A family friend has a 10-year old grandson who, at 10, is unable to read anything! The strange thing is that all of the other aspects of this youngster are just fine. Socially he is a pal. He comprehends everything he sees (aside from words) without a hitch. If you read it to him he can answer almost anything a child that age might be asked. This seems to indicate that he's not "slow". But there's that one area that he can not do, no matter how he tries. And, of course, it is a vital one. He can copy images in writing but he can't do much more. I found this perplexing! To sit and talk to this guy you would likely think him an above average 4th grader! Is there one compartment of the brain that can be so impaired and so specifically so? Dyslexia is the easy answer but his family has had him tested and he doesn't seem to suffer from that. The dummies also say they will give him four years to get the recognition parts right. By then he will be so academically behind that it won't matter! Anyway, I've just never encountered a human who can do everything else OK but just that one instinctive thing. Is it your basic handicap (such as blindness, etc.) or is there a trigger in there somewhere? Just hoping that some or even one of you have encountered such a dilemma and understand how to work it through. Or, at least, your understanding of what might be happening to this child. I've dealt with many a "special student" (overall learning disabilities) in my life. But never one like this. He can learn anything! Just that one thing holds him back.

There has been a study at Yale on this and it is interesting:
Here
If you ask this lad to fetch a favourite story book from the shelf, is he able to do that? I am asking , as it maybe that he doesn't want to read, although he says he does. Does he look at comic books? Does he extract knowledge that he wants/ needs from a text? Or does he truly not read, not even a letter of the alphabet?
I am sure those people studying his case are asking those questions. There has to be the need/desire to read first. There has to be the stimulus, the interest and the example set by members of the family. So many factors. I can see how frustrated the family must be with the ' he will read eventually' sort of reactions, but it may be true that with the right stimuli and real desire he may eventually do just that.

Good question. His grandma asked him to grab the Hot Chocolate Mix the other day. He was lost. He grabbed the jar of coffee because he recognized the "C". Haven't read the link yet, ren, but will now. Thanks! (And odd to note that he can configurate that much.)

I'm very reluctant to say much, but I'd just like to ask a few very basic questions: has the child been taught systematically? Has he been taught the alphabet? Have phonic methods been tried? In some schools in English-speaking countries kids are very largely left to 'pick up' reading as if it were speech - and for many kids it just doesn't work.

I'm curious about the method that was used in his schools as frequently in American schools in particular, they'll use some reading method like the Bible with strict adherence to the method and it fails dismally on a percentage of the kids. I've been seeing another thing happen in the States too. There are a few educational systems that purportedly wait until a child is ready to read for various reasons, yet, some children apparently hold out longer than others and without obvious reasons.

I won't mention the name of the school but it seems to be touted as the best thing since sliced bread and yet it just falls flat for some kids. I know of one eight year old who still couldn't read and in fact, said it out loud around my young relative who read early and read a lot. I mean the kid read more than I did, which is saying a lot.
THis kid would look kind of wistfully at her friend and say, 'I can't read yet'.
When this happens I suspect that the method used in the school and supposedly not traumatizing a kid by forcing them to do something when they are not yet developmentally ready is backfiring on them.

Another method that fails dismally is phonics in Catholic schools unless the kid is able to catch on despite it. If phonics is the only method not just a necessary component of learning English. I mean the extremely rigid method the Catholic schools still used at one point and I taught there in the lower grades and the old timers still claimed it worked well. Sorry, but, when a kid struggles with why read and read are pronounced differently in different contexts etc and you bawl them out for not getting it, something's very wrong.

The writing is talk written down method actually is effective in some contexts. I remember it backfiring when I got my letters from my little Hawaiian students who had just learned that year. 'I like you every they Miss B'
Why did the child write it that way? Because when you transcribe his stories into written English that's the way you pronounce the th when you say the word they. So that method uses the child's vocabulary written in standard English.
In pidgin you use the "da" for the. Most Hawaiian kids have a strong local accent and use words that most Americans wouldn't get as they're from the languages of the islands and the immigrant languages.
So, this method is good as it side steps the cultural bias in most reading material available for kids in Hawaii, yet, it has it drawbacks!

I think the problem with reading methods is that we're always jumping on some bandwagon and doing one thing then totally changing to another.

My son began reading in French before he read in English. His teacher was a trooper close to retirement and yet, she had an ironclad method that got those kids jumpstarted for the rest of their lives in French. French is a hard language to read and write properly by the way and many kids, especially boys, fall by the wayside that first year of school. Well, we got endless sheets of syllables and how they were pronounced and written and even, in cursive, in block print and every different way it might appear including lower and upper case.
Boy did her system work well!
When he began reading English, it was a little harder as you have to have a leap of faith and have heard a word out loud I think. In fact, I think I learned a lot from my children learning to read in both. It made me notice how darn hard English was to read.

When I asked whether "phonic methods" had been used I didn't mean a blinkered use of such methods. For many kids it does seem to be helpful to taught things like the "basic" (short) sounds of the vowels and the significance of vowel + single consonant + final e - for example "mad - made", "hat - hate", "pin - pine" , "rip - ripe", "hop - hope", etc. It's also helpful if kids are taught the "basic" sounds represented by 'ea - ee - oo - ou -ow", too. Obviously, we all know that many words in English aren't spelled regularly and that there are competing 'rule-systems', too.

I fully agree that there are few things worse than dogmatism - and that the more obviously a method is failing (at least with some kids) the more desperately some schools adhere to it.

I'd add that I find the concept of "reading readiness" largely misguided. It's the school's job to say in effect: "Now you're at school, you will learn to read!"

It is worrying , though, if he is unable to recognise brand named packets , such as coffee or chocolate. The first thing a baby ' reads' is things like Macdonalds, Cocacola and ice cream.Usually they begin by this sort of recognition of signs and fonts. I was asking if the urge to read is there. Of course , every teacher should be using all the different methods, look and say, phonics, read by reading and all the combinations, but if he doesn't want to , he won't. I was asking if he reads comics, picks up reading matter as a matter of habit. My two read because they needed to know what to do to obtain the toy on the cereal packet, because they needed to know what Barbie clothes were available, not because Spot the dog was on the log. The answer may lie in the motivation, and then next in the custom-built method for his learning.There are some super reading schemes out now that look like comic books. ask your Learning Support Department to look at some for him, and children like him. he has passed the age for Primary One reading schemes.
PS I just re read your last post Gatsby and I am wondering why he grabbed the coffee " because he saw the "C" " How did he know that Ch in chocolate began with C ? It is not the same sound as the c in coffee. Some things are seeping through in that case and it would seem to be not a medical problem and all is not lost.

Thanks, everybody! All very helpful. Everything is so retro in this area so I don't know how adventurous they get with education. I suggested phonetics, oddly enough, but the family is not keen on the benefits of that. They want him to be like his peers and in the same acumen as the rest, which obviously hasn't worked so far.

Interesting, too, ren, about the hard C sound versus the Ch sound. He must know the alphabet and a few basic sounds/spellings. Not being a family member over there I'm not sure about how they have approached his at-home activities. Domonic IS in the best school available around here. It seems the teachers are trying everything but I just get the facts and not the details. As a matter of fact no one bothered to mention that he couldn't read until last Friday.

Quote:

---

I suggested phonetics, oddly enough, but the family is not keen on the benefits of that. They want him to be like his peers and in the same acumen as the rest, which obviously hasn't worked so far.

---

That's the point, most of his peers will have learnt to read using a mixture of just that: phonics (not phonetics!)and many other methods depending on what suits them.. Phonics is just one of the many many tried and true methods of teaching, and all good schools will use all of them. So if he tries phonics it may work, along with any combination of all the other methods. You don't lose kudos by learning by any specific method , it is what works for you.
(Oh I wish I were nearer. I never sent a child up yet who couldn't read,{braggin' agin!}. I love a challenge! Incidentally I have never met a true dyslexic in 30 years of teaching children to read!They are truly rare.)

On that note , a funny story:
A local private, so called international, school which charges huge fees and brags about its methods and resources has , as its Principal the most ignorant person I have ever come across in the history of education. She was actually heard to say the following (I swear)
" Oh yes, about this Dyslexia... we really must get some for the school. I like to get all the modern equipment...."