Students with dyslexia & ADHD in independent and public schools
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Newest New Mexico senator has dyslexia but says he sees his role clearly - Las Cruces Sun-News

Newest New Mexico senator has dyslexia but says he sees his role clearly - Las Cruces Sun-News | Students with dyslexia & ADHD in independent and public schools | Scoop.it
SANTA FE — State Sen. Pat Woods, who took office in late October, says he has packed a lifetime of lessons into the last eight months.

Woods, 63, has dyslexia, but it has not stopped him from being a voracious reader. Eva, his wife of 41 years, says he pores over books and newspapers each night, retaining incredible amounts of information.
But, Woods says, he has a hard time speaking in public because of his dyslexia. Words that ought to flow simply and naturally become cluttered in his mind when he is in front of an audience.
His sons, Toby and Charlie, had such severe dyslexia that Eva says they were below-par readers in third grade. One of Martinez's legislative initiatives is state-mandated retention of thousands of third-graders who read poorly.
The Woods kids forged ahead instead of being retained. Through study and plenty of help at home, both graduated from college.
Toby taught high school math before becoming manager of the family's 100-year-old farm. Charlie is an electrical engineer in Denver.
"Early childhood intervention is the secret" to kids becoming proficient readers, Woods said.

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War on Wisdom: Barry Schwartz, Prof. of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore

War on Wisdom:  Barry Schwartz,  Prof. of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore | Students with dyslexia & ADHD in independent and public schools | Scoop.it

There are various ways to do the right thing and most of them are flawed. One can meticulously adhere to rules, for example. Or eagerly perform for various incentives, financial or otherwise. We can avoid the sticks and savor the carrots.
And yet, as Barry Schwartz, the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College told the large audience gathered for his “Bring the Family Address” at the twenty-fourth annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, within each of these conventional forms of assuring that the “right” thing is done, reside a small minefield of problems that have crippled us as a society.
The author of the 2005 best seller “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less”, who is responsible for bringing to our consciousness the fact that too many choices are not good for us, pointed out another paradox in his approach to doing the right thing.
“This talk is about how we have too little choice,” he said. “ As a society we are giving people choices when then don’t need them and depriving them of choices where they do.”
After assuring the audience that one didn’t need to know a “single thing about psychology to understand and disagree” with his talk, he explained that America was “broken.” 

All the most fundamental institutions of a functioning society—healthcare, education, criminal justice, banking, politics– “do not work the way that they should.” Our carrots and sticks seem to miss the point, or make things worse. To resolve the problem one need only return to the ancient Greeks. “We need virtue,” he said. “A virtue that Aristotle referred to as ‘practical wisdom.’” It is very simple, really. Practical wisdom is “the will to do the right thing and the skill to figure out what the right thing is. “


Via Sakis Koukouvis
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