Oral vs. Written Language–Two Talks on Twitter

In the last 24 hours, I’ve participated in two different but intersecting discussions on Twitter—one on phonics, the other on autism. Their point of intersection: the question of oral vs. written language.

First, Phonics

The phonics discussion was one I couldn’t help jumping into. A distinguished education professor and specialist in reading instruction dismissed someone’s linguistically accurate observations about consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) patterns by telling them they should take a class in linguistics. I’ve taken many classes in linguistics, so I piped in as follows:

A review of In A Different Key

I’ve just finished reading In a Different Key, a book by John Donvan and Caren Zucker subtitled “The Story of Autism.” It’s the most comprehensive, in-depth, even-handed history of autism I’ve read so far.

Published in 2016, the book begins with the first formal diagnosis—back in 1942, Leo Kanner’s “Case 1”—and proceeds through the various wrong-headed theories (“refrigerator mothers”; normal children “locked inside”; post-natal, vaccine-induced “brain injuries”) and wrong-headed approaches (institutionalization; psychotherapy; behavioral modification through cattle prods); to the panic about a growing autism epidemic as the diagnostic criteria shift and as the reported rates increase from an original estimate of 1 in 4,000 to a rate of 1 in 66 at the time of publication. (We’re now at 1 in 59).

The book ends with two recent developments.