Most education in America has become focused on desk work. Chalk boards have been replaced with electronic screens or whiteboards. There are very few opportunities to do things with your hands. Now there are plenty of kids who use fidget gadgets and the tactile strips as a way to help reduce stress and maintain focus.
From the start of the movement to educate every child there has been a model of quiet children in rows doing quiet work at desks. That this idea has nothing in common with how kids actually behave or learn hasnāt changed (enough) how kids get taught. Until recently they were told to sit still and a failure to do so was treated as a moral failure. We still insist that there is a ārightā way to think, learn, and behave in a classroom. I guess I see a tie-in with changes in how certain behavior is explained and accommodated for, and the growing acceptance of neurodiversity in general.
Agreed. The first e-book I read was a bit of an experiment. I put Danaās āTwo Years Before the Mastā on my Palm Vx PDA for the train in 1999, and it was OK. Putting the newspaper website on a Palm Vx didnāt work at all.
I find linear material fine on my e-reader, a bit less so on my current phone because of interruptions (even though I have so few apps on it that the battery lasts about a week). If I have a textbook or academic paper, or some other reason to have to flip around a lot and make notations, then the phone or e-reader doesnāt work as well. My kids seem to have come to about the same opinion; one of them has gone back to physical books for most things.
I just checked and OpenDyslexic is an option on the Kindle. I thought it was, my bestie uses it. He likes to listen to the audio and read along.
Were you unaware or referring to something else?
Unawareā¦thank you!
Let me see if I can figure it out. And then, Libby!
Darn it: it seem OpenDyslexia is only for writing, and its companion for reading only works on Safari, not book apps themselves.
I read a physical book recently written in OpenDyslexia, and it was fabulous. So much easier and quicker to read.
Really? I can choose OpenDyslexic in both Libby and Kindle apps in the font/appearance menus
I wonder if I completely misunderstood what you were asking 
The president of the college declared, "As a result of Professor Deanās comments, there now may be students on our campus who feel threatened in or outside of the classroom.ā
This is as outrageous as it is absurd. While such moves are increasingly common on campus, I want to remind people that for years, decades in fact, political theorists, philosophers, historians, sociologists, and more, have been teaching texts like Jodiās to their classes. The subjects she raisesāand the need to engage with the questions that those subjects raiseāare part of any normal college curriculum: What rights to oppressed people have to resist? What methods and meansāincluding violenceācan they legitimately wield in their resistance? Who speaks for the oppressed? What are the obligations of people not directly involved in the conflict to the oppressed?
Whatās more, the way we teach these issues is by presenting students with strong writing about these issues, writing that takes a stand, and makes people uncomfortable.
Iāve taught texts that defend the actions of John Brown and his confederates, who slaughtered innocent white children in order to retaliate against slavery. Why is Jodiās text any different. And if we acknowledge that we can teach Jodiās text, why canāt Jodi teach it herself? (Of course, Jodi was banned not for teaching the text in the classroom but for writing it on a publisherās website.)
And if by writing her text, Jodi makes students feel unsafe, how does my posting that text her make students feel? Am I now also making them feel unsafe?
This discourse of student feelings and student safety was always a dangerous road to drive on, and weāre gradually seeing where it takes us: to the know-nothing, anti-intellectual, put-our-fingers-in-our-ears-and-hear-nothing-we-donāt-want-to-hear non-culture that weāre all living in now.
It reminds me, in a way, of the zone of silence that was created in the slaveholding South, where everyone knew what was going on and no one was allowed to say it. And the more unstable the system grew, the more censorious and repressive it became.
Jodi Deanās piece:
Thanks for sharing that linkā¦
Higher ed is fucked.
Education in general is fucked. Either by active censorship or self-censoring out of fear of exactly this kind of blowback. The increasingly ārightwing is not right enoughā kind of attitude of the self-appointed gatekeepers, who have no knowledge of the subject matter, but boy do they have opinions. Yeah, itās a mess. I have no solutions until the fascists are chased out of town completely.
Not yet, I hope!
(Bit surprising to hear. We bbs regulars usually arenāt so defeatist!)
Some institutions might be, but we should keep in mind that weāre more capable than ever before in educating ourselves. Iāve been working on genealogy and looking at census records from the 19th century. Seeing how many people embraced reading and writing after the Civil War is very encouraging. More about why appears as number 1 here:
Now, due to tech we have a lot more options. Focusing on eliminating the digital divide helps to overcome some forms of gatekeeping and censorship. Thatās why the forces of fascism are against programs designed to reduce it.
KOReader (available on at least Android, and various legacy e-readers) lets you use any system font, so that would include any number of dyslexia-friendly ones.
Bonus - it is highly anti-distraction. I do not know Iāve got emails or messages when reading.
I donāt see it as ādefeatistā as such, but as an accurate reflection of what we are seeing. Teachers are leaving the field in record numbers, the ones remaining are afraid to teach facts that might make the worst of the fascist āuncomfortable.ā We are seeing book banning, state-mandated discrimination, fascist takeovers of school boards. Might not be the case where you are, but certainly is here. There is a fix, but it requires voting the Nazis out, everywhere. Wonāt happen tomorrow, though. Watching what is happening to our kids is agonizing.
Okay, and good to hear. I guess we have a different sense of what it means to say something is āfucked.ā In my experience itās meant nothing more can be done to fix it.
Right on. Various forms of protest of help too, of course.
That was my original complaint: I canāt!
So unfair. Iāll keep working on this. Thanks for the push to not accept the status quo of my individual situation.
Itās so weird you canāt and sad. OpenDyslexic is such a basic accommodation!
Tell me about it!
However, by doggedly going through everything yet again at Kindle ā using your screen shot as a guide ā Iāve found it there, finally! Thank you so much!
But Libby is how I read most books, and that one still eludes me. I will keep trying.
ETA: Recently, the books Iāve been wanting to borrow have been unavailable virtually so Iāve got a stack of physical books, which means there isnāt a current book in Libby to read. I finally figured out to āborrowā something/anything, and once that was in place I see that I can change the font (when availableā¦.didnāt work with magazines) for each specific book. Itās not a universal setting, which is what I was looking for, but it is possible for at least some books in Libby to change the font to the dyslexic one.
PHEW!
Iāve known about the font for years, but never felt I needed it particularly because my learning disabilities are different. Or at least, so I thought. But then I read a physical book in the font, and realized what a difference it made.
This is a good example of how making diverse educational supports available to all ends up helping even when it wasnāt expected to be needed. But they need to be easy to find and use!
