Society and dyslexia

Some say that dyslexia is only an issue because of the way society makes judgments about dyslexic behaviour.

Our society places higher values on certain aspects of intelligence than others. We tend to view people that are good with language as “clever”. We reward these people with high status and high salaries.

People with different abilities tend to have less status. This can be different in other countries. In Germany, for example, visually skilled engineers are viewed as high status individuals. I have seen advertisements placed by an American architectural practice asking for visually skilled dyslexic people to apply for jobs.

Some dyslexic people have very high abilities, but are slower than others to process “incoming” information. They might need to hear a list of instructions more than once, for example. They are wrongly viewed as having low ability because they do not react with great speed.

Dyslexia can ruin lives. Children learn quickly that they are “different”. Untrained teachers and other children who do not know about dyslexia can make school life very painful. Such children “switch off” or use other methods to avoid pain and humiliation. They might become the “class clown”, for example.

A history of failure and underachievement in school followed by poor examination results spills over into the person’s working life. They tend to take low level jobs where reading and writing skills are not required. The Government have stated that those with poorly developed reading skills earn up to £50,000 less over their working lives.

Some dyslexics spend their working lives not taking promotion to “desk” jobs and avoiding training and development courses because they might be required to read and write. When a sympathetic co-worker or supervisor leaves, the dyslexic employee is likely not to be far behind in looking for a less stressful work environment.

This fact is a huge waste on a personal level and also for the UK as a whole. Our productivity per worker is 30% less than workers in the USA and 20% less than workers in continental Europe. Up to half of our total workforce (between 12-16 million people out of 30 million) have reading ages lower than those expected from children leaving primary school.

Raising awareness of these issues is one of the main goals at HDL. Both the human and economic costs of not recognising and supporting dyslexia are too high to bear for much longer.