Review
Having assumed the role of devil's advocate and drastically trivialized the act, I will state my case for writing and support the laudable mission of the current unique monograph, The Writing Dilemma. Writing indeed represents the ultimate neurocognitive integrative act. It is the supreme accomplishment of a developing young mind. It is in the act of writing and only in the act of writing that a seemingly diverse collection of germinating neurodevelopmental functions and academic subskills coalesce and collaborate. Writing demands the vigorous participation of attention, multiple forms of memory, language, critical and creative thought, brainstorming, motor output, metacognition, progressive automatization, organization, synchronization and even visualization. In addition, writing represents a formidable challenge to problem solving skill, as exigencies, such as planning, previewing, topic selection, strategy use, self-monitoring, and pacing represent core components of the problem solving act. Writing is as well a social skill, as renditions on paper are cautiously guided by the author's conscious insights into the backgrounds, preferences, and expectations of prospective readers (including the ever-changing parade of requirements and personal tastes found among individual teachers).
Two obvious inferences can be drawn: first of all, writing is a wide-open window on central nervous system development and function. This is especially the case during the middle childhood years, ages 10 to 15, when writing facility or difficulty is a commentary on the ways in which critical neurodevelopmental functions are progressing and becoming tightly interwoven. Second, it should be obvious that in the process of becoming a writer, a student is honing and blending the widest possible range of subskills and underlying brain processes. Thus, writing serves to solidify and integrate the very same functions that are needed to master writing in the first place! Regrettably, some students harbor neurodevelopmental dysfunctions or variations that thwart writing attainment. Some become writing phobic. They write as little and as passively as they can. As a result, these non-writers lose ground with respect to language progression, memory capacity, organizational skill and the other essential abilities that we have mentioned. While most careers do not stress writing, they all call for strengths in writing's neurocognitive underpinnings.
There exist a multitude of possible reasons (and very commonly combinations of reasons) for a student's writing failure or reluctance. Consequently, there are many subtypes of writing disorder. When we come to understand the reasons for a particular child's writing difficulty, we have learned an enormous amount about that individual's intrinsic "wiring." That which we have so discovered and uncovered can have vital implications for understanding the whole child, and for substantially heightening his or her level of academic productivity as well as pride.
Up until now, writing has been a well guarded territory narrowly divided between professional disciplines. When psycholinguists or speech and language pathologists have spoken of writing problems, they have referred to them as disabilities of written language. Motor specialists have assumed that writing problems are the result of neuromuscular coordination deficits. Others have invoked exclusively attention deficits, laziness (and like forms of moral turpitude), performance anxiety, or other simplistic, global, and rather monopolistic attributions for all writing failure.
Clearly, it is time for a holistic approach to the understanding of writing and of problems with writing. The Writing Dilemma offers the education world an embarrassingly overdue breakthrough, as this most important work acknowledges and describes vividly the multiple possible breakdown points that must be considered in a child who is not developing writing skills. Regina Richards lucidly puts forth a range of practical suggestions tailored to individual children with specific dysfunctions that obstruct the transcription of their thoughts on paper. A book on writing probably ought to be well written. This one is. As such, it will be of inestimable value to educators, to clinicians, to parents, and ultimately to the many exasperated students whose disappointing written output has been sadly misinterpreted by themselves and by the adults whose respect they crave. No child needs or deserves to suffer writing humiliation, we assert penitently! -- Dr. Mel Levine Professor of Pediatrics University of North Carolina Medical School Director, The Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning Founding President, All Kinds of Minds A Nonprofit Institute for the Understanding of Differences in Learning
