Should there really be a ‘Dyslexia debate’?

Abstract

As its name suggests, the book The Dyslexia Debate by Julian Elliott and Elena Grigorenko aims to generate a debate on the concept of developmental dyslexia. Contrary to some misguided detractors of dyslexia (see text box below) these authors do not attempt to deny the existence of children with a specific reading disorder, nor do they deny that it has a strong underlying biological basis, even less do they try to convince the reader that dyslexia is just an excuse for bad teaching or a synonym of social disadvantage. Indeed, they can be commended for being very up-to-date on current research on the topic. The largest part of this book (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) is dedicated to a thorough review of the dyslexia literature, in its cognitive, neural, genetic and educational/therapeutic aspects. The breadth of research covered is remarkable, and its treatment is accurate, if not perfectly well balanced. One may indeed regret that, for the sake of its argument, the book prefers to emphasize inconsistencies and disagreements, rather than providing a more constructive synthesis by focusing on the (admittedly scarce) converging lines of evidence and points of broad agreement. Most importantly, the comprehensive review of the literature is only a means to the book’s real purpose, developed in the first and the last chapters: to demonstrate, step by step, that the notion of dyslexia has no validity, and that we should prefer instead the notion of reading disability. The dispute is not just about whether the notion of specific reading disability should be called dyslexia. The authors argue that there is no good reason to distinguish specific reading disability (dyslexia) from reading disability (or poor reading). Let us begin by clarifying this apparently sibylline point about the definition of dyslexia.### Typical detractors of the dyslexia concept British Member …