Check your subscription status, update your details and more. We are finally pinning down what makes dyslexic brains different Humans never evolved to read and write, and around 10 per cent of us are dyslexic. Now, we are uncovering the pathways underlying the condition, opening up new ways to support people who struggle to read I used to be stupid.
It was a long time ago and I was very young – too young to question teachers who said I was a bit dim. Besides, wasn’t there proof? I had been slow to learn to read, my spelling was atrocious and my aptitude for climbing trees wasn’t fooling anyone.
Then, aged 7, everything changed. For the first time, I had a teacher who saw beyond my literary ineptitude. She told me I was smart – and, suddenly, I was.
That was more than 50 years ago. Back then, dyslexia already had a long history, but news of it hadn’t reached the classroom – at least none I found myself in. Children like me usually weren’t given a diagnosis or special help.
At the convent school I attended next, spelling tests were a ritual humiliation, where the nuns lined us up against a wall in the order of our results and shamed those who failed to perform. Things have changed since then. Teachers are fully aware of dyslexia.
Children with this, the most common of learning disabilities, are no longer labelled “stupid” or “lazy”. Huge volumes of research have been published. Yet, fierce disagreements have also raged about what causes dyslexia and how best to diagnose and treat it.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
