Dedicated to dyslexics

By Peeyush Agnihotri

GUESS what Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison had in common? All three suffered from dyslexia, a learning disability, during their childhood. Many people associate dyslexia with the reversal of letters of words, poor spellings and an inability to do mathematical problems. Though these symptoms are present in some individuals with specific learning disabilities, they are by no means the only problems which a child might suffer from. Dyslexia is quite common in pre-primary schools. Nearly 10 per cent of the population is believed to suffer seriously from the disorder and about 20 per cent suffers from it in a milder form.

Learning disabilities, a slow process of development and mental retardation among children, are abnormalities that all parents dread. Imagine the plight of a mother when instead of responding to a stimuli, her child gives her a blank stare.

When the parents realise that their bundle of joy, whom they were ecstatic about, suffers from stunted development, they do not know where to look for solace. What weighs on their mind is the corrective measure they should take so that their child does not become a laggard.

Organisations, like the Indian National Portage Association (INPA), during such a time appear like manna to the beleaguered parents. Dedicated to children in the age group of 0-6 years, INPA is a non-profit voluntary educational professional organisation, with its headquarters at Chandigarh, and is an affiliate of the International Portage Association. Persistently working for past more than four years, INPA has taken upon itself the onerous task of visiting slum areas and villages to educate and teach parents of the mentally infirm economically disadvantaged pre-school children.

It caters to the needs of the children at risk of developmental delays, learning disabilities and mental retardation and provides educational, vocational and personal guidance to the parents.

"Trained home advisors visit the home and pre-school educational centres and study children with special needs. Or, sometimes parents whose children suffer from some sort of mental disability visit us. We then chalk out strategy to cope with the child, which obviously depends from case to case," said Dr Tehal Kohli, president, INPA. It was this concept which gave birth to the name of the organisation. The word ‘portage’ derives its name from the fact that the organisation acts as a bridge and carries the services to the doorsteps of the needy.

Started in 1969 from Winconsin (USA), the concept soon caught on and the International Portage Association came into being. The INPA is an affiliate of the same and was formalised on January 23, 1994.

The portage model of teaching is divided into four phases. During the first phase, a weekly curriculum is planned by home advisors.The curriculum’s objective is taught during the second phase. The third phase sees to it that curriculum objectives are recorded and assessed and in the fourth phase curriculum objectives are evaluated on the basis of the targets set for teaching.

"The INPA volunteers try to correct the disability through behavioural therapies, group counselling or by playway techniques. Kits, toys and audio-visual aids are used. Though basic intelligence remains constant, environment can enrich it," Dr Kohli said and added that success rate had been tremendously high.

"I don’t claim that children became perfectly normal after sessions with the INPA, but they registered a sharp level of improvement in their abilities. Inspired by the results, the association started two AICTE-approved courses for specialising volunteers and those interested in training the learning disabled," she said. "The courses had been beneficial for pre-service and in-service training of primary and secondary school teachers as well since these helped the teachers to identify and help the learning disabled," she added. She said that still there were lot of misconceptions about mentally retarded and learning-disabled children. "A lot of people think that severely retarded children are helpless, whereas in reality, with appropriate educational programming, such persons could lead relatively independent life," Dr Kohli averred.

She claimed that with time people have got enlightened about the cause and more and more people are coming forward to help the association. "Despite this, what is needed is that it should be emphasised how even a small gesture from the public can make a big difference," she said.

A ray of hope! Organisations like the INPA make these not-so-perfect creation of God believe in themselves. And in belief there is power as our hope becomes a reality.

The journalist as artist

By Darshan Singh Maini

A LTHOUGH the business of the journalist as a major sociological phenomenon that has changed the face of human history since its rise to recognition,eminence and power over a century ago, particularly in the West, continues to be a major player in the field of "the Information Revolution" today its not surprising to find it still excluded from the world of letters in general.Perhaps there are good reasons for treating the journalist per se with a dash of irony and indulgence, and deny him the front parlour. For the role conceived for him — as reporter, commentator and analyst — seems, as it were, to exclude him from the higher reaches of the imagination where the muses dwell. In sum, he may not be classed with the artist, novelist, poet, literary essayist etc, for his aesthetics (if any) have a different dynamics, a different dialectic and a different direction. This being the general impression, it remains to be seen how in our times, the line between journalism and creative art tends to disappear where a symbiosis of news and knowledge and vision is effected through a benign piracy of the imagination. Such examples, though still rare in Indian journalism, have had a fairly long tradition even if it developed, as in the United States, as a well-tended, minority culture, which eventfully helped establish what’s called "literary journalism" today.

Since I take my cue from the American models here, the "journalism" of Henry James and his treatment of the trade in his novels and tales in the form of both caricatures and voyeuristic snoopers, and in that of visionary writers with a creative impulse, should serve my argument. Since James, America’s greatest novelist who interpreted life on "both sides of the Atlantic", and wrote inspiring pieces of journalism for the American papers — The Paris Letter, for The Tribune, New York in the seventies of the last century being a typical Jamesian exercise —, it would, I think, put the argument in perspective if we for a moment, returned to the role of the journalist in his different avatars.

Since its the American mode and format that, in general, form the tapestry of Indian dailies, weeklies, glossies, etc, today, a peep into the American view of the journalist qua journalist becomes necessary. And this brings me to a seminal statement, The Art of Newspaper Making (1895), by Charles Dana who,perhaps, more than any other contemporary American, sought to give a definite air, elan and energy to the newspaper in keeping with the requirements of the American settler — puritan imagination. In brief, in his own chain of papers and in his lectures, Dana envisaged a typical reporter as "a cultural hero, tough uncompromising", and willing to initiate ideas and action. As a recent critic put it, he emphasised "the essential manliness of the journalistic calling". Joseph Pulitzer in an address (1883) considered accuracy as of supreme importance. "Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman", he wrote. Again, it should be clear that the gender language indirectly emphasises manliness and integrity. Undoubtedly, the expression and the sentiment behind it are bound to raise hackles today, and there’s no need to drag in the latest gender theories of power into the argument. For the 19th century context had its own rationale, and its own problematics.But no, even then, Henry James and others of his persuasion, though convinced of Dana’s bona fides had many a reservation. And its such considerations that slowly effected changes in the art of journalism, imbuing at least a section of it with the energy of thought, poetry, vision, creativity and dream, which was in other words, a way of making a popular kind of writing high-minded, high-toned, ensuring at once Dana’s vigour and strenuousness and the Jamesian view of linking journalism to the concepts of culture, social responsibility and civilisation. And in any such transformation, the use of fictive modes and vehicles of expression — affective and visionary language, the use of philosophical, theological, critical insights to create patterns and evoke archetypal responses and paradigms — would, of necessity, be the tools of interpret the events and personages that form the stuff newspapers are made of. In short, such a journalist, would normally have a background of world history, culture, thought, art, poetry, fiction etc, in order to reach down to the grid of energies behind a given event, tragedy or disaster such as the Operation Bluestar trauma, the Babri Masjid outrage, the Bombay blasts. Yes, even our latest nuclear tests, if you like.By merely reporting factually or even graphically tragedies of such magnitude, one may never reach the heart of truth which is often that "heart of darkness". Facts in themselves tell little. Or, to recall Pirandello’s words, what can one do with a "sack of facts with nothing inside to make them stand up". If a report or a commentary or an editorial remains just a rehash of events with a vague opinion or two thrown in, its bound to sag like a "sack", and disappear from the reader’s line of vision.

Hence the need of connecting contemporary events with the larger history of ideas, with their nuclear energies, with their poetic truths, and with their potential consequences.In any such writing, therefore, musings and reflections, fantasy and fancy etc. find their own place. No wonder, quotations and classical sayings, aphorisms and utterances often lace such a discourse or narrative. Above all, its in the energies of the language in question that such a literary journalist finds his truest expression. And that language must be, as far as possible, free of clichés, old soiled idioms and phrases, jaded jargon etc. It’s in the freshness and newness of his rhetoric that such a writer may achieve his aesthetic nirvana. And the word rhetoric here is not being used in its pejorative, but primal sense, as the art of persuasion.

Often, literacy prose of this nature is full of little traps for the unwary reader. Thus one requires a certain trained mind to decode signs and symbols and thus understand the grammar of dashes, codicils, parenthesis, dots etc. Often a certain kind of compression becomes necessary in view of the space at one’s disposal and then the tenor of the argument in progress may begin to acquire a certain complexity. Often such a complexity is mistaken for wilful obscurity, and that’s where a literary journalist has to be wary and vigilant. If the thought is lost in the process itself, the first aim of all writing — communication — itself is defeated. Thus, literary journalism imposes a very different kind of obligation, and it needs to create a different order of taste. It, in other words, creates a readership of "engagement", and a community of commonalities.