Why I believe that dyslexia is not a myth - Comments

Dyslexia IS indeed a myth. At least one MP has spoken out. His may be a voice in the wilderness, but I am sure it will spread like wild fire and people will eventually come to see this dyslexic thing as a hoax .... a big HOAX !

AGREED ! Dyslexia is the hoax of the century.

hi, Mark Lewis, Einstein. A man breaks down on a main road. Two passers-by stopped to help and asks the man to open the bonnet. One man suggests that there is a problem with the sparkplugs because everybody says it is always the sparkplugs when your car breaks down. The other man agrees and said it happened to his 'friend' and it was the sparkplugs what went wrong. The man pulled out the sparkplugs and cleaned them and put them back. The two men shout try it now, the car engine block seizes and the car is totalled. It ended up that he just put the wrong fuel in. The moral of the story is that to idiots who know nothing about the subject shouldn't of made a comment in the first place they should have waited until they got somebody with academic qualifications to make an informed comment.

einstein and mark -if you're right, then I hold that the myth you point out is entirely dwarfed, overshadowed, by the education myth = an exceedingly big HOAX, I should say...

Dyslexia, will you please let us know when the guy with academic qualifications shows up? I'm hoping he might be able to tell me whether it's "shouldn't of" or "shouldn't have".

I am talking about corporations in education, either FE or HE. The model I am talking about is the casual worker agency that covers the entire country eventually and becomes a dictator on price and service standards. I know of a few. For example, if I lose my job in one university, I can possibly go to another: that way several people judge the quality of my work. However, if all universities are owned by one company, then my job becomes dependent on one manager and his manager: and I will find that I cannot even sue that company for unfair dismissal because the ‘no win/no fee’ solicitor will tell me that they are too big to take to court, as they will endlessly appeal, and my resources will dwindle too quickly. Therefore my anti-discrimination/employment rights are affected. In effect, I am then black listed because of the large influence of that company. If I say that I am a disabled staff member due to my dyslexia, this may be dismissed and the awkwardness of the situation I find myself in, without trade union support, may mean that rather than report bullying by other staff, students, managers, I have to keep my mouth shut in case I lose my job. I am vulnerable. But even trade unions say they’re powerless. Or being in such a trade union, I get less work. Let’s say my manager doesn’t know anything about how my dyslexia affects my work, he went on a training course, ya, but he did not chose to commit himself to really understanding it, he was too busy, and anyway it was much easier to just squeeze me out, by the mechanism of the admin staff gradually reducing my hours to zero: with the “we will be in contact when we get more work” generic email. That was easier on him and on the company profits, because otherwise acknowledging the theory/practice gap on the ground, with all its PC debates, meant that he had to train all his staff more, therefore £££. No, it was much easier to phase me out, or sack me. In that situation I would favour being sacked because at least then his or her dirty dealings are visible and I have the satisfaction of evidence on my side. Being phased out is more cruel in a way, by way of its invisibility, more humiliating, more poor mental health inducing, more economic uncertainty, fear of the future. Let’s say that I see poor practice on the ground: my other manager, a different sector of the company, the college or university, is bullying staff by cutting their hours down, while the ‘poor practices’ staff are being rewarded by more hours, and given better rooms too, plus a better admin service. The emailing system is used for ‘we never got your email’ mechanism of wind up. then the service users start to recognise these reward systems and know that they are in some kind of dog house, so they move to the other staff area, not knowing that they are getting the poor practice service, but they do not know any better, or they join in in this corruption and start up their own bullying practices. Then how can the good practice staff member, who may also be experiencing discrimination, possibly over race and disability, or age and sex, report that manager to the other manager? So, what if during a dismissal procedure they explain all this to their employer manager, who agrees that there were structural weaknesses that drove standards down and promises change, but when they return to the other manager things are worse than before: the other managers and their loyal staff have just thought up new, more hidden ways to make that ‘whistle blower’ suffer. But the employer just says, “oh no, not you again”, when you go back to report the new situation. And when they are throwing your career in the bin, “why didn’t you tell us?” when you go running to your professional membership jismail, looking for support. You cannot even tell them half of what is happening because you know the shock will cause a kind of professional deafness, belonging to those who do not really know what happens in disadvantaged situations, having never lived among those disadvantaged groups, or belonging to them. Have we not seen these stories of discrimination in the press? Considering that we work in teaching language and Admin, is not racial, class, and dyslexia discrimination likely to be a major source of bullying? How can a manager in a large company offset this?, especially if other staff have been weaned on the above process. Business as usual. I must be living in cloud coo coo land if I think anything is going to change. Though Ofsted said that in my role as SENCO, I ran the best dyslexia service they had ever seen, by three times. And when you are naïve to these practices being an everyday occurrence in HE and FE, with the only staff staying being the ‘non-trouble makers’: how can we really put anti-discrimination at the front? Though we think up all sorts of fancy ways of describing it, the academics, policy makers, all out to lunch on the proceeds. Blair government practices of window dressing Vs reality suppression techniques, fuelled by the media. Certainly we are demonstrating to the students that nothing has changed when the staff with the full time jobs are all white, and the agency staff are all black, minority, or come from disadvantaged situations. The only few token, non whites, say things to their fellow black staff members like... “I don’t do black”. Therefore agency staff practices promote the worst kind of discrimination, and they even tell you to your face “so, what are you going to do about it?” If you do get a job with security it’s because you will join the established order of things. We know that social mobility is dropping at a faster rate from previously, Andrew Neil: this is your “never got the email” society at work. The same is true for the vulnerable disabled people and the groups that try to protect their rights. Our democracy and its society depends on fair competition: that’s why they have laws on this subject. In monopoly situations managers are aware that the individual staff member is powerless and they cannot but help use their corporate status to hide behind when things go wrong. This is a weakness that breeds a culture of bullying. Just look at the ‘corporate’ weaknesses of Haringey Council, where staff on the ground were not given any power to take control of the situation, in spite of several whistle blowing attempts by staff. I work with a lot of social workers. The results were a child being visited something like 60 times, but still nothing was done. The staff said the boss had bred a culture of : Put up, or Push Off. And it is this culture that breeds in corporations, they become top heavy because the staff on the ground are not taken seriously, or their reports of complications in practice are quashed. Clear breaches of the law are covered up. So you Steve, or any other small company, shouldn’t consider my protests as relevant to you. I am talking about Faceless Corporatism, and how they breed cultures of bullying: those who see flaws in day to day delivery of services are weeded out. They either bring these to someone’s attention, or they are sacked, or they leave. But then you are driving out your most conscientious staff. We know that teachers and nurses have suffered as a profession, as a result. This is already evident/our experience. This is not a dread or a hypothetical. Please do not think that it is about profit/non-profit, it is about Size, Monopoly, Areas of Influence to do with Size, Too big to keep contact with practice on the ground, that is the main weakness of this service, and the huge combine of TURNOVER, being inappropriate. The Michael Jackson School of Democracy: too big to sue. While the individual worker is atomised down to nothing.

(Dyslexia, will you please let us know when the guy with academic qualifications shows up? I'm hoping he might be able to tell me whether it's "shouldn't of" or "shouldn't have".) Ya, this is exactly the kind of idiotic snobbery that the fundamentally ignorant come up with. They get the job because they all know each other under the code: "Shouldn't of/have" Inspite of being incredibly thick. Well I make grammar mistakes too, but my intelligence is much higher that you fools. Just watch them dig their own graves.

I am dyslexic and I can assure you that its not a myth. Though academically I have done quite well this has been due to having to pay for a specialist private tutor for years as a child. I am now faced with the working world where there is little understanding or sympathy for the disorder with my manager telling me that he does not class it as a disability. My short term memory is like a sieve I make mistake after mistake processing information that is copying information from paper on to a computer screen. I have sequencing problems; spelling issues, problems understanding instructions etc. These things make you look a fool with people wondering how you got to university. Dyslexic is not a visable disability and is one which effects ones confidence because you can so easily fuck up the most basic task yet have the ability to understand and discuss subjects like law without any problem. However when starting out on the first rung of the ladder it isn't your communication, problem solving and lateral thinking skills that employers want to see. I wish I didn't have to live with it. Everyday I wonder whether my inept audio memory will prevent me from achieving what I want to achieve.

I honestly fail to understand the delight some people seem to garner from denying the existence of Dyslexia. I would be interested to know exactly what grounds these individuals have for dismissing the concept.

Do teacher quality which is massively variable? David Turner citing evidence frm primary schools showing a bad teacher can take two years to teach what a good one can achieve in six months.As a bad student has to spend more years for his/her High Education than a excellent student?

Hi all, initially I was a little skeptical about dyslexia. Then, my twin boys demonstrated difficulties with learning, which I thought was simply a case of 'slowness' which requires the need of extra time, support & encouragement. However, it was frustrating considering I was a language teacher myself - I had tried all sorts of techniques to no avail. That was when I started doing my own research. After careful & thorough study of other researchers' work & findings, I now understand that they are dyslexic - something that has a biological explanation which is best illustrated by Frith's (1999) causal framework. Symptoms of dyslexia vary accordingly and cover a vast amount of area. Even though both my parents and parents-in-law (who were teachers/lecturers) still cannot accept that their grandchildren are dyslexic because they seem practically normal in behaviour, I have, on the other hand, decided to learn this area in greater depth. It's not a myth. It just doesn't have a straightforward list of symptoms for those diagnosed with it.

It's important to separate things out a bit. There are indeed myths surrounding Dyslexia (e.g. "they have better visuo-spatial skills, and make good architects" - not necessarily, and in any case,"visuo spatial kills have many components, so one could be better in some ares and worse in others. eg[2] "they are very intelligent.." - some are, some aren't! - and so on). Then there are myths surrounding learning support plans; providing a note-taker is only of limited use; extra time in some exams likewise - it depends on the individual's profile and external factors. Many individuals can grow up with a clear impression that whenever their disability crops up, someone else has to compensate for it. But that's ridiculous - if I need to change a light bulb and I'm not tall enough, I get a stepladder - i don't simply assume that the state should provide me with a tall light bulb changer. There does seem to be a kind of "needy-feeder" mentality that is not in the best interests of the recipient of all this compensatory care, that perpetuates certain myths and obscures the issues and ways towards the best possible action. Then, in tandem with that, there's myth that comes out of the "I'm dyslexic so it's not my fault" mentality - the idea that because dyslexia is thought to have structural underpinnings at a neurological level, nothing can be done about it. This is just plain wrong. It may be the case that a dsylexic may never be quite as good at certain tasks - same as I'll never be an Olympic swimmer, but I can still train and exercise and be a better swimmer than I currently am, and Dyslexics can likewise train to improve their performance; such training causes structural neurological changes, same as learning a musical instrument does. So I think the basic premise of stating that Dyslexia is, or is not, a myth is simply clouding the issue. Separating fact from fiction requires careful dissection with a fine scalpel, not simply mashing away with a mallet!