Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Plug holes in my hypothesis - a comment by a friend



Here is a message on messenger from a good friend which I think is better answered on my blog so that others may benefit from it.

Hi Luqman, I notice that your empirical findings of phonemes being the problem of shut down children, please read the article in the link and may be more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing.

A hypothesis need to be proven by devising some kind of peer-reviewed tests and  results, where you need to plug all possible holes in the hypothesis. Only then it is accepted as Theory by the scientific community. I think perhaps that is one of the problems of those guys not willing to accept your 'theory'. Hope you get some ideas as to how you can go about this. I feel you are waging a lonely battle to prove your theory. One simple 'hole' in this theory may be that 'perhaps your one to one personal coaching may be reason for the success of your students'. You need to eliminate such a possibility.  Hope this helps you. Wish you well. Just thought of this idea to be given to you think.




My response:

I wish there were more such comments from other readers and rebuttals from educators around the world. It then gives me a chance to explain.

The westerners have yet to evolve to get comfortable with questions and even more so with the answers given. I have asked the questions and have given the answers to the questions. 

Now to respond to the message above:
1.       Theory to be accepted by scientific community
I strongly believe that the educators/researchers I had written to via emails, LinkedIn and Twitter are not as stupid as they portray themselves to be. Some of the answers from them, which I cannot repeat here due to space constraint and because I have repeated them often in my posts, are ludicrous. 

Most of them must be doing the work of the big boys who benefit from the dyslexia scam. The dyslexia con is a multi-billion-dollar con/scam. This is similar to the medical con game which my friend who sent the message is fully aware of.

The parents of so-called dyslexic kids swallow hook-line-and sinker what is advocated on the internet daily on dyslexia.

I was the first person in the world to disagree with the 35-year-old-theory that phonological awareness deficit is the cause of dyslexia. I wrote many articles and commented on many blog posts by so-called educators some of which were deleted and mostly ignored. However, some doctorate students debunked that theory in 2015.

Similarly, my findings that about 20% of kids shut down when they are confused will be (not, maybe) researched by some students somewhere and confirmed.

Yes, I am waging a lonely battle against the big boys but I have won one major battle and this too will be won. There are many educators watching me but have not made any comments as this is the world we live in today. It is similar to my case against the Lions Club. No one will stick their necks out.

          ii. One simple 'hole' in this theory maybe your one on one personal coaching


This, I have covered in my blog posts and in my book. I repeat one such study here and let you all ponder over it. There are many more in my blog for those interested in reading them.

I quote from the Book ‘Equipped for reading success’ by Dr. David Kilpatrick.

‘In a large study conducted by scientists from the State University of New York at Albany, researchers were able to reduce the number of children who require ongoing remediation from the national average of 30% down to about 2%? 

Another example is the Assured Readiness for Learning (ARL) program., which incorporates numerous researched-based teaching practices. Many school districts using the ARL have dramatically reduced the number of poor readers. 

A third example is a study by researchers at Florida State University. They showed how the most severely reading disabled students could reach grade level – and stay there – using a surprisingly brief intervention program. These examples question the inevitability of widespread reading failure.’

(Note: My name is mentioned in the acknowledgment page of the above book. I was sent a free copy of the book by the author.  However, I have nothing to do with the above quote. I would not have known where to begin with regard to such research.)

I believe the above quote eliminates the theory of one on one that has benefitted my students.

The questions that need to be pondered upon are: 

1.       Why do many kids need interventions in the first place? The answer to that question is what needs to be confirmed by researchers. Many smart kids shut down from learning to read because of confusion created by teachers teaching the wrong pronunciation of phonemes.
I have posted 5 YouTube videos on why kids shut down from learning to read. The first can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGGr4uyFdn4
2.       How is it that a short period of intervention can bring back to grade level all these kids who were unable to read in the first place?
3.       Was a study done to find out why kids shut down from learning? If not, why not?
4.       Why are kids able to read in many other languages other than English and deemed to be dyslexic? Many websites say that dyslexics have a language learning disability. Is English the only language in the world?
5.       Do we really need ‘empirical evidence’ to say that consonants should not be taught with extraneous sounds? This came from none other than Dr. Timothy Shanahan on whom praises are showered.
6.       Do we have to believe another educator, Dr. David Boulton, who says, after 15 years of research with 160 experts, that he does not want to give any solution to the problem as he does not want to be mistaken with any agenda?

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