Dyslexia has had an interesting history and major disagreements still rage around the subject. Ever since it was first identified at the end of the 19th century, diagnosis and discovery has been met with scepticism.
Dyslexia was defined as a Special Educational Need by the 1993 Education Act, having been first recognised by Parliament in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. In 1994, the Department for Education and Employment published its first code of practice on the subject. This document, however, appeared reluctant to define dyslexia as a learning difficulty.
The term, coming from the Greek ‘dys’ meaning absence and ‘lexia’ meaning language, has a stronger basis in scientific evidence now, yet there are still questions about its causal origins and whether it has become blurred with a more general difficulty some children have with reading. This is also at the heart of a debate about dyslexia as a diagnosable cognitive deficit, psychological condition or a more general learning difficulty – while others feel that this discussion can obscure the need for practical help to support children in overcoming their dyslexia. Emerging from this debate is an understanding that dyslexia may be a difference in the way that people understand the world, rather than a deficit.
The technique of Empowering Learning™ has emerged from this more recent perspective. It’s based on a basic principle that if you can learn how someone who is good at something does it, you can teach it to those who are not so good.
If I were a child today, I would have been diagnosed as dyslexic. However, I managed to avoid being given that label and thereby avoided the feeling of being limited. From this experience, I felt there needed to be a movement to shift the understanding of dyslexia away from seeing dyslexia as a learning difficulty where the main task is to support the individual with a perceived deficit, to instead offering our teachers and parents the best skills to enable our exceptionally talented, creative and imaginative children to learn in a way that works best for them.