Professor Julian Elliott of Durham University’s School of Education and
Dr Elena Grigorenko, of the Yale School of Medicine have just had a book
published entitled ‘The Dyslexia Debate’:
Professor Elliott recently gave an interview on Radio 4 in which he summarised
the main findings in the book, which reviews evidence in the fields of education,
genetics, neuroscience and psychology.
As soon as Professor Elliott’s interview was over, I felt a sudden
urge to rush up to my attic, lock myself in, stick my fingers in my ears, and
remain in this position for the rest of the week. You see, I was anticipating a verbal
explosion from all sorts of quarters, either in agreement with or in protest
against what people believed to be Professor Elliott’s claims without having
properly listened to them.
The main thesis of the book is that a minority of children, for various
reasons that do not include lack of intelligence, experience great difficulty
learning to read and write; that these children should be given all the help necessary
to overcome or mitigate this problem; but that saying that these children are
‘suffering from dyslexia’ is of questionable scientific validity, as are the numerous
screening tests that purport to diagnosis this ‘condition’, and may not be
helpful for children as a whole who struggle with their literacy.
Cue for parents of children diagnosed with dyslexia to personally
abuse Professor Elliott in the media for saying that their offspring don’t have
genuine difficulties and for certain newspaper columnists to praise him for
saying likewise.
Having not yet read the ‘The Dyslexia Debate’ I shall reserve
judgement on it. However, I find that
there is nothing controversial in what the professor has said in his exposition
of the book’s contents and, though lacking the extent and depth of knowledge of
the authors, I myself made similar observations based on my own experience:
It is also worth visiting:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/is-it-time-to-rethink-dyslexia/2011751.article.
One observation I would like to add is that the more remedies there
are on the market for a diagnosed condition, the more our suspicions should be
aroused about the utility and authenticity of the diagnosis. There are indeed many treatments whose proponents
claim are capable of curing dyslexia.
Consider the example of a headache. There are many treatments or cures for a
headache, orthodox and otherwise, because a headache is a problem and not a
diagnosis. Once you have made the diagnosis – that the headache is due to,
say, a viral infection, high blood pressure, cerebrovascular disease, food
poisoning, or noisy kids – then the range of effective remedies narrows down
considerably, sometimes even to just one. Even in medicine, this distinction is
lost, and the urge to put impressive-sounding diagnostic labels on problems,
(labels that are usually just another way of describing the presenting
complaints) can be irresistible - see ‘Spurious syndromes: we create disease by
giving every illness a name’ at:
In psychiatry and clinical psychology this malaise is rampant.
One final comment: investigating whether the brains or the genes of ‘dyslexic’
children are different from those of the rest of us is of benefit only to the
careers of those doing the research. It is
of no help to the children concerned.
