Dyslexia: all in their heads? (Book review)

A review of the book 'Dyslexia, learning, and the brain', by Roderick I. Nicolson and Angela J. Fawcett, published by MIT Press, 2008. The authors' reveal a strong commitment to the standard position on dyslexia--that it is a 'real,' neurologically based condition--when they attempt to counter the reasonable observations made by many who teach or interact with children but do not have research careers in specific learning difficulties to defend, that is, that supposedly dyslexic children can be taught to read with the appropriate instruction. Nicolson and Fawcett's book is another brick in the wall of the edifice erected to the existence of and biological causality of dyslexia. The existence of the edifice represents a real tragedy because it excuses the failure of the education systems of the English-speaking world to properly instruct children in reading. The consequences of this are appalling: Countless individuals are condemned to a life of diminished possibility and to an image of themselves as flawed and not quite right, with the added dread that they may pass on their 'bad genes' to their children and thus condemn them to a similar fate.