According to Joe Elliott and Elena Grigorenko, authors of the book “The Dyslexia Debate”, “dyslexia” is an imprecise label that does nothing to assist the children to whom it is applied. The authors are not denying that there is indeed a well known issue for children with reading difficulties and that it should be recognized and treated early on. It is the use and label of the term of dyslexia that they are questioning and are pushing into abandoning. They argue that applying this term is unscientific because there is no of universally agreed set of criteria for the diagnosis of developmental reading disorder. What one clinician might call dyslexia, another might not.
The word dyslexia is widely used and frequently misused by non-experts in the field and by mainstream media. The most effective thing we can do to help affected children is to provide them with systematic and intensive reading targeted at the gaps in their skills.
Image: Portrait of a Child, by John Singer Sargent (Wikimedia Commons - w/Effects)
