Literacy Myth busting by Lyn Stone – Part 2

 

Here are a few more comments I have on the podcast by Kate of IDA Ontario and Lyn Stone.

Sunk cost fallacy

People will keep investing in that thing rather than scrap it. We spent all this money and time and can’t possibly be wrong. The sunk cost fallacy exists and it makes you think that something is working when it is not working.

 

My comment:

Sunk cost fallacy is the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.

 

This is clearly the case with educators who have said that learning 10 sounds represented by letters can get a kid to read 26,000 words. The ego of these educators prevents them from saying they had made a mistake. Many teachers will accept what educators like Emina McLean twitted because she is a graduate researcher from La Trobe University. LINK

Educators said that Dolch words should not be memorised even though I had explained that we don’t memorise high frequency words by visual memory but by rote memory. They are unwilling to accept because of their ego and because they have been saying it for years. LINK

There are others who maintain their stand that consonants cannot be taught without extraneous sounds even though I produced videos showing that it can be done. These educators can’t be that stupid, can they?

There are others who insist that teaching sounds represented by consonants with extraneous sounds do not prevent a kid from learning to read despite my explaining that fortunately, many kids figure out how to read. The mind figures out how to read despite the wrong teachings by teachers. I am concerned about the kids who disengage from learning to read due to confusion.

Those who have moved from the sunk cost fallacy their stories need to be told because the more people are able to do that the more and the more people believe.  It is going to be more easy for the next person but those stories need to be told, yes anecdotes making that change and putting everything on the line.

Lyn Stone can’t make up her mind about anecdotes. On one hand, she says:  Don’t be fooled by anecdotal evidence. So, we must be careful about anecdotes as they don’t equal data. (Lyn)

And here she says ‘Their stories need to be told… it is going to be easy for the next person but those stories need to be told.’

When I talk about what I had discovered from my research of 15 years of teaching kids on a one-on-one basis and learning from them why they were unable to read, I am asked for evidence and research reports to support my discovery.  

I am busting myths about what is and what isn’t dyslexia. Dyslexia cannot be cured. Dyslexia is neurological disorder that makes it difficult for you to engage with print. Dyslexia causes one thing and that is difficulty with print and that is the only thing that it causes. It doesn’t cause anything else. Dyslexia in a nutshell is a neurological disorder that makes it difficult to form robust mental orthographic images of words. They can’t store words in their long term memory.   If you are dyslexic, then you are going to find it difficult to read and write.

This is utter nonsense. There are many research reports stating that dyslexic kids can read in transparent languages. How can anyone say that dyslexics have difficulty engaging with print? Lyn Stone should explain how many kids can read in Chinese using characters. How do they form robust mental orthographic images of words?