Learning Disabilities

It is widely assumed that learning disabilities result from a difference in cerebral functioning. This perception is drawn from the observed differences in brain functioning between those capable of high level performance and those incapable of high level performance. The observation is not disputable, and the conclusion seems logical. But causation is always difficult to prove. For instance . . .

• If two students know the alphabet, one has a functioning literal vocabulary of several hundred words while the other has no concept of written language, would their brains function differently during a spelling test?

• Of two students in algebra class, one has mastered the prerequisite learning, and the other has second grade arithmetic skills - will their brains function differently while attempting to solve for X in quadratic equations?

• Assume that two students love music and both are strong solo performers. One reads music expertly and performs complex solo piano literature – the other is a self-taught pop singer who does not read music at all. Will their brains function differently if they are asked to analyze and write the figured bass of a Bach chorale?

In every case, the answer is that we should expect significant difference in brain functioning. However - in no case is it safe to assume that the brains of the high performing students are different from the brains of the low performing (or non-performing) students. The only thing we know about the brains of each pair is that the level of training in the required skill is different, so the students have to work toward the solution in different ways. The trained individual relies on experiences and knowledge that are stored in memory. The untrained individual must resort to improvisation, drawing conclusion from context, and guessing.

Because our lives, each decade, each year, and so on down to the current second are time measurements which we experience and use continually, we assume that human perception of time is a naturally occurring phenomenon - like breathing the air around us. In fact, the contrary may be closer to the truth.

Consider the animals, one of our closest and most continuous encounters with nature.  They make instinctive use of seasons and cycles that aid them in their natural will to thrive. But they are beings with little need for an understanding of hours, minutes, and seconds. Just as a deer races over the prairie with no thought of speed or distance, it exists in timeless naivety with no need for time to measure its actions or its life.  It seems to live in the constant present with little thought for the past and no concern for the future.

We should assume that we enter the world in a similar state. Just as we learn to spell, learn to use numbers to advantage, and learn the intricacies of music, we must learn to relate to time. Without that learning, we relate to time like a baby relates to a book.  We exist in the same space, but there is no consciousness of the benfits available through understanding of that object.

Most of us learn about time in the natural course of our lives. We learn to relate sunrise to sunset – then breakfast to dinner – then school’s start time to lunch time – then lunch time to nap time – and so on to ever decreasing spans by which we measure our lives and our activities. That is a simple process. In fact, for those who can hold a thought for significant periods of time, it is inevitable that we learn time perception just by living and relating recurring events to other recurring events. Without being aware of the learning, we begin to use time as a tool just as we eventually learn to use a ruler, an odometer, or a measuring cup.

Because high functioning adults – read "teachers" – perceive time perception as an obvious and ubiquitous natural phenomenon, we teach spelling, mathematics, music, etc., but we don’t teach time perception.  We wouldn’t think of teaching it any more than we would think to teach breathing or eye blinking.  Although time perception, breathing, and blinking all seem to be involuntary phenomenon, our previous observation of animals illustrates that time perception is unlike the other two.

For those students who have difficulty focusing attention for extended periods, time perception is difficult to understand and even harder to learn.  Teachers expect students to pick up the skill on the way to other learning or as a natural part of development. As described above, their exposure to time perception tasks consists of their experiencing and relating to larger spans of time, which are by far the hardest to recognize and perceive.  During each of these time spans, the ADD student has thousands of adventures, some of them real and some of them virtual. If there is nothing happening in the environment, the ADD student creates mental adventures that stimulate a restless brain. We might call this need for adventure "event consciousness," which is the opposite of "time consciousness."

How would we teach time perception as a skill to be acquired in the normal way that humans acquire skills? That would require that we develop a sequential curriculum starting with the least difficult and most easily acquired learning. Small blocks of time are infinitely more accessible than large blocks of time. In other words, we must provide captivating events at a rate that precludes the ADD brain creating its own internal events.

Like some very expensive but well-documented therapies, the K-12 RhythmBee Program provides precisely that opportunity. Every student has a chance to relate to time in incremental steps using simple skills first, and then moving into more complex representations of time in music performance. All the while, the multisensory nature of a RhythmBee experience attracts the attention of even the most distractable student.

Left to Right

Dyslexia is most often characterised by the brain perceiving letters of a word in an order other than that on the page. Other symptoms are also present, including a complete lack of rhythmic awareness. But the scrambling of lettes from their written sequence is the stereotypical one. A visual aid which trains the eye to track carefully over each feature in turn is the most evident feature of the RhythmBee Program. So dyslexic students experience proper sequencing and unerring rhythm from the very first lesson. They are able to learn just as we learn to walk and talk. They are allowed to try until they master the task.

Many educators and LD specialists believe that to be the "magic" of the RhythmBee program.