UK Labour MP calls dyslexia 'a cruel fiction'
A Labour MP says dyslexia is a myth to cover up bad teaching of reading and writing.
Graham Stringer, MP for Manchester Blackley, also suggested there was a link between illiteracy and crime - as prisons were full of people unable to read and write.
He describes the condition as a "cruel fiction", claiming it is "no more real than the 19th century scientific construction of 'the aether' to explain how light travels through a vacuum."
"The sooner it is consigned to the same dustbin of history, the better."
Mr Stringer suggested the dyslexia "industry" should be "killed off" through the "magic bullet" of teaching children to read and write by using a phonetic system of sounding letters and words.
He made the comments while writing a column for Manchester Confidential, an entertainment and review website about the city.
From the Independent. I don't know quite what to make of this.
Where do I start?
There is no doubt some over-diagnosis going on (for the purpose of getting funding), some failure to attend to phonetic discrimination in the young, but dyslexia does exist, in several forms.
But this is the mantra of the 90's ... surely old news now.
Yes it's important to monitor and ensure phonetic learning, and systematic phonetic-based instruction can be useful for remediation. However, it is not the answer for every child and in particular tends to slow down fast learners.
I think if this MP checks, he'll find teachers are very aware of this, and likely offended that he's getting some air time at their expense.
It's just not that simple!
Yeah, it seems like he's going too far. I guess what he means is that what we call "dyslexia" isn't the nice clearcut medical condition that it's sometimes presented as. I wonder if Mr. Stringer is a fan of Thomas Szasz?
It never was clearcut, and never will be. We don't completely know the effects of industrial toxins in the air, water and soil on learning, for example.
We do know that for some kids, certain things are more difficult than they are for others, intelligence aside.
I had the pleasure once of facilitating a research group of teachers, from both sides of the 'whole language v phonics' false divide. I also had the pleasure of seeing them put the whole picture together, pretty much as I stated it above.
Diagnosis of learning disabilities is more in the realm of psychologists, not psychiatrists. Medical practitioners depend on others to do these assessments. They just report the diagnosis as their own. (oops! slap! cheap shot! teehee!)
I've often thought that the move away from phonics (happened when I was in school) was devastating to a huge number of kids. One thing I noticed in college and high school was the HUGE number of my classmates who were practically illiterate when it came to spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. All because this "whole reading" horseshit came along to replace actual, you know, phonics, grammar and spelling lessons.
Now I think schools are integrating both whole reading AND phonics, and I think that's a much better approach. Whole reading DOES work for some kids who really catch on quickly. And whole reading is important to all kids, I think, as part of their curriculum so that they get a feel for the language and the look of it. But even those kids who catch on quickly when it comes to language arts (I was one of them) need explicit lessons in phonics, grammar rules and spelling rules.
And I don't think overdiagnosing dyslexia and other learning disabilities is helpful. I think learning disabilities exist - it's kind of dumb to say dyslexia doesn't exist - but I also think that a lot of diagnoses of learning disabilities are actually teaching disabilities. And I think the same way about behavioural diagnoses like ADD and ADHD. Sure, I think those conditions exist, but I also think that a huge percentage of diagnoses of these disorders are actually just kids who are more active than other kids, who don't learn well from sitting at a desk, or who are unable to concentrate for external reasons (poor diet, for example).
So I think this guy's comments go too far, but I also think that he makes a good point about brushing off bad teaching by labeling the children who find it hard to learn from the current teaching style.