"Dyslexia Does Not Exist"

The place I worked for reckonned that it was a brain malfunction - though a mistake in the brains internal "filing system" as it were.

Although the researcher in the program said that he couldn't tell the difference between Dyslexic and "Ordinary" reading difficulties, I did rather wonder about the grouping of other symptoms around dyslexia - are these a response to/compensation for brain malfunctions?

And what about people who show many classic associated symptoms of Dyslexia - like myself (and my mum) with poor spelling and word letter reversals and inability to tell left from right - who never had the slightest trouble learning to read?

So, it does exist then?

Well, yes! That seemed to be the whole point, that it existed, but it wasn't what most people *thought* it was.

Also, that it really *wasn't* linked to IQ - which most Dyslexia experts have been saying for years - that either Dyslexia doesn't exist, or that it's much wider and more common than just the few that get diagnosed with actual dyslexia rather than being "thick"?

And how are you going to bring class issues into it, Dada? What, because it's only a disease that nice, middle class kids get? (Because the whole point seemed to be that only *certain* kids got recognised and treated for it? Are you going to say that it's only kids of a certain class, rather than kids that are "bright"?)

I mean, that seemed more an inditement of *mothers* (well, yeah, it's always the mother, isn't it) who are "too busy or too stressed" (which I read as "how dare middle class mothers go and have careers instead of staying home and playing with their kids?" but that's my personal bugbear) causing the problems. Even though they said parents, it was the *mothers* (one posh, one on an estate) that the program focused and and took to task for it.

I'm amazed that people still think this was "IQ" based, unless the very notion of "IQ" is what prescribes dyslexia, and the common understanding of measurable IQ is also wrong.

Chicken or the egg, really.

Though let's try to make this a thread that's *not* about class for a change, huh?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm, I think you'll find that depends what "working class" culture you come from. I think resources avaiable and the attitudes of professionals and teachers to poorer children is considerably more important.

x-post

I think you'll find that depends what "working class" culture you come from.

True. OK, and this is one of the things that my Scottish Enlightenment book really brought home to me, as that the near-religious worship of *education* (in fact, totally based on religion, due to the bible-reading demands of protestantism) cut across all classes in Scotland. But this isn't the case in England, and it's certainly not in America.

I think it was more that that diagnosis needed to be *widened* rather than dispensed with.

well yeah, exactly. he basically just rubbished the last 30 years of his own life.

i dunno if the misunderstandings around dyslexia come from the class or the (lack of) intelligence of the ones with the misunderstandings... in primary school (v working class area and most kids pretty thick, though we were a comparatively bright year) there was a girl called c who was definitely thick but also (i suspected) dyslexic, so in my (earnest, well-meaning, no doubt insanely irritating) way i went and asked her quietly if she thought she might be and she HIT THE FUCKING ROOF, totally interpreted "dyslexic" as "thick". apparently this had come up before and her family all interpreted one as the other, and no one likes being called thick, so she was a bit twitchy. stupid really.

Nevertheless I know a number of people with dyslexia and I have never connected it with IQ. Nevertheless bordeline cases (which often do not become clear until the pressures of University kick in, transcribing from lectures, the increased reading-load) are exactly that and could easily be confused for other learning difficulties or hitting your natural educational level.

Sounds like a programme who that did not understand its own thesis, presenting it badly and misrepresenting the nations view on dyslexia for its own aims.

i tht it was just mixing up the order of letters and shit.

!!! color me astonished

Where dyslexia can be connected with general intelligence (wary of even using IQ) is that brighter kids tend to find their own methods around it. Certainly when I learnt to read I recognised whole words rather than breaking them down into constitutent parts. In some ways my language toolbag is a bit rubbish therefore, spelling pretty poor, punctuation lousy, makes me I often assume a word is pronounced a particular way without looking at the bits of the word that makes it up and this makes me useless at foreign languages. I was always a fast reader, but this was because I developed my own version of skim reading (very easy to do as a child) which certainly did not help when I got to reading detailed philosophy tracts at University.

Am I dyslexic? Possibly. Has it ever really affected me, except for lousy typos and a general dislike of proofreading my own stuff, probably not. I was unlikely to get diagnosed at school because apparently there was not a problem.

If this = dyslexia, then I am dyslexic. I learned to read very young, but it was more sight reading, recognising words as wholes, etc. and very fast reader as a result. My spelling is hopeless, my pronounciation a mess - although I'm good at foreign languages, I'm much better at reading them rather than speaking or writing them. I don't have the faintest clue how many words are spelled when it comes to how they sound out -it's a question of whether the word *looks* right as a shape, or, as I learned to type, if my fingers went in the right places in the right order. My muscle memory is a lot better than my sight memory, which is why I've always been great at musical rote playing and improvisation but rubbish at sight reading.

LOL!

I wonder how adults react when they encounter new words - do you stop and sound it out, break it down into familiary syllables or other chunks? Or just pick it up as a whole and carry it along, grasping the meaning from context.

I liked reading as a child but mainly for the narrative and dialogue and so soon got into the habit of skipping much description or dull internal monologue. It is quite possible that this is the cause rathe rthan a symptom of me not having a very visual imagination. And here is the problem with kiddy brains. It is sometimes difficult to identify if a learnt behaviour is due to a difficulty or due to just a different habit.

Depends what kind of tit. Perky? Sillicone enhanced? The right one or the left one. ;-)))

There is a hereditary element

MY INFERRAL was that this was yet another sexist, conservative, right-wing dig at "how dare Middle Class women (i.e. those who could afford to do otherwise - that was the only reason I used Middle Class as a descriptor, though the brush tarred all mothers) insist on being so selfish as to dare to demand careers instead of staying home with their children like Good Mothers." I also ADMITTED in my own post that this was my own personal bugbear and not necessarily what the program implied.

However, I do believe that ALL women, regardless of class, have the RIGHT to pursue a career - not a privilege as Dave is implying.

as she always and unfailingly does... now that to me is batshit nonsense, but let's forget it, eh...

Just like you unfailingly bring your fucking kneejerk anti-middle-class reactions into bloody everything - THAT is what to me is batshit.

Now I will shut up like a good little woman and DNFTT.

i think you might very well be dyslexic kate, because you certainly can't read very well.

(Even though they did say "parents" I didn't see them interviewing any *dads* in council flats over their not spending enough time teaching nursery rhymes to their offspring.)

The issues of psycologiacal harm from parents can sometimes be obvious (HELLO ABUSIVE PARENTS) but can equally be completely random: over-protectiveness, conflicting signals. We don't know in many cases, and even if we did - it does not follow that the kids will necessarily be harmed by it.

I think the reason I became such a big reader was that both of my parents were big readers and the library was a fun place to go. I learnt to read to be like my mum and dad who would read and tell me to play quietly. I think the playing quietly skill was the one they were much keener on me grasping. (And my mother worked part time from when I was three, and my Dad worked away from home most weeks. Which means next to nothing in the scheme of things I think).

OTM.

I quote this again and again on education threads, but the number one indicator of how kids will do in education is not class or income or status or anything like that - it's how many books the parents have in their home.

x-post though yeah, that was what the program was saying.

and again...

There's plenty of research. He just couldn;t read it!

Dyslexia The Daily Mail 'is just a middle-class way to hide stupidity' - fixed

strike "hide" also.

and possibly "way to"

Dyslexia = impairment in reading ability, so of course it exists. Tsk.

hist si lliys just

My brother, was orginally thought by his teachers to be slow, stupid etc he also did the whole mirror writing as normal thing. Then he was diagnosed as having dyslexia in about 2nd year at secondary school and given the extra support and OMG the difference.

A'd his GCSE's.
A'd his A-Levels.
First class degree with Honours from Sussex.
Phd in some sort of molecular biology thing.
Now an expert in god knows what at the HPA.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7828121.stm

A Labour MP has claimed dyslexia is a myth invented by education chiefs to cover up poor teaching methods.

Backbencher Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley, describes the condition as a "cruel fiction" that should be consigned to the "dustbin of history".

He suggests children should instead be taught to read and write by using a system called synthetic phonics.

But Charity Dyslexia Action said the condition was "very real" to the 6m people in the UK affected by it.

Writing in a column for website Manchester Confidential, Mr Stringer said millions of pounds was being wasted on specialist teaching for what he called the "false" condition.

Mr Stringer claims the reason so many children fail to be taught to read and write properly is that the wrong teaching methods are used.

"The education establishment, rather than admit that their eclectic and incomplete methods for instruction are at fault, have invented a brain disorder called dyslexia," said the MP.

"To label children as dyslexic because they're confused by poor teaching methods is wicked.

"If dyslexia really existed then countries as diverse as Nicaragua and South Korea would not have been able to achieve literacy rates of nearly 100%.

how does dyslexia = illiteracy??

You know, it had never previously occurred to me to wonder if/how something like dyslexia might operate in different types of written languages, like ... I dunno, would you call Korean "logographic" or "logosyllabic" or something?

Backbencher Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley, describes the condition as a "creul fictoin" that should be consigned to the "dustbin of history".

lol @ "wicked"

is it making a comeback?

a shame he brought dyslexia into his article really because the stuff on illiteracy and crime and synthetic phonics is fair play. maybe the education depts of s korea and nicaragua are innumerate.

A few years ago I knew a person who made a living diagnosing learning disabilities (including but not limited to dyslexia) and providing advocacy services for those so diagnosed. Through this person I came to know others involved in this line of work: teachers, social workers, advocates, private businesspeople, etc.

The working definition most non-clinical diagnosticians involved in this line of work seemed to use went something like this:
If there is a specific area in which an individual performs substantially less well than their overall performance level, then that individual, by definition, has a learning disability. The degree of difference between overall ability and specific-skill performance that "counted" for diagnostic purposes seemed to vary greatly, but generally speaking, if a client generally functioned at a given level, but read at a markedly lower level, the client was said to suffer from dyslexia. Or if their math skills were below par, dyscalculia. Writing skills, dysgraphia. Etc.

Any individual with any recognized learning disability was entitled to accommodations under the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. This meant money for agencies that diagnose/advocate and big breaks for diagnosed students, so there was pressure from both directions (client and diagnostic agency) to diagnose. As it turned out, if you cast a sufficiently broad net and defined your learning processes narrowly enough, you found that almost everybody had at least one area in which they underperformed -- even if their overall performance was well above average.

I'm not saying that the diagnosis of learning disabilities was therefore a scam, but it seemed clear that there was a LOT of financial and social pressure to turn it into one.

Doesn't address whether or not these disabilities exist, but rather the way they become fictionalized in social practice.

Yeah, ideally the distinction is that the performance isn't just sub-par, it's identifiably disordered, right? Which seems to exist quite clearly in a number of people that can't really be waved away.

Agreed.

I was digging around on the net because I wanted to make a joke about vaccination rates in South Korea vs. UK, but I ran into this instead, and it made what you've been discussing here seem much more serious. 20 %. Good luck UK.

If you are one of the 20% of people in the UK who struggle with concentration or coordination and find it hard to read, write and learn - you are not alone. With its drug-free treatment programme, Dore has offered hope to thousands of people around the world. Its results are astounding and they're long term.

Dore specialise in the treatment of learning differences such as Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Autism, Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD.

Speaking as somebody who works with college kids mostly aged 16-18 I'd say 20% is a huge fucking underestimate but maybe I'm just having a long week.

It seems so unjust that dyslexia isn't spelled lysdexia.

It is.

Dore are recognised scammers who have gone bust in most countries they have operated in, just in case anyone is tempted to take them seriously.

Yeah, read www.badscience.net for ripping apart of Dore and their terrible practices.

I have studied lots of psych stuff but not that much re dylsexia. SO contenderizer's post is interesting. It's by no means the only psychological disorder/whatever to have its diagnosis tied up with politics.

I sat next to an American academic on a plane once, and he was apparently in the process of sueing his (British) University employers because they wouldn't give him extra funding for an assistant to help him overcome various struggles caused by dyslexia (ie academia involves lots of reading, writing, checking, which takes longer for a dyslexic).

In one sense I can sympathise with him as yeah, this is probably one of the worst jobs for a dyslexic, but another side of me thinks that it's not impossible for him to do his job/ improve reading speed etc (not saying he hasn't tried this). As contenderizer says, many people have skills that are below their other general capability levels and probably don't even think about it. Anyway I was amused at the culture clash - here as far as I can tell, schools etc are also pretty keen on testing for dyslexia as its now fairly commonly recognised. And you get loads of stuff like a computer if you 'pass', but most obvious dyslexic cases I know aren't bothered.

yeah, Dore are kind of specialist fearmongers. (xp)

I'm not sure 'logographic' is the right word for hangul, given it's the term used for hanzi/hanja/kanji/"chinese characters" ('ideographic' being wrongminded). You could almost call it alphabetic in that you have to build the syllables yourself out of jamo: the shape of the syllable's just like another set of spelling rules. On top of how confusing Korean spelling normally is.

There are dyslexics in Japan, apparently - some friends of mine took part in research on kanji dyslexia.

The basics of "dyslexia" seem incredibly broad, really -- a whole vague spectrum of processing problems running from text to word-recognition to decoding of new words and all the way to mental word-processing -- so it seems obvious that it could crop up in all sorts of languages; it's just interesting to me to think that it'd create really different effects depending on how the language functions, right? I'm really curious on what level, and with what effects, something like kanji dyslexia would present itself.

I remember reading an article about dyslexia in different languages and writing systems a few years ago; might be this one. (Fairly sure I got the link from ILX in the first place, so apologies if it was on this very thread)

Possibly unrelated, but it reminded me: when my cousin was 5 or 6 his teachers were worried because he had real troubles with numbers, he couldn't tell 2/5 or 6/9 apart and would be unable to put cards numbered 1-9 in order, but his family played Mah Jongg a lot and he could arrange the Chinese numbers written on the wan/character tiles in order like lightning.
http://www.otal.umd.edu/~vg/amst205.F96/vj07/pictures/mah_char.gif

a shame he brought dyslexia into his article really because the stuff on illiteracy and crime and synthetic phonics is fair play

It's Graham Stringer and he seems to like seeing his name in the papers