Posted on 04/07/2009 5:24:44 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Professor Joe Elliott, from Durham University, believes many parents with children who have difficulty in literacy lessons push for them to be diagnosed with dyslexia so they can get the extra support they need.
Prof Elliott says this leads to children being falsely labelled and ignores the fact there are simply many children who struggle to read and should be given help at an early age.
The academic, a director of research at the university's School of Education, said: "Many of the messages that I have received from parents have pointed out that the system has forced them to use the dyslexic label in order to access additional resources.
"Parents believe that if their child were to be diagnosed as dyslexic, clear ways of solving their problems would emerge."
Prof Elliott's views are provocative and he sparked controversy following his appearance on the Channel 4 programme Dispatches: The Dyslexia Myth, screened four years ago.
In it, he claimed to have little confidence in his ability to define dyslexia, let alone diagnose it, despite 30 years in the field.
Part of the problem, according to Prof Elliott, is that dyslexia is not easily identifiable.
One recent study into the condition identified 28 slightly different definitions of the term. The symptoms typically associated with it include everything from poor short-term memory to clumsiness.
"Not only do these blend into other diagnoses, such as dyspraxia, but they are also commonly found in people who are not considered dyslexic", he said.
Prof Elliott argues that a diagnosis is a hollow victory for many parents, not least because there is no clear evidence that any one teaching approach is more suitable for dyslexics than any other group of poor readers.
Instead of spending time, energy and money on diagnosis, he believes that resources could be
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Dyslexics of the world untie!
It is what is called a “line-of-sight disease.”
There is a lot of that when special interest groups and the government funds stuff.
Have mods fix title. It should be “lysdexia”
WE WUZ DOBBER!
This all too common in the United States. If your child can’t read or write they get labeled as “Autistic” so the the school can receive extra federal money.
This is why there is an explosion in ‘autism’ diagnoses nationwide. Two working parents who don’t invest the time in proper child rearing and making sure Johnny/Suzy does their homework.
Now, of course there are legitimate cases of Autism — don’t get me wrong.
But people now know how to game the system and blame a disease for their lack of proper parenting.
“Many of the messages that I have received from parents have pointed out that the system has forced them to use the dyslexic label in order to access additional resources.
Follow the money. Using children to get more money.
(scisedsyl 'niggirf)
Spow noonerisms are torth the wime.
Parents can shift the blame to a “disorder” and they won’t feel guilty. Same goes when a child misbehaves...ADD*cough*
The state will also up the welfare mother's stipend for a "disabled child".
yitbos
Sad, they actually have Aixelsyd.
If they had the ADD dodge for kids who just misbehave I wold have been drugged out of my mind by the time I was 9.
I had to wait until I was in college to do that to myself! ;)
Seriously, I feel sorry for any rambunctious MALE kid today. He will be drugged into total submission and any and all energy stolen from him. Parents who facilitate this should burn in Heck.
My late wife had an odd ability. She could write mirror writing. She would write down a sentence or as much as you would want and just as fast as one does normally. When she finished you could hold it up to a mirror and it would read perfectly.
I don’t know as much about dyslexia but the brain scans of ADHD people are different. I KNOW this b/c I worked with a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic who also said he was ADHD and he showed me the SCANS!!!!! There are different areas lit up/not lit up.
I do not believe people who use it as a cop out but it is real. I am not very fond of medication either. In fact, I do not believe in medicating our children - that, too, can affect brain development.
ADHD kids need lots of stability and consistency - regimentation and structure are important. Never has there been such a dearth of structure in the lives of families - whether due to single parent homes, or working-mom homes, the fractured families, and craziness of our modern life, all of these things are variables that matter.
How many people do you know that sit down as a family and eat dinner together 5 or more nights a week and at a similar time? Probably very, very few. However, when I was growing up, it was the norm. Families ate dinner together. My family always ate around 6:30 p.m., except on the weekends when we often had an “early” meal on Sundays. We rarely, rarely, rarely all went OUT to eat (another thing that has changed drastically since I was a kid).
A gal I know told me that her son had ADHD and the doctor said you almost HAVE to have it to survive in the modern American world. I think he was on to something.
It is going to get worse too....
I have heard about this. Kinda wild. Get her on Leno - he sometimes has people with unusual talents.
That's the money quote.
Maybe 22 years ago I was volunteering at an elementary school. A 1st grader, the child of an acquaintance, was messing up on a simple letter recognition computer game. It was evident that she had problems "Sequencing" the letters she saw. This was one of the rare classic "dyslexic" problems. There really are people who lie awake wondering about the existence of Dog and who should be member of DNA - the National Dyslexic's Association.
I mean, there really are some clear, "frank" neurological problems which are easy to identify.. But there is a vast array of questions, related to the plasticity of brain organization. I am intrigued with the typographical errors which I make and which are encountered so often on FR. It's not a total waste of time for some to speculate about the neurological side of typos.
But it seems to me clear that the response to these problems is, to say the least, vexed. Some people compensate very well, Others are hopeless -- at least they cannot use the currently offered coping methods.
One of the most popular errors, one too frequently encountered, is the error of thinking a persuasive conjecture is a proven fact. Some people clearly have something which might as well be called ADHD. Others are just anxious boys who could use a little more paternal involvement. Differential diagnosis is hard when the pathologies in question haven't been clearly defined.
What’s even sadder are the dyslexic agnostics, who aren’t really sure if there’s a dog.
I am not surprised. The way they throw deseases around today.
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