Luqman's musings

Not long ago I listened to a TED talk by Julia Galef . Now, that I have received a response from the Ministry of Education, Singapore, I think this topic is relevant and fits in with what I have been writing. 

Yesterday, 21.12.2018, a cruise ship – Diamond Princess – docked at Kota Kinabalu port. My wife and I met up with some friends from Australia. One of my friends, Iain Loganathan, who had bought my book ‘Shut Down Kids’ told me that he had bought my book but has yet to read it as his two children are not dyslexic. Well, firstly that book is not on dyslexia but about kids who are unable to read because of confusion as a result of wrong teaching of sounds of alphabets by teachers. Secondly, one does not have to have dyslexic kids or kids who cannot read due to any reason at all to read a book on why kids shut down from learning to read.

One of the commenters on Nitu Bhojwani's post had said: “Assertiveness is a state of Balanced Emotions. It's a way how you constructively use your Anger.” When you write as I do in a blog there is no place for anger. One may get angry when talking or discussing with another. However when one writes a blog one is usually calm and collected. I usually write whatever I want to write and check it again before posting it the following day. As such I can be assertive without being angry.

Here are extracts of a talk given by Sue Lloyd who is a committee member of the Reading Reform Foundation of UK. You may listen to the whole talk here .

There is another comment on Nitu Bhojwani’s original post that I would like all readers to ponder over.  “ It's always the struggle between what is right and what is presumed to be right. Sigh!”   The commenter above has hit the nail on the head. As mentioned in my previous article, 40 years ago, one professor had said that ‘Phonological awareness deficit is the cause of dyslexia’ (loosely kids who are unable to read) and more than 100 professors had echoed it without thinking. All these professors had ‘presumed that statement to be right.’ 

Recently I engaged in a discussion on a post by a friend, Nitu Bhojwani on LinkedIn. I made a few comments and thought that this will be an excellent material for a post in my own blog. Here is a definition of assertiveness from the internet:  ‘ Assertiveness is a skill regularly referred to in social and communication skills training. Being assertive means being able to stand up for your own or other people's rights in a calm and positive way, without being either aggressive, or passively accepting 'wrong'.’

Here is Ms Sue Lloyd's response to my first email. She is a committee member of the Reading Reform Foundation UK. 16 Nov at 17:14 Dear Luqman Michel, Thank you for your interesting email. I think the reading problem comes when children are asked to memorise words and not decode them. When strong systematic synthetic phonics is used, in whole class situations and intervention for the slow-to-start, then all the children become good at decoding.