In September 2005 a program on The Dyslexia Myth was shown on the UK Channel 4 Dispatches program. Following the reaction to this program the producer of the program, David Mills, published a comment on what he identified as the five major views about the future use of the term 'dyslexia': This comment was reprinted in the LDA Bulletin (Vol 40, Nos. 3 and 4, September/December 2008). See attached.
In summary, these five views were as follows:
View 1
The term dyslexia should be dropped completely, and replaced with the terms 'reading problems' or in more severe cases 'reading disability'.
While sympathetic to this view, Mills concluded the term dyslexia is so ingrained that a lot of people would still go on using it, and that it is a handy term for those trying to focus attention on the needs of those with reading problems.
View 2
'Dyslexia' can be redefined to describe all children who find it difficult learning to read because of phonological problems.
The problem with this view is that this could result in labelling up to one fifth of children as 'dyslexic'. Given that so many children have problems learning to read, this could be seen as applying a label of ‘abnormality’ to what is an entirely normal experience for quite a lot of children.
View 3
'Dyslexia' should only be used to describe children with the severest problems.
The problem with this definition is that it would not distinguish between children whose reading problems were due to poor teaching, and who would have learned to read if they had been properly taught, and those whose problems were due to underlying problems of neural processing, and who would continue to have reading problems despite the best and most effective teaching possible. It could also suffer from the difficulty of arriving at a cut off point, so that on one side of this line a child would be labelled dyslexic, while on the other, a very similar child would not be.
View 4
'Dyslexia' should be used only for the 1-2 per cent of children with a long-term reading problem who do not respond to the best school teaching currently possible.
This is the view that is supported by David Mills, and which he claims is supported by many leading researchers. It would mean that 'dyslexia' defines a clear group of children who are significantly disabled and for whom special help is both needed and justified.
View 5
'Dyslexia' should no longer be really associated with reading problems nor defined in relation to reading.
The problem with this view us that there seems to be little agreement on whether such a pattern exists, or if it does exist how at present it might be defined.
While I am sympathetic to View 1, I would agree with David Mills that it would be virtually impossible to get people to stop using the term dyslexia.
The only other option would be to find a way of defining dyslexia, or using the term, in a way that would be most useful in terms of providing support to all students who have difficulties in learning to read, according to their needs.
I think that adopting a definition of dyslexia based on View 4 is most likely to achieve this objective.
However, I would like to see the term ‘dyslexia’ replaced with the terms ‘reading difficulty’ or ‘severe reading difficulty’ when determining the need for support for students with reading difficulties within the school system, and also when discussing a student’s reading difficulty with their parent/s.
If a parent asks if their child has dyslexia, I would say that dyslexia is not a clearly defined term, and that it is better to focus on the particular difficulties that a child has and to try and help them to overcome their specific difficulties rather than to spend time and money getting a formal assessment of dyslexia.
With this approach, the term dyslexia may lose its appeal, and eventually come to be seen as a non-scientific term that does not carry weight within the scientific community.
I would also argue that eligibility for support within the school system for students with reading difficulties should not be based on a formal diagnosis of dyslexia, but should be based on easily administered tests of basic reading skills, including tests of word reading, text reading and spelling.
One does not have to spend $1000 or more to decide on whether a student can or can’t read.
More extensive assessment may be required in cases where the student does not respond to intensive intervention based on methods that have been proved to be effective with other children experiencing reading difficulties.
But such assessment should not be required to determine access to support for a reading difficulty within the school system.
Molly
PS An alternative categorisation of different views on dyslexia is provided by Susan Godsland on the UK RRF Forum. See
http://rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5930
Susan identifies three groups according to their view of dyslexia.
The first group believe that dyslexia is caused by a ‘specific brain weakness or 'glitch'; which can be readily diagnosed, and that people so diagnosed need a special form of intervention which can only be delivered by trained teachers who have taken courses endorsed or accredited by one of the prominent dyslexia organisations.
The second group agree with Group 1 that some people's reading difficulties are the result of a specific brain glitch (or glitches?) and have a genetic basis, but believe that there are at present no valid tests which can differentiate between the groups of ‘dyslexics’ and ‘ordinary poor readers’, and that scarce funds should not be spent on unscientific assessments for 'dyslexia', but the money should be used to provide all struggling readers with suitable interventions.
The third group don't believe that there is a specific brain glitch or that one will be found by brain scans or genetic research in the (near ?) future, and that the vast majority of struggling readers' problems are a result of weak, absent, muddled or delayed teaching of the extremely opaque English Alphabet code. While accepting that there are a tiny percentage of children who have serious language, memory or cognitive problems (not one specific brain glitch) that affect their reading, they see this group as just part of the larger group of children, including those at the bottom end of the normal range of ability, who need extra help. The focus of this group is on prevention rather than intervention.
PPS Susan Godsland also gives a link to a very interesting paper by Daniel Willingham, which includes a map of the errors in word reading (of familiar words) by various European countries at the end of first grade (see
http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/ ... tries.html
The percentage of errors varies from 2 per cent (in Finland) to 67 per cent (in England).
Per cent of errors is substantially greater in countries that have an opaque orthography (Portugal, France, Denmark, and England) than in countries that have a transparent orthography (Finland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Austria, Germany, Sweden and Norway).
