Question

Is dyslexia a necessary distinction for children education?

Affirmative

The term “dyslexia” was first identified by Oswald Berkhan in 1881 and has been widely accepted as a informative term to provide children with the help they need. By identifying the learning problems, children can narrow down the learning methods that are really helpful for them. See Symptoms & Diagnosis for more details.

In response to the argument that dyslexia is not a necessary term, The British Dyslexia Association disagrees that the term dyslexia is irrelevant, and the UK campaign group Dyslexia Action “insisted that a diagnosis brought considerable benefits”. Other much stronger defenses also appear in social media and newspapers.

“Has ‘Dyslexia’ Become Meaningless?” video link: http://news.sky.com/story/1217540/education-experts-query-dyslexia-diagnosis

Negative

The book The Dyslexia Debate published in 2014, by Julian Elliott, professor of education at Durham University in the U.K., and Elena L. Grigorenko, professor of psychology at Yale in the U.S, argues that dyslexia is a meaningless label and should not be used any longer for children education. Main argument of the book surrounds the consistency of the diagnosis process and the distinctiveness of the learning aids that are used specifically for the dyslexic children.

The term “dyslexia” is not a completely precise term where the symptoms stated overlap with many other disorders (eg. poor vision, ADHD, etc.) and they many be the confounding factors determining whether a child is dyslexic, so that children are still at risk of not receiving the help they need. Resources can be wasted just to confirm the validity and reliability of the dyslexia diagnosis, making little contribution toward providing the helps children actually need. Furthermore, such distinction may assume the children who are not diagnosed dyslexic are lazy or not bright. This is in particular a disadvantage for students who are not diagnosed as dyslexic and still appear to struggle on reading and/or other learning skills.