I’d appretiate any advice you could give.

Karen Norton

It could be that children with high visual / spatial abilities end up in independent schools because they were not suited for public school but I believe this is the least likely explanation. Simply because these children would not end up in an independent school without parents who are actively involved in their education. Presumably these are parents who are also well off compared to the average public school family. It is the different social backgrounds, expectations, parental encouragement and the learning environment I believe is more important in developing skills such as visual spatial awareness than any gift dyslexia may grant.

This is not to say dyslexia should be seen as a curse and when dealing with individual children they need to hear positive messages. My concern with talking about dyslexia as a gift is that we (i.e. society) forget that it is a disability. One in twenty children are dyslexic. These children are across the social spectrum with wide ranging intellectual abilities. Many will be born to parents who cannot or will not take the effort to get them into independent schools. Most are born with average or below IQ’s. Most go to run down state funded schools with large class sizes taught by teachers with inadequately training and resources. By placing a positive message on dyslexia we run the risk of making it acceptable to leave these children to struggle and fail because they have a ‘gift’.

We just wanted to add a comment about your concern with independent vs. public school students. Of course, you are right that these students should be matched for other characteristics -but we still wonder if many of the dyslexic kids were only at the independent school because they couldn’t ’succeed’ at public school. At least that’s often the case of the kids we see. Often an independent school for dyslexics is not a family’s first choice for their children. They may arrive there only after struggling in a non-dyslexic program. Anyway, something to think about.