Myomancy ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism

The text below was originally posted as a comment to a completely unrelated post. In effect it is spam and I have deleted it. However I thought the issue is worth wider discussion so I’m posting it here.

Dear Friends,

I am connected with an organisation called The Learning People, who have launched a UK petition on the Downing Street website to reclassify dyslexia as a thinking style rather than a disability.

You can access further information about the campaign, and sign up for newsletter updates, on our blogsite at http://www.dyslexia-gift.org.uk

If you are a UK resident or ex-pat British citizen, you can sign the petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk

Please help us publicise the campaign by telling everyone you know, and by passing the word around any other relevant networking groups you subscribe to.

Our sincerest thanks,

Tatjana Lavrova
tatjana.lavrova@gmail.com

I am totally against this. The Learning People are a group of practitioners of the Ron “Gift of Dyslexia” Davis Dyslexia Programme. I quite like the programme’s style that mixes mental exercises with Montessori style multi-sensory techniques but the idea that dyslexia is a gift really annoys me. If dyslexia is such a gift why is Ron Davis making so much money selling a programme to fix the problem?

Calling dyslexia a gift is like saying someone in a wheelchair is gifted because they can roll down hill.

Dyslexia is a disability. It condemns sufferers to lifetime of underachievement unless they get high quality intervention. Unfortunately most don’t which is why so many dyslexics end up in prison, on the streets or with mental health problems.

For more on this subject, read Is Dyslexia a Gift? Sink or Swim.

UPDATE: In the last few days, this message has been posted three times to Myomancy, each time on completely irrelevant posts. Two of them have been after I posted this article. Clearly the Learning People have pay no attention to the blogs they spam. Don’t buy from The Learning People. They are spammers who use shoddy marketing techniques to promote their products without regard for the damage they do to dyslexics everywhere.