LD in China
Those Chinese teachers -- what a frontier you have if you can explain those enigmas to them that I'm sure they've seen in their classrooms over and over. I wonder if there are statistically as many ADD's, ADHD's, dyslexics, and particularly autistics and autistic spectrums, which have become such an epidemic in American life. I wonder who is doing the studies on that or if it's even possible to compare, given the lack of diagnosis. Kind of like how rape statistics increase once it starts getting reported. They all wonder why we have an epidemic of all of these conditions. You would think that somebody would be making comparisons to other cultures and countries.
- Jean Levis
I lectured again for an hour today about learning disabilities and autism-spectrum today. This time I was able to speak slower (I was already lecturing at half-tempo) and make sure my vocabulary was less technical than before. The teachers seem very interested in the subject and I had to clearify that there is a difference between ADD/ADHD and being lazy, and autism/pdd with being weird. They seemed a little too thrilled to know a single pill could make their "naughty students" pay attention. Ohh industrious people of China :-)
I basicly pushed three points: teach to the three modalities (which I called the "three learning senses"), patience, and finding the students core interests and teaching to that as best as possible. They had never really considered giving extra time on tests. It seemed like a lot of what I said sunk thruough though... they were actively jotting down notes. My real fear is that they might take off with this idea and assume all disinterested students are ADD/ADHD and that all students having difficulty reading have dyslexia.
None of the teachers really seemed to relate when I spoke of autism and Asperger's Syndrome. I've read some theories that autism-spectrum might be linked to pollution. If that is so, then it should be rampant in China. It doesn't seem to be, so take from that what you will...
Tags: Treyopia China Students Teaching ADD Attention Deficit Disorder dyslexia learning disabilities
1 comment:
Fascinating! Supposedly, while dyslexics are 10-15% of the American population, they comprise only 7% of the Chinese population because of the totally different brain circuitry required to read pictorial characters, and it's almost unheard of in Italy because it is pretty much a perfectly phonetic language. So there's been much research into cultural differences in dyslexia - ADD and ADHD not so much - many Americans still don't believe such a diagnosis exists, probably because of the overdiagnosis. Autism spectrum is a pretty new diagnosis, but in the last 4-5 years, all of a sudden, everyone is bipolar - are the Chinese teachers familiar with that at all? Enjoying keeping up with your exploits ...
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