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I found this today on the web i know is was a few years ago but still scream

A Labour MP has claimed that dyslexia is a "wicked" myth invented by the education establishment to cover up poor teaching.

By Jon Swaine 10:58AM GMT 14 Jan 2009


Graham Stringer, the MP for Manchester Blackley, said the condition was a "cruel fiction", and "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 added.
In a column for an online Manchester magazine, Mr Stringer wrote: "The reason that so many children fail to read and write is because the wrong teaching methods are used. The education establishment, rather than admit that their eclectic and incomplete methods for instruction are at fault, have invented a brain disorder called dyslexia.
"To label children as dyslexic because they're confused by poor teaching methods is wicked."
The MP said his argument could be proven by comparisons of international literacy rates. "If dyslexia really existed then countries as diverse as Nicaragua and South Korea would not have been able to achieve literacy rates of nearly 100 per cent," he wrote.
"There can be no rational reason why this 'brain disorder' is of epidemic proportions in Britain but does not appear in South Korea or Nicaragua."
Mr Stringer also said there was a "huge correlation" between illiteracy and crime, claiming that 80 per cent of inmates at the city's Strangeways prison were "functionally illiterate".
He wrote: "I don't believe in panaceas but I am confident that if the rate of literacy were improved there would be an inevitable decline in crime.
"Children who cannot read or write find secondary school a humiliating and frustrating experience. Their rational response, with dire consequences, is to play truant. Drugs, burglaries, robberies and worse, then, often, follow."
To cure the country of illiteracy, the MP advocated the controversial teaching method of synthetic phonics, which he described as a "magic bullet". Under the system sounds are linked to their different spellings.
Mr Stringer said it was "amazing" that rather than use the system, which he credited with pushing the literacy rate in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, to 100 per cent, the Government instead spent £78.4 million a year on 35,500 students defined as dyslexic.
He added: ""Certified dyslexics get longer in exams. There has been created a situation where there are financial and educational incentives to being bad at spelling and reading.
"This reached a pinnacle of absurdity, with Naomi Gadien, a second-year medical student initiating a legal case against the General Medical Council because she believes she's being discriminated against by having to do written exams.
"I don't know about anybody else but I want my doctors, and for that matter, engineers, teachers, dentists and police officers to be able to read and write."
Mr Stringer’s comments drew criticism from Judi Stewart, the chief executive of the British Dyslexia Association, who said he didn’t understand the condition.
She said: “Mr Stringer assumes that literacy will solve the issue of dyslexia. However, although many dyslexics have acquired the skills of reading, there is no doubt that they still remain dyslexic.
“Although being able to read is often problematical for those with dyslexia it also sits alongside a range of other processing skills including organisation, sequencing, retrieval of information, short-term memory, spelling, writing and numbers.
“It is concerning that an MP does not recognise dyslexia, which affects 10 per cent of his constituents, even though his Government have taken steps to make sure dyslexic children and young people with dyslexia are recognised and supported.”





 
 
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