Dyslexia.htm/19DEC2001

Dyslexia

Dyslexia affects at least 1 child in 10 (the British Dyslexia Assn. now says 1 in 7), and four boys to one girl, so at least 16% of boys and 4% of girls are dyslexic.

It is an inborn, latent potential to muddlement, as far as reading and spelling are concerned, and look‑say (lack of phonics‑first) makes dyslexics needlessly word‑blind. Wrong initial teaching activates dyslexia. Intensive, systematic phonics‑first is the help dyslexics need. If they started on phonics and were spared whole‑word or whole‑book teaching at the beginning, 29 out of 30 dyslexics would learn to read and spell along with the rest of us, and 90% of us would spell better. The failure is created.

When drug companies sold Thalidomide, they had to pay compensation to the deformed babies. Only now are people who have been crippled by look‑say beginning to claim compensation. Half the children in juvenile court are dyslexic, 45% of prisoners. Should their infant teachers be there in the dock with them? Even if the 'system' agrees to provide extra "appropriate" teaching, how often is it just another dose of what created the problem in the first place? ‑ because too few people know how to teach good phonics, and good phonics materials are scarce. The compensation should come from those responsible, the teachers (who should then sue their trainers), and not from the innocent, helpless taxpayers.

Whole‑word teaching is the Thalidomide of education. When it stops, attainment rockets. It goes under many names: look‑say, sentence method, paired reading, shared reading, language experience, apprenticeship, "real books", Whole Language (WL). Children should learn to read as young as possible, and should learn in 3‑4 months (says Marva Collins), certainly in two years at the most. We are losing so much potential, a brain‑drain beyond imagining, not to mention the spin‑off in disruption, truancy, delinquency, crime etc., the cost both human and financial. Until we get infant/nursery teaching right, all teachers will be fed up, dispirited, and secondary education a non‑event for many children. This disaster is world‑wide, in all English‑ speaking countries except (so far) South Africa. 90 million people in America, nearly half the adult population, have such inadequate literacy that they have trouble keeping a job. Australia even lacks data.

In September 1989 the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee issued a statement that Whole Language teaching etc. was "dead wrong". Bill Clinton was a leading light at the Governors' Education Summit conference in 1989, although George Bush senior was a Republican. How was it that this Policy Committee statement that appeared just two weeks before the conference was not given to those governors? In August 1994 Congress was considering a law to ban phonics! The Republican statement listed obstacles to reform which apply equally here:

* Refusal of reading experts to accept outside criticism

* Reading experts' lack of knowledge about phonics teaching.

* Unsubstantiated information in educational publications.

* Refusal to admit that there is a literacy crisis.

* Lack of legal redress for malpractice in reading instruction.

* Establishment of .... teacher education as a monopoly. It concludes:

"The overwhelming evidence from research and classroom results indicates that the cure for the "disease of illiteracy" is the restoration of the instructional practice of intensive. systematic phonics in every primary school in America."

The State of Ohio in September 1989 passed a law requiring "phonics" but the teachers used only "intrinsic phonics" so in 1994 Ohio had to pass another law stipulating systematic phonics. That still was not accepted. Third time pays for all? The third bill 1995‑6 tackled also teacher training. Ohio teachers have still (2001) not accepted phonics as the vital first factor.

When we drop the whole‑word idea and "real books" as a way of teaching HOW to read, when we stop neglecting phonics, and go back to phonics‑first, when teachers KNOW what good phonics is, improved literacy will gradually work through and transform our entire education system. Nothing else "I do this. Phonics is the missing ingredient. Learning to read is fundamental, and very simple. Until teachers do it, parents must. School governors and people on LEA education committees should press for a return to phonics and an end of whole‑word teaching. They should keep track of failure and its cost.

The harm done by whole‑word teaching is beyond belief. The spin‑off affects wholelife job prospects, income, limited leisure pursuits, frustration, humiliation, truancy, etc. The onl y factor, of many investigated among delinquents in America, that correlated with aggression was reading failure (Hogenson, Minneapolis 1974). Is literacy the cure for football violence? TV and press reports on truancy, violence, the child murder of James Bulger, the thousands of children being excluded from schools now for 'disruption', never mention literacy, or whether the offender(s) got off to a good or poor start in reading. What was the 7+ reading age of today's disruptive teenagers?

So teach your own child, the time‑honoured, simple, safe way: intensive, systematic phonics first. Seeing your child learn to read is one of the joys of parenthood, and many can do this before school age.

Have fun!

The cheapest, fastest way to tackle illiteracy nationally is by TV. A six‑month series, a lesson of 15 minutes repeated on two subsequent days would reach all ‑ parents, pre-schoolers, infants, remedial children, dyslexics, delinquents, adult illiterates and semiliterates, poor spellers, truants, prisoners, gipsies, vandals, people just learning English. But the programmes we have had (from BBC Education, ITV, Channel 4, Open U, "Sesame St." ) have had far too much entertainment, too much whole‑word presentation, or too much emphasis on first‑letter, and hardly any good, systematic phonics, and ‑ evidently ‑ they have not worked. It is cruel to have programmes to convince the illiterate how important reading is. He knows it better than we do. What he needs is access to systematic phonics. The National Literacy Association and National Literacy Trust have accepted too much of what the Whole Language lobby has put out. Much of the work of ALBSU (now Basic Skills Agency) is pre‑occupied with Political Correctness, not offending clients by sexism, ageism, ethnic, racial or religious offence, and in the process what is really needed ‑ good phonics teaching ‑ has got lost.

Oh for the good old days of: c..a..t = CAT!