by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The effects of illiteracy reach far beyond the schoolhouse doors. That’s why Circuit Judge Karen Cole has been traveling Jacksonville with a team comprising two judges, a lawyer and a doctor to raise awareness about dyslexia.
The Literacy Speaker’s Bureau is sharing its message via presentations throughout Jacksonville’s business, legal and medical communities in an attempt to encourage a Citywide response.
The group includes Cole, U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Corrigan, Jacksonville Bar President Reginald Luster and Laura Bailet, the Nemours Clinic school psychologist.
“We want the community to know that illiteracy isn’t just an education issue. It’s a public health and safety issue,” said Cole. “Literacy reduces crime and opens doors.”
Corrigan said he’s been faced too many times with the task of sentencing young people to jail. Many of those cases started, he believes, with the offender failing in school.
He pointed to studies that show 85 percent of juvenile offenders are functionally illiterate. That means they can’t read or write well enough to fill out a job application.
“Those who cannot read are more likely to fail,” said Corrigan. “They’re more likely to use drugs, to violate the law, and they’re less likely to have meaningful jobs.”
The depth of the problem is illustrated by the numbers, said Bailet. More than 40 percent of Florida’s third graders failed the reading section of the FCAT and about half of the State’s adults are functionally illiterate.
The speaker’s bureau focuses specifically on the impact of dyslexia on those numbers. Bailet said the disorder has a greater impact than most people realize.
Bailet called learning to read “an unnatural act,” difficult even for the most adaptable brains. Human brains naturally understand speech, she said, not so for the written word.
“Teaching a child to read is like learning to drive a car,” she said. “You have all these bits of information taken in at once and all must be processed.”
For dyslexia sufferers, repetition and effort simply aren’t enough.
“It’s important to have books in the home but that won’t help children with dyslexia,” said Cole.
Instead, she advocates a research-based study program that emphasizes the fundamentals of language structure. Essentially, it teaches students to recognize written words in the same way they hear language.
With the right training, dyslexic brains can learn to function like normal brains, said Bailet. Cole said she hopes people walk out of her presentations able to spot the warning signs of dyslexia and knowing where to look for training.
“There’s excellent research on the internet. We want parents to know where to go to get intervention for dyslexia,” said Cole. “With the right instruction, we can inoculate kids against reading problems.”