Dr Steve Dykstra: What do people mean when they say 1 in 5 children are dyslexic?
Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2016 9:02 pm
Dr Steve Dykstra has given IFERI permission to copy and paste his message below regarding the topic of 'dyslexia'. This is such a very important topic and IFERI share Steve's concerns below:
Steve wrote:
Steve wrote:
For a variety of reasons I am troubled enough by the lack of progress in the world of reading to finally comment on this issue in a way I have considered for some time.
What do people mean when they say 1 in 5 children are dyslexic? I know what I think they mean: that 1 in 5 children struggle so much to learn to read that they require extra attention in order to do so. But that doesn't make them dyslexic, and failure to read isn't the same thing as dyslexia.
I wouldn't really care except I think that common statistic, 1 in 5, does a lot of harm when it is presented as the rate of dyslexia. It says those children struggle (and at least that many do) because they have an inherent neurological condition that predestined them to struggle when it came time to learn to read. That simply isn't true. 75-80% of those children struggle because of other reasons, primarily poor instruction. These children are not pathological. They are simply in the lower half of a complex distribution of features, some of which are neurogenetic, so they suffer the consequences of poor instruction more severely.
They are not dyslexic. To say they are stands the definition of dyslexia on it's head. It says 20% of the population are born disabled. That's absurd. It also collects these instructional casualties under the same heading with children who will struggle to learn to read no matter how they are instructed. If we do that, then the diagnostic label and process have no meaning. It's like calling everyone in a wheelchair paraplegic, including those recovering from a broken leg, or someone who can't walk because they've been kept in bed for years.
Worse, saying 1 in 5 children are dyslexic shifts the attention away from problems with instruction and teacher training and toward these children. When we begin by saying they are disabled when they're not, we're saying their alleged disability is the problem when there is no disability, not for 75-80% of those 1 in 5.
We're not giving these children what they need, and what they need isn't special. It isn't analogous to advanced therapy. The problem is, in an educational sense, we are starving them. There's nothing wrong with these children. We're starving them! But once you say they are disabled, it shifts the focus. Suddenly, these kids are a special case. It isn't us, we haven't failed. These kids are disabled. You can't expect us to succeed with them. And even if I get you to do what they need, you'll only do it with them, not with the 80% of the kids who need it too.
Stretching the definition of dyslexia to an absurd extent, no matter the intention, does more harm than good. It confuses, it misleads, and it takes the attention away from where it should be. These kids are fine. There is exactly nothing wrong with them, yet they don't learn to read because we fail them.
They're not sick. We're starving them. Diagnosing them, and dyslexia is very much a diagnosis, disguises that essential truth.
Steve Dykstra, PhD
Psychologist