Not Yet Been Taught To Read

“Research has determined that dyslexia and other reading disabilities stem from a core deficit in phonological awareness, a skill that is needed to associate spoken words with written language.” Spalding Reading International

The underlying meaning of the term ‘dyslexia’is almost always “has not yet been taught to read. Traditionally, such poor readers were referred to simply as “bad readers.” It is time for educators to accurately define this overused term so that parents better understand the problems that their children are facing, and make better decisions even if those mean removing children from schools that fail to teach reading to enroll them in schools where full literacy is considered the achievable goal. Spalding Reading International defines the core deficit of such readers asphonological awareness. It is time that all schools employ teachers who know how to teach all children the skills for phonological awareness, then teach all children to read by teaching them to accurately use the complete system of phonics for both receptive and expressive literacy. Phonics is, and always has been, the code in which English speech is recorded for later reading. It is time to let both the students and their parents in on that secret.

When it became obvious, even to those outside the realm of schooling, that teachers, were failing to teach children to read using the See & Say Method with its Dick & Jane typebooks,, damage control became necessary. By bringing into use the term dyslexia,educators were provided with the means to transfer their own failures onto parents, genetics, birth defects, family dynamics, birth order, housing, neighborhoods, income levels, –anything but—the true reason that children were no longer learning to read.

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