【特别感谢热心听友“阿饺”帮忙听写本篇文稿】
Heyang: The latest research says that over 10 million children in elementary school across china have dyslexia or 读写障碍. I think in Chinese, not even that many people have heard of it. And these kids don’t get timely support and often are misunderstood or just totally neglected. Guys, what is dyslexia and how can these kids get help?
Ryan: Well dyslexia is a type of learning disability associated with problems within the brain’s language processing areas. Research shows, and can be caused by both genetic and environmental factors. Children with dyslexia have problems recognizing and understanding words. Despite having normal or above levels of intelligence. That’s I think that’s important. So basically these kids have like a learning disability, but has no real influence on their intelligence, they are still smart people. And in fact, before I go on, I just wanna mention that Albert Einstein was someone that suffered from dyslexia. His theory of relativity and a lot of what we know about like astronomy today and physics came from the man who had dyslexia. So it’s a serious problem, but it doesn’t mean these children are seriously inhibited.
Heyang: That’s true and also just add another example. Apparently Steve Jobs, the great Steve Jobs, the man behind the iphone and ipad and all those amazing products. He had dyslexia, 读写障碍. And that just really hard for a lot of people to get their head wrap around this problem like, I know in English dyslexia means that sometimes a suffer could, can’t really tell the difference between B and D, these two letters. And in Chinese, I think the difficulties for the patient could be, that, simply this guy or girl cannot tell how did these strokes work as we build the character. As I’ve read first hand accounts of kids, after the teacher telling them how to write a character hand by hand teaching them, they still can’t get it. And the only way they can write a character is like drawing. They don’t get the pattern of the strokes at all. (It’s a creative way to learn) And also a different way. And if the teacher doesn’t know about dyslexia or 读写障碍, or doesn’t have the patience or the knowledge to cope with a situation like this, the kids’ studying process is gonna be compromised.
Ryan: And you know I do wanna point out that the 2014 national data surveyed from the Chinese Academy Social Sciences. 11 percent of Chinese suffer from this disorder.
Heyang: Right before the show we talked about all these famous and also very successful people who have this disorder, but it’s not a disease, and it hasn’t stop them from achieving greatness in life. And can I please just add up another example? Can I please do that? It’s an abuse of power I feel. But I have to talk about ‘我腾’, that’s is short for ‘我的萧敬腾‘. Ok. So basically he is a singer from Taiwan and Chinese singer he is really cool, he can totally do rock songs, write his own music and also do great ballads and very very talented. And this guy has got dyslexia. And he has said that during his school years, he always thought that he was a kind of dumb that he was all little bit on the stupid side, being always the dim student in the classroom. And I think it was actually through his own words that he said later on it was music that sort of salvaged him and made him find worth in life because throughout his student years in school, he always thought that there is something wrong with his head or something. And he was too cool and too proud to try to find a way to fix that as you always turned the cold shoulder of the teacher. So, I just wanna say, there, according to this recent research, there are more than 10 million kids that suffer from 读写困难, or dyslexia in our country. And if they don’t know that, this is not your problem, it’s a disorder, it’s not like you are stupid, and I mean if you grow up thinking like that, it’s detrimental to your self-esteem. So guys, what do you think needs to be done here right now in Chinese classrooms?
Ryan: Well, so this is definitely a serious issue. And in the U.S I can personally speak from experience that they have what called special ed, special education. And it does like when people talked about it, initially I remember the reaction was kind of negative. So like oh you are in special ed like, actually I have a story myself to talk about. So, when I was younger, I was in these classes, special ed, and my thought process was I knew this stuff was super easy for me. But I have had what was called attention deficit disorder which means it’s very hard for me to stay concentrated, especially at this age, on stuff, I just wanted to go out and do things. I was one of these people that always have to be moving. So this affected my grades and I just didn’t care enough, my mind was in other places. So in these classes, at first I was like really liking how easy it was and how I can go out and spend more time playing in the counterparts that were normal classes. And then I was when I got to middle school that I realize that I should step up my game that I should challenge myself, and it was like through my own personal like revelation that I decided you know, I really need to start really challenging myself. But, maybe there are lots of kids that don’t have that realization and they need people to push them and help them finding incentives to like to get pass things as you said you have very intelligent people who have low self-worth, when that’s really was not just the case, they are just intelligent as anybody else, they just have different way to get to where they need to get to.