No Such Thing As Dyslexia?

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Melendez

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Did anyone, forum teachers especially, see the dispatches program on Channel 4 last night? I have a son who is diagnosed as dyslexic. He has a reading ability 3 years above his age (I don't know how they calculate that, but it is pretty much in line with his peers) but he makes some of the classic dyslexic errors when reading such as guessing the end of a sentence, and tends to spell phonetically as well as mixing up "b"s and "d"s, "w"s and "m"s etc.

The program seemed to infer that the non existence of dyslexia, as opposed to just having poor readers/spellers, was something that should have been of concern to parents. Maybe I missed something, but all I noticed was that the name of the problem was slightly different to what I had thought before, and the required support and learning techniques are every bit as valid as they ever were.

Did I miss something? Comments appreciated!
 
I wish I had seen the programme. I have tutored Maths to two separate kids who had been diagnosed dyslexic. Similarly, they showed all the classic symptoms.

I was very puzzled to see the show advertised, but was out for dinner and missed its screening.
 
The main gist of the programme, correct me someone if I'm wrong, was that traditionally, children with average intelligence and above who were bad at reading/spelling were classified as dyslexic and got whatever support was going. Children with below average intelligence were classified as thick and got no support. The program was saying that the ability to read and write is not a function of intelligence, they used the analogy of being tone deaf, and that support was equally beneficial to the thick and bright alike. Basically all poor readers have the exact same learning difficulty and classifying them into dyslexic and thick has no basis in science.
 
It's difficult to comment without having seen the programme. My personal view is that too many people claim to be dyslexic. I do believe dyslexia exists but is much less widespread than generally claimed.
 
Originally posted by Melendez@Sep 9 2005, 09:42 AM
The main gist of the programme, correct me someone if I'm wrong, was that traditionally, children with average intelligence and above who were bad at reading/spelling were classified as dyslexic and got whatever support was going. Children with below average intelligence were classified as thick and got no support. The program was saying that the ability to read and write is not a function of intelligence, they used the analogy of being tone deaf, and that support was equally beneficial to the thick and bright alike. Basically all poor readers have the exact same learning difficulty and classifying them into dyslexic and thick has no basis in science.
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If that's the case then I could believe the programme's claims are correct.
 
I caught the last bits of it - I am particuarly interested as my 7 yr old son is below par at reading and writing, it seems a very general diagnosis to me, the main jist of the program I caught was that no matter how much money they throw at schools, the standards have not improved. I do feel that many children show symptoms of dyslexia as part of their learning, ie remembering left and right, mistaking b's and d's, I think it may be over diagnosed too.
 
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