Posted on 05/29/2007 3:55:31 AM PDT by mek1959
Dyslexia is a social fig leaf used by middle-class parents who fear their children will be labelled as low achievers, a professor has claimed.
Julian Elliott, a leading educational psychologist at Durham University, says he has found no evidence to identify dyslexia as a medical condition after more than 30 years of research.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I think it's real just like ADHD, autism, etc. are real. But it is being used as an excuse by many so they don't have to work. I don't know how you'd fake dyslexia but I'd say a good number of those on drugs for ADD, etc. don't actually have those disorders.
My high school best friend was very smart, but dyslexic. If he was able to get help acquiring the information he could spit it back out on exams and such. He got a degree in History, and even though it’s impractical, he is great fun at parties because of all the history information in his head.
“Dyslexia is very much a real phenomenon, as is ADHD. Neither is a handicap, as both my brother and I can attest. They have absolutely nothing to do with intelligence or achievement potential. They are merely inconvenient for standard teaching methodologies.”
Thank you for your comments. Was beginning to believe nobody understood that this is a very real problem for lots and lots of people, no matter what their social/economic status. The irony of this disorder is that people who have ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, etc. often have higher than average i.q.s
Actually the poster was describing the two main methods used to teach reading.
I went to elementary school in the late 50’s early 60’s and the Dick and Jane books used the whole word method, sometimes called the sight method.
See Dick Run, See Jane Run, See Spot Run...they taught you to recognize certain words and then repeated them over and over in books, constantly adding more words to each new book.
My first grade teacher also taught phonics,(thankfully.) And that way you learn the sounds of different letters and are able to “sound out” words, even if you haven’t seen them before.
Most kids do better with phonics, but I have run into kids who just can’t master a phonetic approach to reading and have to learn through the sight method.
I’ve heard leftists decry Phonics teaching, especially WRT homeschooling,
because they believe the “motive” behind teaching phonics is so that children will be able to read the Bible sooner.
Perhaps it will give some much needed context to a victimization culture. Our country is certainly not stronger as a result of the humanistic teachings of Maslow and Carl Rogers that permeate the modern psychology movement today.
For what it’s worth, I have a severely disabled son who dispite his disease (9 surgeries and 30+ fractures as recent as yesterday) does not see himself through the lens of his disease. You’d be the one more likely to ask him what’s wrong with him rather than him volunteering that he has MAS. How often to I hear “I’m ADD, or ADHD, or Dyslexic, or this or that” and that’s why I can’t....
I’m not for a minute saying that everyone who claims to have these “diseases” is that overt, but as a small business employer, you cannot imagine how many of the younger generation have some “disability”.
Thank goodness no one diagnosed Chuck Yeager as ADD, ADHD etc. Perhaps we would never have known we could safely break the sound barrier. I’m quite sure he was a handful when he was a young boy.
Until I met my MIL, I would tell people that I had never met anyone who is truly stupid, although I prefer the term simple-minded. She takes just about everything at face value, and seems to be unable to think deeply about anything.
My niece has severe dyslexia, but she just graduated with a BS in food science.
I talked to her about her reading, especially when I noticed her having trouble reading a children’s book.
I don’t think Phonics would help someone like her, because she doesn’t see the letters in the order that they appear on the page, making it impossible to “sound out” a word.
Well, he certainly wasn't upper class. He was rich, but that's not the same thing.
Both your theories on dyslexia and AD(H)D are very interesting. Perhaps you and this “professor” can try to do years of research, examine the brainwaves of people who supposedly have this unprovable dyslexia and AD(H)D and prove that those disorders don’t exist.
Hell, it’s much better than using anecdotal evidence and political talking points like what you’re doing.
And by the way, the disorders were proven to exist. The brainwaves of a non-dyslexic and a non AD(H)D patient were proven to be different.
>>Julian Elliott, a leading educational psychologist at Durham University, says he has found no evidence to identify dyslexia as a medical condition after more than 30 years of research.<<
I don’t have a personal opinion on this topic... But
1. I am not surprised is some people have have high intelligence but trouble reading.
2. I would think you would want a medical doctor to say whether something is a medical condition instead of an “educational psychologist”
Imagine if this vindictive comment/title was aimed at any other group...
“C”’s do not bring extra money to a school district. Labels do!! Nuff said.
>>According to Professor Elliott, dyslexic university students are gaining an unfair advantage by getting extra time for their studies and many are getting diagnosed simply to get up to £10,000 worth of equipment including laptops and extra books.
University lecturers have complained about students “milking the system” by pretending they have the condition.<<
It is possible that the diagnosis is sometimes misused but that does not, by itself, mean that it is always misused.
Any surprise that they vote mostly Democratic?
You stole the words out of my mouth!
For kids with this condition, who do not get the kind of intensive one-on-one that was needed to fix it early in the game, I can see them having a permanent reading problem
One of the more memorable school moments. I remember thinking something like, "oh, so this is school. Their stories are different from regular stories."
My kids were raised on phonics and taught to read at home in a total of ten hours each, at age 4-1/2. They thought Dick and Jane books were exceptionally strange.
FYI, Dr. Seuss got his start because of whole language, although accidentally. His publisher told him that he had to write a children's book with a limited number of words (around 30). They gave him a list including the words, "hat," and "cat." You know the rest of the story.
It can and is, Methods started long ago by French researchers do wonders in treating dyslexia, and have started in the last few years to be incorporated by some in the United States with much success.
I just saw a report on this stuff not all that long ago.
Dyslexia occurs in all cultures and regions, though english and french seem to have worse times than other languages studied, the belief is that the languages are more complex, while English may only have 40 sounds, it has countless ways to spell many of the same sounds... if you have issues with the associating sounds with visual queues that represent them, this would make the effects certainly more pronounced in languages such as English.
I don’t agree with this Doctor that dyslexia does not exist at all. He’s welcome to his opinion, but I don’t agree with it at all.
This has been my experience in my homeschool instruction. For a long time, phonics was the way to teach reading, and "dyslexia" was unknown. "Dyslexia" is just a way to label somebody who needs phonics instruction rather than "Whole Language"
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