What Good Is Dyslexia?

Originally published here on May 29, 2008.

In recent days I've been involved in a discussion on a listserv hosted by the International Reading Association (I'm an IRA member) about dyslexia. The listserv promotes discussion among professionals who work in the field of reading.

The discussion recently has been fruitful for me. We have a listserv member who (for a variety of reasons) objects whenever the word "dyslexia" is mentioned on the list. He doesn't believe in it. Some listserv members seem to think of him as a curmudgeon; others seem to see him as something more like light unto the gentiles, a savior for the reading community. And many wish, simply, that he'd shut up (which is about what they also think of me). His name is Hugo Kerr. And he resides in Wales (where I myself have some ancestral ties).

Without going into much detail about Hugo at the moment (I'll do that in future posts), I'll just say this for now. Hugo has made me think recently about what usefulness the concept of dyslexia has. My conclusion is that it has very little usefulness.

My county's school district brought in a woman to speak to us a few years ago at a workshop for elementary grade teachers. Her name was Susan Barton. She was impressive and convincing as a speaker. She talked about dyslexia. We pursued the issue. Many in the county (me included) were trained in instructional methods designed to address problem associated with dyslexia. And we looked into methods for identifying dyslexia in our student population.

What we discovered was that identifying dyslexia is time consuming and expensive. And the issue went away.

My recent conversations on the listserv with Hugo have made me think again about dyslexia. And what I've clarified for myself is this: There is no apparent benefit in the framework of American education to going the whole nine yards and determining (with whatever degree of certainty is available) that a student does or does not have dyslexia.

IDEA 2004, the law on disability in the US for American education, runs to just over a gajillion words. The term dyslexia appears in the law exactly once - as part of a definition for the far more important legal term specific learning disability. It is given as an example of conditions that may be included under the label of specific learning disability. Dyslexia itself is never defined in the law.

Nor is it defined (or even mentioned) by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-IV). That document gives medical diagnostic criteria for ADHD, Asperger's syndrome, autism, bipolar disorder, conduct disorder, mental retardation, tourette's, and much more. It doesn't acknowledge the existence of dyslexia.

If a child can't read (or can't read as well as they should), my job as an interventionist is to ask why. I start to look for approaches to instruction that would help them. The truth seems to be that the concept of dyslexia doesn't help me with any compliance issues related to federal or state law (my state's special education law merely parrots the single mention of dyslexia in federal law). And while I know that some children benefit from a multi-sensory approach to reading, or from particular types of structure in the instructional framework, I can't see that being able to say that this or that child is "dyslexic" is helpful in any way.

So I guess Hugo wins that one...