty screwed to begin with

Only in particular circumstances though, if you are given an easy question where all you know is that you need a numerical answer, you could just go for '0' and hope for the best. Of course if you are given a proof by induction, you're pretty much screwed, and yes, a binomial expansion that large would take up far too much time, no matter how much extra time somebody got in an exam

Although I do agree with you with some Maths papers, mainly the ones that have 'Show that the answer is...', I have been saved a few times by questions like these, and end up working backwards...

[Euphoria]

I'm not actually that sure what to think of this. I mean I'm not dyslexic and I've never really needed extra time in exams and so on, however, a couple of my friends are. If I knew that they weren't working hard to achieve the score they wanted, then I'd definitely say that they don't deserve extra time, however if they paid attention in class and did try and achieve something, then yes - I think the extra time they are given is necessary.