11 ms·

The Battle over Dyslexia

67 points by oska 6y ago

MivLives 6y ago
As someone who was diagnosed with dyslexia, and went to a special school because of it, a lot of things in this article brought back memories. I'm unsure how others are taught to read or spell, but the school I went to used an almost extended alphabet. Where combinations of english letters like CH were taught as if they were the roots of spelling. It did seem to work I went from three grades under my reading level to three grades over in one year. Effects linger on, the feeling of wanting to use a word I can't spell, unintentionally mispronouncing words, and the inability to understand a word from spoken letters("L-I-K-E-T-H-I-S") are all things I deal with. I was lucky to be born when I was, as computers entered the picture while in middle school. Spell check, text to speech, and text based communication via IM all contributed to getting my writing skills to their current level. The removal of stress from having to spell freed mental capacity for me to just worry about the actual content instead.
- mc32 6y ago
  I don’t believe I have dyslexia but I have the hardest time mentally (air spelling) multisyllabic words. Something like “Dinosaur”. But jotting it down is no problem.
- auto 6y ago
  I was always a strong reader as a kid and have never had issues with spelling, or anything that would hint at dyslexia, but the spoken letter things is one of (in my opinion) my greatest weaknesses. I'm super visual and consider myself to have a really strong "minds eye", but for some reason the moment people start spelling something out loud, it's just mush. I've thought about it so much in recent years that I've considered just practicing with videos or a writing a program to do it to see if it's something I can eradicate.
  - Tyr42 6y ago
    Yeah I have a similar inability to put together a word from letters being spoken to me. I'm also really bad at anagrams (and by extension, scrabble). I always wondered if those were related.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  > I was lucky to be born when I was, as computers entered the picture while in middle school. It makes sense that you felt relieved when computers could compensate for your reading difficulties by reading and spelling for you. On a different track, do you know of any computer based learning applications for teaching dyslexic diagnosed people to improve their reading and/or spelling abilities? The article seemed to say that there isn't a magic method, which probably explains why the contentious debates reported in the article exist. But it also says that those who get into the program do improve their abilities, through more intense teacher led instruction. I'm wondering if this form of instruction been automated at all? Could it be? What is the state of the art of literacy education software?
- gonzo41 6y ago
  I'm dyslexic and my learning to read happened in a burst from ages 11 to 13. I got a lot of extra attention at school which was mostly around drilling phonics, like shhh sounds with ti, si, ci. And learning strategies on decomposing words. One one of the really impactful things I did that contributed to large improvements in my reading and spelling was working on a computer based system. It had you type words that you watched change color on screen whilst TTS spoke the word back to you. This was combining fine motor control, visual perception and hearing into all into how I was learning. It was a game changer for me. At the time, mid nineties this would have been pretty cutting edge software in the education world. I'm not sure what things are like now but I was thinking about it the other day just how lucky i was with that.
  - scotty79 6y ago
    I think a lot of reading difficulties could have been alleviated if teachers just abandoned prejudice against phonics.
elliekelly 6y ago
I wonder if "dyslexia" is at all related to the way we teach children to read? This thread[1] from a few months back comes to mind. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981447
blakesterz 6y ago
"He also believes that the current system entrenches inequality, because children from poorer backgrounds tend to be less likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia." So if I'm taking away what I should from this article, the biggest problem they have with "dyslexia" is that there's inequality and there's not a good way to diagnose it? In the end they say anyone struggling with reading should get extra help, dyslexia or not. I'm sure they experts know better than I do, but dyslexia seems like SOMETHING more than just having big problems with reading. Even if it's hard to diagnose and that diagnosis is inconsistent and expensive (and therefore not fair) it still seems like a useful diagnosis, especially in school aged kids. My son is taking a second round of tests next week, so I'm in the middle of this right now. It's been interesting, people said "expect to fight with the school" and our school has been GREAT. I guess we got lucky. It closes with this: "Back in 1976, Bill Yule wrapped up his Isle of Wight research with the following observation: “The era of applying the label ‘dyslexic’ is rapidly drawing to a close" (thank you for posting this, oska, it's perfect timing for me)
- advisedwang 6y ago
  The inequality is not the root for why they are arguing that we should stop using "dyslexia" but because it they say dyslexia outright doesn't exist. The inequality issue is that a spurious classification of children that gives access to better resources but is only available to parents that have the time/money/influence to get a diagnosis for their kids. The point is that having a incorrect label is not just a harmless historical idea but something that we should be motivated to eliminate in favor of a more truthful (and equitable) system.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    No its a way to not support neurodiverse kids in schools and save £££ is why local authorities love this guy.
- buddhiajuke 6y ago
  I’m paid to manage a penguin farm. Weak penguins need additional feeding. Thin penguins are just thin. But there’s no objective criteria to tell weak from thin. And I have a budget. Now, my penguins happen to have owners. But they don’t pay for their penguin, they pay into the penguin system.
emmelaich 6y ago
In the 70s, when dyslexia had a jump in 'popularity' (according to google ngram too), an education psychologist I knew had a curious experience. There was a television program about this thing called dyslexia. In the following weeks and months, many parents came to him to announce that their child had dyslexia and must be treated specially. I guess this is not actually that curious. In the sense that conditions seem to be contracted via mass media ... and now social media.
- bluGill 6y ago
  While that exists, it also happens that people are under diagnosed for somewhat rare conditions. If you don't know you have a condition it cannot be treated. If you have an explained symptom that your doctor can't explain and suddenly you find an explanation it is correct to see the doctor who understands it enough to diagnose you. Of course the above gives quack a start, once you can explain something with BS you can spread it for money. I don't have a solution.
coderintherye 6y ago
I'm surprised Astigmastism is not mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astigmatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astigmatism Astigmatism is fairly common in the population, results in blurry vision which impacts reading and thus impacts education. It often also results in behavioral issues from the frustration caused in kids with blurry vision who don't know how to express that's the problem. Anecdotal experience of a couple family members who struggled, once their Astigmatism was corrected they went on to excel.
- tssva 6y ago
  Testing for vision issues such as astigmatism is usually performed before some one is proclaimed to be dyslexic.
  - slg 6y ago
    Dyslexic here. I don't know how universal it is, but I definitely was receiving eye tests in school before reading tests which lead to a misdiagnosis. I was only 6 or 7 so I don't remember if it was specifically astigmatism or some other eye condition, but I was misdiagnosed as having eye problems a year before I was finally diagnosed with dyslexia.
    - tssva 6y ago
      My daughter has dyslexia and an IEP in place to get her the assistance she needs. Before the school system would designate her as having a specific learning disability, a requirement to have an IEP, they required vision, hearing, reading comprehension and a battery of other reading related testing to help identify her specific reading deficiency After she was identified as dyslexic she began a specialized reading program targeted at those with dyslexia. Unlike as mentioned in the article it is not the same reading program they assign to others who are "slow readers". This has helped her move from 2 years behind in reading to now being ahead of grade in reading. Unfortunately her spelling although improved is still a mess and likely will be for life as it is for many with dyslexia.
      - 6y ago
powersnail 6y ago
The debate seems to be around whether the word dyslexia should be used, but the condition --- however named --- exists anyway. The proposed phrase "struggling with reading comprehension" is no less broad, or actually more broad, than _dyslexia_, and in my opinion brings no additional value to the situation. I've known a person diagnosed with Dyslexia, and he was simultaneously one of the most well-read, eloquent person I'd known, and the most struggling with spelling. Even words he had to write daily (being a teacher and all), he couldn't spell with high accuracy. If you tell me, he was just "struggling" with spelling, that's no different than telling me a myopic person is just "struggling" to see, or a person with a club foot is just "struggling" to walk. Of course, I don't object that there are difficulties in the diagnosis or even a precise definition of dyslexia. But, to me, that sounds like we need more research to understand what's happening. If you want me to believe that the condition alltogether doesn't exist, I'd like to see some more evidence.
- topkai22 6y ago
  The article is talking about two things simultaneously that really need should be talked about separately, or at least in order- the technical criteria for diagnosing an learning disability and the policy response to it. It might be that any reading difficulty, whether it is someone who test to a high IQ reading below expectation or just generalized below grade level, has the same cause/treatment. It doesn't make it any less important to identify, treat, and accommodate it. This article talks about some specific, strong policy responses that sound unique to the UK and are very expensive. In the US, a family member was diagnosed with dyslexia in early high school and all that was provided was 30% more time on tests. And you know what? It was enough to let him significantly increase his grades. In his advanced classes he'd consistently been the only person in his class to not finish timed tests, not because he didn't know the material but because he was a slower reader (and writer) than the rest of the class. The article seems to want to do away with the diagnosis of "dyslexia" entirely, because it has lead to inequities in the past, rather than revamp it to be more inclusive of general reading comprehension issues. That seems wrong to me. Dyslexia and other educational disability diagnoses provide a "cheat sheet" for more individualized education and have value. That it is more a symptom than a disease in and of itself doesn't make it any less real for people afflicted. The exact policy response (special schools, extra tutoring, or just extra time on tests) are far more debatable, especially given the limited resources of any educational system. I wish the article had given more thought to it not being an all or nothing change. I really like powersnail's comparisons to physical ailments. We understand that many causes may lead to a single symptom- for example, being wheelchair bound. Yet that symptom is real and worthy of accommodation.
bjo590 6y ago
> The method for diagnosing dyslexia, known as the discrepancy model, was relatively straightforward: test a child’s IQ and their reading age, and if there was a discrepancy between the two – average-to-high IQ, low literacy – that child was dyslexic. Elliott felt unsure about these assessments. The children he tested for dyslexia all struggled to read and write – that much was clear – but their literacy difficulties manifested in different ways. I'm a dyslexic, and I was given extra attention is school that significantly helped me. I have a pet theory, and this article seems to agree with it to some extent, that there are several or many different neurological conditions that are often put in the same label 'dyslexia'. I hope that one day more research is done to separate out the different underlying neurological states so we can better teach all children to read. The article's conclusion -- that because dyslexia is an inprecise term we should abandoned it to an even less precise term -- is flawed. We should instead work towards creating more precise language and understanding around the different ways low literacy manifests in children. If I was an incredibly wealthy technocrat this would be a pet research field of mine. If we can improve childhood literacy education it will have massive returns on that person's lifetime contribution to society. Understanding how the brain processes language also has significant implications for other lines of research as well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 6y ago
  We do have a term: slow to learn to read. We don't need dyslexia or some more specific term unless those terms can be used for better treatment. In this case dyslexia is too specific: kids who don't fit the definition are being actively harmed because the treatment would help them just as much as it fit those who it helps. It may well be dyslexia (or a more specific term) may mean some other treatment can be helpful only for those who have it, and not for the general population of poor readers. This hasn't been suggested (to my knowledge), but it is possible. Though I will note that the definition of Autism has gotten broader over time as treatments have been discovered to help kids who didn't fit the previous definition.
  - 6y ago
InfiniteRand 6y ago
I'm surprised the article only mentions in passing the aspect of dyslexia that I always heard as the defining condition, that letters get easily mixed up or moved around (I'm no expert, nor dyslexic, although I had some friends in school who were). Is that the issue for most people with dyslexia or is that just a pop-culture simplification?
- narwally 6y ago
  It's just a simplification, many people experience dyslexia differently, but for some people with dyslexia that may be a good way to describe to someone what they experience. It's not actually a medical diagnosis, though can achieve the qualifications to test for it, it's a learning disability that doesn't have a well understood physilogical mechanism behind it. For me I was slow to learn to read, and was in remedial classes until halfway through elementary school, but I was eventually able to get it down and am now a very active reader with an average reading pace. Spelling was the issue that never went away for me. When I try to spell a word I can remember the general set of letters it's composed of, but knowing the precise order, or if a word ends in one or two ls, are things I really struggle with. I'm constantly having to look up the same words over and over, It just doesn't stick. My first job was a short term remote developing contract. My coworkers thought I was foreign for the first few weeks because of my poor spelling in code comments. It's better when I have access to good spelling or grammar checkers, but often times I misspell a word so completely that even the software has no idea what I'm trying to say. I also still mess up you're/your and their/there/they're all the time. In my head words are auditory not visual, so I have to put extra effort into resolving homophones.
  - auganov 6y ago
    > My first job was a short term remote developing contract. My coworkers thought I was foreign for the first few weeks because of my poor spelling in code comments. It's better when I have access to good spelling or grammar checkers, but often times I misspell a word so completely that even the software has no idea what I'm trying to say. I also still mess up you're/your and their/there/they're all the time. In my head words are auditory not visual, so I have to put extra effort into resolving homophones. I'd actually say these kinds of mistakes are often a good indication of someone being highly fluent in a language. Isn't it more natural to write things as they're spoken rather than obey a bunch of arbitrary rules? When you learn an initially foreign language you're much more likely to pay attention to these "rules" as you don't know any better. If you speak the language well already, you will care much less whether or not your serialization of speech into writing obeys rules exclusive to that domain. Don't have any data on this but wouldn't be surprised if "dyslexia" shows up much less in people's second languages.
heimatau 6y ago
The font Verdana has been the best thing for me. None of the 'dyslexia fonts' have been desirable. You might need to increase the size a little (depending on how the UI renders it) but it's very enjoyable to me. I tend to even switch words when I read my kids because the font isn't normal to me, as opposed to when I'm on a computer.
danShumway 6y ago
I object a tiny bit to the article's assertion that inequality is the category's fault. If we got rid of dyslexia as a category, there is still going to have to be prioritization between different kids based on their relative abilities, there are still going to need to be tests to determine whether someone is struggling enough to need free assistance and access to special resources. If you just get rid of the category but don't address the systemic problems of people being able to pay for diagnosis, then you haven't solved anything. Because that category doesn't go away just because it's called something else. The category is, "who is getting special access to resources, and who is considered functional enough to leave where they are?" It's the prioritization and diagnosis that sounds broken, not the word. What these people should be campaigning for is to expand dyslexia to cover more kids who don't fit into the tidy, innacurate IQ box, and to set up more impartial diagnosis methods that aren't as subject to monetary abuse. The dyslexia critics are quick to point out that they're not trying to get rid of resources, they're trying to expand access. But the only way that getting rid of designations would be an equalizer is if it's exactly the scenario that dyslexic kids/parents are worried about -- that nobody gets resources or special attention any more; that the category itself stops existing. If these researchers genuinely do want to help people, then I don't get what their end goal is -- it sounds like they're just playing pedantic word games. Just expand access, why is worth worrying about what word people use? I mean, what should we call the category that describes, "child with a reading disability that needs special attention and extra government resources from the limited budget we have?" How about the word that's already widely used that pretty much everybody already understands? How is it helpful to anyone to have this fight instead of just expanding the existing category to fit more people?
bob33212 6y ago
I was never diagnosed, but I was a very slow reader in first grade and my daughter was exactly the same. The problem is that we read 3 words at a time when most people only read 1 word at a time. It takes longer to get good at but once you do you are a faster reader.
petejames 6y ago
The case study was interesting. Those diagnosed in England get support from local government by covering cost of private school at £20k a year. Looking at the incentives, governments don't want lots of people diagnosed as it costs them. £20k is a huge amount of money in the UK, top universities (Oxbridge) cost around £10k a year. I could see why many would not get the support they need and go undiagnosed.
ggm 6y ago
I hazard that this is one of those places where everyone is anecdata, and doing the maths (well.. statistics) underpinning this, is going to be the main problem for choosing rational paths out. At 5-15% of the population, its got significant economic consequences. The investment of dollars in education and child psychology, research, teaching, will pay back. So it should be a no-brainer, but people are going to get tied up in knots on the anecdata, instead of the underlying trends. I also think that like "headache" its a symptom label, not an underlying causative statement. There are many fake cures of headaches, and some which work, some of the time, for some specific causes of headaches. If you label it migraine, it doesn't get any better because again, its a symptom label more than an actual specific thing much of the time. Dyslexia not having a single root cause won't admit of a single fix. I don't doubt reading difficulties exist. I'm a bibliophile, and live surrounded by books since childhood, but now read almost exclusively my kindle and my reading behaviours have changed, and not entirely for the better. I skim read since childhood, and re-read books frequently, discovering new meaning missed in the previous skims. This has upsides, (the pleasure of re-reading is enhanced: new things!) and downsides (it infuriates the authors of detailed, dense writing of substance who need me to read it properly and recall it to engage with them in work) Anecdata!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PeterStuer 6y ago
What is unclear to me is why these schools have to be private, and why they have to be expensive?
qubex 6y ago
I was diagnosed with “light dyslexia” as a kid (way back in the late eighties) and it benefitted me modestly (I was already in a highly selective private school). I went from the lowest rung of reading ability to the highest in a matter of months, based on little more than parental campaigning and settling into the general gait of those whose company I was placed in. I totally agree with this article’s two claims: that the disease is a mirage (not even a cluster of issues that provide similar symptoms) and that public policy needs to be broadly revised to not depend upon hitting some abstract set of criteria in order to qualify for tailored help that largely assists any student. I’ll end my contentious statement by pointing out that a significant bias exists amongst all those who are providing personal anecdata because they consider themselves legitimately systemic once the criteria are deemed to have been fulfilled once by at least one partitioner, but do not retire their diagnosis if other practitioners disagree.
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Article seems to be by a cherry picked outsider to allow the powers that be dodge their requirement to support neurodiverse students. Also the article is using decades old definitions of dyslexia as difficulty reading and an average or high IQ And the journalist doesn't have a background in disability reporting "Sirin Kale is a London-based journalist specialising in women's rights, politics, music, lifestyle, and culture" Having a non expert waltz in and comment on say the BLM / Institutional Racism would not be acceptable in 2020.
- sparsely 6y ago
  My impression from the article is that they want all students who struggle to read to be supported, not just those from wealthy backgrounds
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    As a neurodiverse person this is not the impression I got this is and out of date and a single fringe persons view. They don't even use the more modern holistic view of dyslexia as one of a spectrum of conditions. Exactly the sort of person that the current UK and US administrations love "classic Dom" as they say. This is a very problematic piece by the guardian - if this was about BLM and used a 1950's/60's view point / terminology the guardian would be getting crucified
  - scotty79 6y ago
    This is rather unlikely result of message that will morph into "dyslexia is fake" when spread.
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago
      Which is the intention no doubt
marchammknd 6y ago
Dyslexia is fake
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  And you base your statement on what exactly?
  - marchammknd 6y ago
    Reality
scotty79 6y ago
This way of thinking makes way more sense. A lot of human abilities are quite independent and lie on a spectrum. IQ correlates with some of them to a certain degree, but picking one and an arbitrary cutoff line of how much correlation with IQ is broken, and calling it a specific disorder is a bit much. Some people are less able to learn to read and write, some are less able to recognize people, or remember names or faces, or detect emotions. We should develop mechanism for them to improve and cope with what they can't improve, but labelling it an illness doesn't feel right if there are no weird, specific additional symptoms that might indicate common, specific unnatural source of their difficulties that might have been a target for specific treatment.

67 points by oska 6y ago

As someone who was diagnosed with dyslexia, and went to a special school because of it, a lot of things in this article brought back memories. I'm unsure how others are taught to read or spell, but the school I went to used an almost extended alphabet. Where combinations of english letters like CH were taught as if they were the roots of spelling. It did seem to work I went from three grades under my reading level to three grades over in one year. Effects linger on, the feeling of wanting to use a word I can't spell, unintentionally mispronouncing words, and the inability to understand a word from spoken letters("L-I-K-E-T-H-I-S") are all things I deal with. I was lucky to be born when I was, as computers entered the picture while in middle school. Spell check, text to speech, and text based communication via IM all contributed to getting my writing skills to their current level. The removal of stress from having to spell freed mental capacity for me to just worry about the actual content instead.

mc32 6y ago
I don’t believe I have dyslexia but I have the hardest time mentally (air spelling) multisyllabic words. Something like “Dinosaur”. But jotting it down is no problem.
auto 6y ago
I was always a strong reader as a kid and have never had issues with spelling, or anything that would hint at dyslexia, but the spoken letter things is one of (in my opinion) my greatest weaknesses. I'm super visual and consider myself to have a really strong "minds eye", but for some reason the moment people start spelling something out loud, it's just mush. I've thought about it so much in recent years that I've considered just practicing with videos or a writing a program to do it to see if it's something I can eradicate.
- Tyr42 6y ago
  Yeah I have a similar inability to put together a word from letters being spoken to me. I'm also really bad at anagrams (and by extension, scrabble). I always wondered if those were related.
wombatmobile 6y ago
> I was lucky to be born when I was, as computers entered the picture while in middle school. It makes sense that you felt relieved when computers could compensate for your reading difficulties by reading and spelling for you. On a different track, do you know of any computer based learning applications for teaching dyslexic diagnosed people to improve their reading and/or spelling abilities? The article seemed to say that there isn't a magic method, which probably explains why the contentious debates reported in the article exist. But it also says that those who get into the program do improve their abilities, through more intense teacher led instruction. I'm wondering if this form of instruction been automated at all? Could it be? What is the state of the art of literacy education software?
gonzo41 6y ago
I'm dyslexic and my learning to read happened in a burst from ages 11 to 13. I got a lot of extra attention at school which was mostly around drilling phonics, like shhh sounds with ti, si, ci. And learning strategies on decomposing words. One one of the really impactful things I did that contributed to large improvements in my reading and spelling was working on a computer based system. It had you type words that you watched change color on screen whilst TTS spoke the word back to you. This was combining fine motor control, visual perception and hearing into all into how I was learning. It was a game changer for me. At the time, mid nineties this would have been pretty cutting edge software in the education world. I'm not sure what things are like now but I was thinking about it the other day just how lucky i was with that.
- scotty79 6y ago
  I think a lot of reading difficulties could have been alleviated if teachers just abandoned prejudice against phonics.

elliekelly 6y ago

I wonder if "dyslexia" is at all related to the way we teach children to read? This thread[1] from a few months back comes to mind. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981447

blakesterz 6y ago

"He also believes that the current system entrenches inequality, because children from poorer backgrounds tend to be less likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia." So if I'm taking away what I should from this article, the biggest problem they have with "dyslexia" is that there's inequality and there's not a good way to diagnose it? In the end they say anyone struggling with reading should get extra help, dyslexia or not. I'm sure they experts know better than I do, but dyslexia seems like SOMETHING more than just having big problems with reading. Even if it's hard to diagnose and that diagnosis is inconsistent and expensive (and therefore not fair) it still seems like a useful diagnosis, especially in school aged kids. My son is taking a second round of tests next week, so I'm in the middle of this right now. It's been interesting, people said "expect to fight with the school" and our school has been GREAT. I guess we got lucky. It closes with this: "Back in 1976, Bill Yule wrapped up his Isle of Wight research with the following observation: “The era of applying the label ‘dyslexic’ is rapidly drawing to a close" (thank you for posting this, oska, it's perfect timing for me)

advisedwang 6y ago
The inequality is not the root for why they are arguing that we should stop using "dyslexia" but because it they say dyslexia outright doesn't exist. The inequality issue is that a spurious classification of children that gives access to better resources but is only available to parents that have the time/money/influence to get a diagnosis for their kids. The point is that having a incorrect label is not just a harmless historical idea but something that we should be motivated to eliminate in favor of a more truthful (and equitable) system.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  No its a way to not support neurodiverse kids in schools and save £££ is why local authorities love this guy.
buddhiajuke 6y ago
I’m paid to manage a penguin farm. Weak penguins need additional feeding. Thin penguins are just thin. But there’s no objective criteria to tell weak from thin. And I have a budget. Now, my penguins happen to have owners. But they don’t pay for their penguin, they pay into the penguin system.

emmelaich 6y ago

In the 70s, when dyslexia had a jump in 'popularity' (according to google ngram too), an education psychologist I knew had a curious experience. There was a television program about this thing called dyslexia. In the following weeks and months, many parents came to him to announce that their child had dyslexia and must be treated specially. I guess this is not actually that curious. In the sense that conditions seem to be contracted via mass media ... and now social media.

bluGill 6y ago
While that exists, it also happens that people are under diagnosed for somewhat rare conditions. If you don't know you have a condition it cannot be treated. If you have an explained symptom that your doctor can't explain and suddenly you find an explanation it is correct to see the doctor who understands it enough to diagnose you. Of course the above gives quack a start, once you can explain something with BS you can spread it for money. I don't have a solution.

coderintherye 6y ago

I'm surprised Astigmastism is not mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astigmatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astigmatism Astigmatism is fairly common in the population, results in blurry vision which impacts reading and thus impacts education. It often also results in behavioral issues from the frustration caused in kids with blurry vision who don't know how to express that's the problem. Anecdotal experience of a couple family members who struggled, once their Astigmatism was corrected they went on to excel.

tssva 6y ago
Testing for vision issues such as astigmatism is usually performed before some one is proclaimed to be dyslexic.
- slg 6y ago
  Dyslexic here. I don't know how universal it is, but I definitely was receiving eye tests in school before reading tests which lead to a misdiagnosis. I was only 6 or 7 so I don't remember if it was specifically astigmatism or some other eye condition, but I was misdiagnosed as having eye problems a year before I was finally diagnosed with dyslexia.
  - tssva 6y ago
    My daughter has dyslexia and an IEP in place to get her the assistance she needs. Before the school system would designate her as having a specific learning disability, a requirement to have an IEP, they required vision, hearing, reading comprehension and a battery of other reading related testing to help identify her specific reading deficiency After she was identified as dyslexic she began a specialized reading program targeted at those with dyslexia. Unlike as mentioned in the article it is not the same reading program they assign to others who are "slow readers". This has helped her move from 2 years behind in reading to now being ahead of grade in reading. Unfortunately her spelling although improved is still a mess and likely will be for life as it is for many with dyslexia.
    - 6y ago

powersnail 6y ago

The debate seems to be around whether the word dyslexia should be used, but the condition --- however named --- exists anyway. The proposed phrase "struggling with reading comprehension" is no less broad, or actually more broad, than _dyslexia_, and in my opinion brings no additional value to the situation. I've known a person diagnosed with Dyslexia, and he was simultaneously one of the most well-read, eloquent person I'd known, and the most struggling with spelling. Even words he had to write daily (being a teacher and all), he couldn't spell with high accuracy. If you tell me, he was just "struggling" with spelling, that's no different than telling me a myopic person is just "struggling" to see, or a person with a club foot is just "struggling" to walk. Of course, I don't object that there are difficulties in the diagnosis or even a precise definition of dyslexia. But, to me, that sounds like we need more research to understand what's happening. If you want me to believe that the condition alltogether doesn't exist, I'd like to see some more evidence.

topkai22 6y ago
The article is talking about two things simultaneously that really need should be talked about separately, or at least in order- the technical criteria for diagnosing an learning disability and the policy response to it. It might be that any reading difficulty, whether it is someone who test to a high IQ reading below expectation or just generalized below grade level, has the same cause/treatment. It doesn't make it any less important to identify, treat, and accommodate it. This article talks about some specific, strong policy responses that sound unique to the UK and are very expensive. In the US, a family member was diagnosed with dyslexia in early high school and all that was provided was 30% more time on tests. And you know what? It was enough to let him significantly increase his grades. In his advanced classes he'd consistently been the only person in his class to not finish timed tests, not because he didn't know the material but because he was a slower reader (and writer) than the rest of the class. The article seems to want to do away with the diagnosis of "dyslexia" entirely, because it has lead to inequities in the past, rather than revamp it to be more inclusive of general reading comprehension issues. That seems wrong to me. Dyslexia and other educational disability diagnoses provide a "cheat sheet" for more individualized education and have value. That it is more a symptom than a disease in and of itself doesn't make it any less real for people afflicted. The exact policy response (special schools, extra tutoring, or just extra time on tests) are far more debatable, especially given the limited resources of any educational system. I wish the article had given more thought to it not being an all or nothing change. I really like powersnail's comparisons to physical ailments. We understand that many causes may lead to a single symptom- for example, being wheelchair bound. Yet that symptom is real and worthy of accommodation.

bjo590 6y ago

> The method for diagnosing dyslexia, known as the discrepancy model, was relatively straightforward: test a child’s IQ and their reading age, and if there was a discrepancy between the two – average-to-high IQ, low literacy – that child was dyslexic. Elliott felt unsure about these assessments. The children he tested for dyslexia all struggled to read and write – that much was clear – but their literacy difficulties manifested in different ways. I'm a dyslexic, and I was given extra attention is school that significantly helped me. I have a pet theory, and this article seems to agree with it to some extent, that there are several or many different neurological conditions that are often put in the same label 'dyslexia'. I hope that one day more research is done to separate out the different underlying neurological states so we can better teach all children to read. The article's conclusion -- that because dyslexia is an inprecise term we should abandoned it to an even less precise term -- is flawed. We should instead work towards creating more precise language and understanding around the different ways low literacy manifests in children. If I was an incredibly wealthy technocrat this would be a pet research field of mine. If we can improve childhood literacy education it will have massive returns on that person's lifetime contribution to society. Understanding how the brain processes language also has significant implications for other lines of research as well.

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bluGill 6y ago
We do have a term: slow to learn to read. We don't need dyslexia or some more specific term unless those terms can be used for better treatment. In this case dyslexia is too specific: kids who don't fit the definition are being actively harmed because the treatment would help them just as much as it fit those who it helps. It may well be dyslexia (or a more specific term) may mean some other treatment can be helpful only for those who have it, and not for the general population of poor readers. This hasn't been suggested (to my knowledge), but it is possible. Though I will note that the definition of Autism has gotten broader over time as treatments have been discovered to help kids who didn't fit the previous definition.
- 6y ago

InfiniteRand 6y ago

I'm surprised the article only mentions in passing the aspect of dyslexia that I always heard as the defining condition, that letters get easily mixed up or moved around (I'm no expert, nor dyslexic, although I had some friends in school who were). Is that the issue for most people with dyslexia or is that just a pop-culture simplification?

narwally 6y ago
It's just a simplification, many people experience dyslexia differently, but for some people with dyslexia that may be a good way to describe to someone what they experience. It's not actually a medical diagnosis, though can achieve the qualifications to test for it, it's a learning disability that doesn't have a well understood physilogical mechanism behind it. For me I was slow to learn to read, and was in remedial classes until halfway through elementary school, but I was eventually able to get it down and am now a very active reader with an average reading pace. Spelling was the issue that never went away for me. When I try to spell a word I can remember the general set of letters it's composed of, but knowing the precise order, or if a word ends in one or two ls, are things I really struggle with. I'm constantly having to look up the same words over and over, It just doesn't stick. My first job was a short term remote developing contract. My coworkers thought I was foreign for the first few weeks because of my poor spelling in code comments. It's better when I have access to good spelling or grammar checkers, but often times I misspell a word so completely that even the software has no idea what I'm trying to say. I also still mess up you're/your and their/there/they're all the time. In my head words are auditory not visual, so I have to put extra effort into resolving homophones.
- auganov 6y ago
  > My first job was a short term remote developing contract. My coworkers thought I was foreign for the first few weeks because of my poor spelling in code comments. It's better when I have access to good spelling or grammar checkers, but often times I misspell a word so completely that even the software has no idea what I'm trying to say. I also still mess up you're/your and their/there/they're all the time. In my head words are auditory not visual, so I have to put extra effort into resolving homophones. I'd actually say these kinds of mistakes are often a good indication of someone being highly fluent in a language. Isn't it more natural to write things as they're spoken rather than obey a bunch of arbitrary rules? When you learn an initially foreign language you're much more likely to pay attention to these "rules" as you don't know any better. If you speak the language well already, you will care much less whether or not your serialization of speech into writing obeys rules exclusive to that domain. Don't have any data on this but wouldn't be surprised if "dyslexia" shows up much less in people's second languages.

heimatau 6y ago

The font Verdana has been the best thing for me. None of the 'dyslexia fonts' have been desirable. You might need to increase the size a little (depending on how the UI renders it) but it's very enjoyable to me. I tend to even switch words when I read my kids because the font isn't normal to me, as opposed to when I'm on a computer.

danShumway 6y ago

I object a tiny bit to the article's assertion that inequality is the category's fault. If we got rid of dyslexia as a category, there is still going to have to be prioritization between different kids based on their relative abilities, there are still going to need to be tests to determine whether someone is struggling enough to need free assistance and access to special resources. If you just get rid of the category but don't address the systemic problems of people being able to pay for diagnosis, then you haven't solved anything. Because that category doesn't go away just because it's called something else. The category is, "who is getting special access to resources, and who is considered functional enough to leave where they are?" It's the prioritization and diagnosis that sounds broken, not the word. What these people should be campaigning for is to expand dyslexia to cover more kids who don't fit into the tidy, innacurate IQ box, and to set up more impartial diagnosis methods that aren't as subject to monetary abuse. The dyslexia critics are quick to point out that they're not trying to get rid of resources, they're trying to expand access. But the only way that getting rid of designations would be an equalizer is if it's exactly the scenario that dyslexic kids/parents are worried about -- that nobody gets resources or special attention any more; that the category itself stops existing. If these researchers genuinely do want to help people, then I don't get what their end goal is -- it sounds like they're just playing pedantic word games. Just expand access, why is worth worrying about what word people use? I mean, what should we call the category that describes, "child with a reading disability that needs special attention and extra government resources from the limited budget we have?" How about the word that's already widely used that pretty much everybody already understands? How is it helpful to anyone to have this fight instead of just expanding the existing category to fit more people?

bob33212 6y ago

I was never diagnosed, but I was a very slow reader in first grade and my daughter was exactly the same. The problem is that we read 3 words at a time when most people only read 1 word at a time. It takes longer to get good at but once you do you are a faster reader.

petejames 6y ago

The case study was interesting. Those diagnosed in England get support from local government by covering cost of private school at £20k a year. Looking at the incentives, governments don't want lots of people diagnosed as it costs them. £20k is a huge amount of money in the UK, top universities (Oxbridge) cost around £10k a year. I could see why many would not get the support they need and go undiagnosed.

ggm 6y ago

I hazard that this is one of those places where everyone is anecdata, and doing the maths (well.. statistics) underpinning this, is going to be the main problem for choosing rational paths out. At 5-15% of the population, its got significant economic consequences. The investment of dollars in education and child psychology, research, teaching, will pay back. So it should be a no-brainer, but people are going to get tied up in knots on the anecdata, instead of the underlying trends. I also think that like "headache" its a symptom label, not an underlying causative statement. There are many fake cures of headaches, and some which work, some of the time, for some specific causes of headaches. If you label it migraine, it doesn't get any better because again, its a symptom label more than an actual specific thing much of the time. Dyslexia not having a single root cause won't admit of a single fix. I don't doubt reading difficulties exist. I'm a bibliophile, and live surrounded by books since childhood, but now read almost exclusively my kindle and my reading behaviours have changed, and not entirely for the better. I skim read since childhood, and re-read books frequently, discovering new meaning missed in the previous skims. This has upsides, (the pleasure of re-reading is enhanced: new things!) and downsides (it infuriates the authors of detailed, dense writing of substance who need me to read it properly and recall it to engage with them in work) Anecdata!

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PeterStuer 6y ago

What is unclear to me is why these schools have to be private, and why they have to be expensive?

qubex 6y ago

I was diagnosed with “light dyslexia” as a kid (way back in the late eighties) and it benefitted me modestly (I was already in a highly selective private school). I went from the lowest rung of reading ability to the highest in a matter of months, based on little more than parental campaigning and settling into the general gait of those whose company I was placed in. I totally agree with this article’s two claims: that the disease is a mirage (not even a cluster of issues that provide similar symptoms) and that public policy needs to be broadly revised to not depend upon hitting some abstract set of criteria in order to qualify for tailored help that largely assists any student. I’ll end my contentious statement by pointing out that a significant bias exists amongst all those who are providing personal anecdata because they consider themselves legitimately systemic once the criteria are deemed to have been fulfilled once by at least one partitioner, but do not retire their diagnosis if other practitioners disagree.

C1sc0cat 6y ago

Article seems to be by a cherry picked outsider to allow the powers that be dodge their requirement to support neurodiverse students. Also the article is using decades old definitions of dyslexia as difficulty reading and an average or high IQ And the journalist doesn't have a background in disability reporting "Sirin Kale is a London-based journalist specialising in women's rights, politics, music, lifestyle, and culture" Having a non expert waltz in and comment on say the BLM / Institutional Racism would not be acceptable in 2020.

sparsely 6y ago
My impression from the article is that they want all students who struggle to read to be supported, not just those from wealthy backgrounds
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  As a neurodiverse person this is not the impression I got this is and out of date and a single fringe persons view. They don't even use the more modern holistic view of dyslexia as one of a spectrum of conditions. Exactly the sort of person that the current UK and US administrations love "classic Dom" as they say. This is a very problematic piece by the guardian - if this was about BLM and used a 1950's/60's view point / terminology the guardian would be getting crucified
- scotty79 6y ago
  This is rather unlikely result of message that will morph into "dyslexia is fake" when spread.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    Which is the intention no doubt

marchammknd 6y ago

Dyslexia is fake

C1sc0cat 6y ago
And you base your statement on what exactly?
- marchammknd 6y ago
  Reality

scotty79 6y ago

This way of thinking makes way more sense. A lot of human abilities are quite independent and lie on a spectrum. IQ correlates with some of them to a certain degree, but picking one and an arbitrary cutoff line of how much correlation with IQ is broken, and calling it a specific disorder is a bit much. Some people are less able to learn to read and write, some are less able to recognize people, or remember names or faces, or detect emotions. We should develop mechanism for them to improve and cope with what they can't improve, but labelling it an illness doesn't feel right if there are no weird, specific additional symptoms that might indicate common, specific unnatural source of their difficulties that might have been a target for specific treatment.