Me and the MP and the debate on dyslexia
At 11am I got the call from Radio 5. Was I free to talk on dyslexia for a few minutes against an MP who has said that it doesn’t exist?
No problem, I replied.
“So what’s the argument against his statement?” asked the researcher.
“There’s two,” I said. “One is scientific and not very listener-friendly, but basically it is a genetic condition, the gene has been identified, and if you get a neurophysiologist on, he or she will tell you all about the genetic mutation that occurs in dyslexics, and how it moves through the generations.
“The other is much more practical. You find a young person who has a high IQ – say 120 or over – who is socially and psychologically within the bounds of what we call normal, and who in everyday life is clearly as bright as the IQ test shows… and you ask that young person to read and write.
“With around 10% of the pupils or students in this group you find they will be way below average in terms of English ability. Around 3% will be so far below that they will be functionally illiterate – unless of course they have had special help.
“It doesn’t matter what we call this situation – it doesn’t have to be dyslexia, we can call it flibble flobble if you like – but the fact is this finding is real, it is replicated across the Kingdom, and as teachers we need to help the young people afflicted by this problem.”
“So why is this MP in denial?” asked the researcher.
“Leaving aside the political issues,” I answered, “the most obvious answer is that it is a lot easier to spot dyslexia among bright articulate young people, than among those who are not so bright and not so articulate. Now it so happens in our society that the majority of bright articulate people are middle class – that is the way the class system works. So most of the dyslexics we identify are middle class – but of course dyslexia is spread across all social groups.
“Because resources are limited, because it is easier to identify dyslexia in middle class children than working class, and because middle class parents are sometimes more able to get hold of the resources than working class parents, that is why we end up overall working with more middle class parents. But that does not make dyslexia a ‘middle class disease’.”
The researcher thought that was great, and the time for the confrontation – me against the MP – was fixed for 20 minutes ahead. They would, out of courtesy, brief the MP on what was going to happen.
And then 20 minutes later they said, “he’s run away.” Well, to be fair, they didn’t quite say that. What Radio 5 said was that the MP had left the building, and so they couldn’t do the piece between him and me. They were sorry – but without his side of the story, there was no story.
So, the only way I can put over his ideas, to balance against what I was going to say, is to report what he said in his press release. Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Manchester Blackley, said dyslexia was “no more real than the 19th-century scientific construction of ‘the aether’ to explain how light travels through a vacuum”.
“The sooner it is consigned to the same dustbin of history, the better,” he said.
He went on to say that illiteracy led to crime, as prisons were full of people unable to read and write, and that it was time the “dyslexia industry was killed off” by teaching children to read and write by using a phonetic system of sounding out letters and words.
So there we have it. I also wanted to sound off about my pet annoyance – the fact that the exam boards have in the past refused dyslexics the opportunity to have extra time in English GCSE and A level exams. That is a frustration, and one that few have attacked. I say in the past, because I don’t have up to date information on this as I am no longer responsible for entering pupils into public exams – but it was certainly true a few years back.
Many universities however do really well by their dyslexic students, giving everything from readers in exams to extra time allowances with library books. The two universities I am most familiar with in this regard – Nottingham and
If the MP comes back and wants to have a bash on Radio 5, the station has my number. I’m more than happy to cross swords, but somehow I think he’s now onto blaming the bankers for all our ills (which I suppose is not such a bad thing, anyway).