Dyslexia 'is just a middle-class way to hide stupidity'

Hi I'm a TSR poster, I'm going to disregard the OP and win the argument with a ****ty anecdote. FFS.

This. I actually wish I hadn't bothered reading any of this thread; I actually have autism and know a variety of dyslexic people/dyspraxic people/people with dyscalculia/etc, none of which are milking the system. It must be lovely for totally able people who can sit there and mock those who are less fortunate, I'm sure, but it really takes the biscuit that they feel the urge to do so.

Woah what is happening in your sig?

I think it's unfair to deny that some people have a genuine problem with dyslexia. The main issue I take with this is the underlying implication that people who are naturally unintelligent deserve our contempt - why should they? It's not their fault. Ideally, it shouldn't matter whether you have the dyslexic label or not, you should get what help you need. In my school, in S6, you can volunteer to give up one free period to go into a bottom maths set in S1-4 and help out. I have no idea whether the third-years I'm helping are dyslexic or not, but I know they need help with their maths, so I'm happy to help them.

But what about those who also have problems say in their spelling and neatness of their hand writing yet don't get go on and get classed as dyslexic like myself (I used to be put in the special group in primary school ). I may have certain problems yet I'm questioning the authenticity of labelling of such people. Some people stuggle at certain things in life you get on with it try to improve etc.

It might even be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy some get labelled with dyslexia and think it's fine to continue being bad at xyz and don't try and improve themselves. I've found my english skills have got better as I got older but to be honest I have never really sat down properly and gone through a word list of words I misspell often writing them out, writing them in sentences etc.

Yeah, but if you just have problems with neatness and spelling which can fix themselves, you won't get a dyslexia diagnosis. Granted I've only been through the autism diagnosis process, but the fact remains that it takes so much damned effort to get a diagnosis of a learning difficulty, and you spend so much time with a psychiatrist/psychologist, that I would be stunned if anyone managed to get a false diagnosis - mainly because you can only even get time with these people if you fully believe you would benefit from a diagnosis, so they're not going to coerce some random child who's just a bit bad at spelling into going through the process.

Dyslexia isn't just about problems with spelling and neatness, anyway - it's also about problems with organisation, acquiring speech, acquiring written language, understanding phonemes, and having a concept of time. I would strongly suspect you have to tick more than just the 'bad spelling' and the 'not neat' box to actually be diagnosed.

An awful lot of people from my college who were "disslecksic", as they would say, seemed to just be complete dolts.

There was not a single person who claimed to be dyslexic who got even half decent grades. I don't doubt that a great deal of people are simply pretending to have something medically wrong with them in order to cover up their lack of ability and laziness.

I don't think people necessarily deny that some people are worse at some things. Yes those who are under achieving should get more help and those doing well pushed to do better. But should those who aren't good get unfair advantages to the normal student. At the end of the day you will be competing with the rest of the student population when getting a job and if you don't do well no ones going to give you a lift up the ladder (Unless you have contacts I guess )

my mates dyslexic and currently studying at Oxford, so there is someone for you

Sorry but i have a dyslexic friend, he is really clever getting A's and B's and is not stupid, quite the opposite really. sorry OP but no your thread is irrelevant.

I want to point out the following fact. English is a schizophrenic language in that there is a huge discrepancy between how words are written and how words are pronounced, and when facing a new written word, there is usually no rule to know how it should be pronounced. That can confuse the brain.

Some personal anecdotes. My first language is not English. I've been living in the UK for years though, and I can tell that the more fluent I've become in English, somehow the more 'dyslexic' I've become (especially when writing). I know two properly bilingual people who have no problem of any kind in my native language, but are classified as dyslexic when it comes to English. And they're both quite intelligent and cultivated.

I suspect that dyslexia has something to do with the English language, not the people. (How many non-english speaking dyslexics are there? Does anyone have any numbers/figures?)