You state that “most non-English speaking countries routinely achieve virtually 100% literacy for their populations”. I feel this carries the misleading implication that English speaking countries tend to have lower literacy rates.

Certainly, on pursuing Graham Stringer’s claims of 100% literacy in various countries, I found them to be contradicted by most sources.

Wikipedia’s list of literacy rates makes interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

Personally, I’d take any comparison based on that with a pinch of salt. Are we to place the same level of confidence on North Korea’s and Canada’s claims to have achieved 99% literacy?

However, the point you make is a good one – English spelling is particularly irregular and difficult for dyslexics like me.

Eddie Carron

Isobel Appleton

The fact remains that we have an observable phenomina: the existance of a group of people posessing a recognisable cluster of anomalous attributes – some strengths, some weaknesses. This group have been termed dyslexic because one of those attributes is a problem dealing with text.

The fact that good teaching (which will probably include phonics, synthetic or otherwise) can help these people overcome many of their difficulties in learning to read and write, does not remove the fact that they are a statistically identifiable population. Nor does learning to read and write remove the range of other issues that dyslexics face when trying to intigrate with a non-dyslexic world.

Happily the recently published report by Sir Jim Rose concludes that dyslexia does exist and makes many sensible recommendations.

However, the cause in the differences of those scans has not, until recently, been investigated; they’ve simply been accepted as proof of the existence of dyslexia for those with a vested interest in such “proof”.

When “dyslexic” children are taught correctly, that is, using synthetic phonics, the neurological condition disappears.

The cause, then, of differences in brain scans between “dyslexics” and good readers is how they have been taught. Dyslexia is an inculcated condition wrought by improper instruction that results in a temporal, neurological condition.

There is no such thing as dyslexia; it is dysteachia.

In contrast to Graham Stringer’s risible article, Julian Elliott’s work is coherent and based on facts. The popular presentations of his work, however, take a similarly narrow definition of the problem. The argument seems to be that once a child has been taught to read and write, the question of dyslexia has no more meaning.

This is at odds with my experience.

I have known many adults who struggled through the education system, eventually managing to learn to read and write, but in adult life always felt out of step with the world around them – sensing that other people were doing things differently but not quite being able to put their finger on what the difference was. Then at some point (typically when they re-entered education) it was pointed out to them that they were probably dyslexic.

Suddenly their many strange quirks fell into a pattern. The fact that they could not easily remember left from right or track the flow of time or retrace their steps out of a big building. Their anomalous abilities were also pointed out to them. It was a moment of huge relief for many. A psychological burden being removed. A puzzle explained.

I am quite prepared to look at arguments that say the funding structures in education are distorted by the idea of a single one-size-fits-all diagnosis of ‘dyslexia’. And synthetic phonics – wonderful. If it works, let its use be expanded. (It seems to be extremely similar to the system that was used to teach me after I was diagnosed with dyslexia back in the 1970s.) But to say: because we can now teach all children to read and write ‘dyslexia doesn’t exist’ is to miss the point entirely.

Dyslexia is a physical difference in the brain that gives rise to a fairly well established cluster of differences in functioning – positive and negative. It is not – as its name implies, and Stringer clearly believes – a synonym for illiteracy.

As to the assertion that: “if you cannot accurately define or diagnose something then it cannot be said to exist” – science progresses by making observations of phenomena that are imperfectly understood, forming hypotheses and then testing them. Dyslexia was a term coined to described a perplexing phenomenon. Since that time understanding has increased. But no one would say that it is yet fully understood. Far from it. Perhaps, when the science of the brain has progressed further it will turn out to be more than one condition. I would think that is highly likely.

Early medicine might have described many different illnesses with the same words – “a fever” perhaps, or a “congestion of the lungs”. It took developments in medicine before the specific causes could be identified – different varieties of flu, which can only now be defined genetically. H1N1 flu existed before it could be properly defined or diagnosed.

Dyslexia exists also.

Have you read “Dyslexia, How would I cope.” If not I would be happy to send you a coppy.