ABSTRACT

It has been estimated that in India 13-14% of school children have a learning disability. Unfortunately, most schools fail to address their problems. As a result, these children are branded as failures, often neglected and tagged as retarded or abnormal. The concept of learning disability refers to children who can see, hear and do not have any marked intellectual deficit but who show some deviation in behaviour, and often in their psychological make-up, to such an extent that they are unable to adjust at home or to learn by standard methods in school. Dyslexia is the most prevalent learning disability among children. Those having

the problem have significant difficulty with word recognition, reading comprehension and typically written spelling as well. When reading aloud they omit, add or distort the pronunciation of words to an extent unusual for their age. The growing body of scientific research suggests that there is a malfunction in the neurological wiring of those with dyslexia, which makes reading extremely difficult for them. The complexity of a language in orthography or its spelling system has a direct impact on how difficult it is to read that language. In reading, the brain has to pull words apart into their constituent sounds or phonemes. In the case of dyslexia, the brain struggles with phonological processing. The dyslexic also finds it hard to recognise voices. This chapter argues that despite the fact that it is a known disorder, dyslexia has

not reached its optimum awareness level in schools in India. Indeed, it is less commonly observed in India because the standardised tools for testing are not easily available throughout the country. Therefore, the integration of dyslexic children in mainstream schools is an important social and educational issue. These children should be offered programmes with an emphasis on life skills. In addition, parents and teachers need training in order to detect and understand the problem in its

initial stages and to manage it properly. They can play an effective role in strengthening self-confidence and lessening the fear of failure in dyslexic children.

In India it is estimated that tens of millions of people have learning difficulties; however, the government pays little attention to their condition and therefore does not allocate funds to deal with the problems. It has often been found that there are some children in the family who have normal intelligence, but face problems when tackling academic activities. They are unable to pay attention to academic work, hence they shy away from it or disturb the class. So, they are branded as stupid, absent-minded or retarded. Most parents lack awareness and do not try to understand the exact problem faced by their children. Stories like those of Sripath Aiyyer and Aditya Bawa, whose mothers found ways to help them overcome their learning problems in a mainstream school, are rare. There is a need to create awareness among Indian people regarding the nature, cause and solution to Special Learning Difficulties. As Dr. Akira Uno (2003), an expert on dyslexia, says, ‘We cannot get rid of disability but we can teach people methods to compensate for it.’ The systematic analysis of patterns of reading difficulties commenced with the

work of classical neurologists in the late nineteenth century. Neurologists, such as Charcot (1884) and Dejerine (1892), wanted to ascertain if a relationship between disorders of spoken language and the impairment of reading and writing existed. Dyslexia is considered to be a language disorder. Hallahan and Cruickshank (1973) described it as referring to ‘those children who could see and hear and do not have a marked intellectual deficit, but who show deviation in behaviour and in psychological development to such an extent that they are unable to adjust at home or to learn by standard methods in school’. The definition issued by the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (1982) is the one which schools and Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) in India often use. Learning disability as a general term refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to individuals, presumed to be due to a central nervous dysfunction, and may occur across a life span. Problems in self-regulatory behaviours, social perception and social interaction may exist with learning disabilities but do not in themselves constitute a learning disability. Although learning disabilities may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (for example, sensory impairment, mental retardation, serious emotional disturbance) or with extrinsic influences (such as cultural differences, insufficient or inappropriate instruction), they are not the result of those conditions or influences. Dyslexia is the most prevalent learning disability among children. The term was

first coined by Rudolf Berlin of Stuttgart, Germany, in 1887 but it took more than five decades before it became commonly used in the West. In India, it has taken even longer. There are several descriptive definitions of the disability. The World Federation of Neurology (WFD) defines dyslexia as: ‘A disorder manifested by

difficulty in learning to read despite conventional instructions, adequate intelligence and socio-cultural opportunity.’ The National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke (NINDS, 2010) gives the following definition: