THE MESSAGE

No matter what we may think of education in Australia: whether we agree with the continual reports that Australia is falling behind other countries in literacy and numeracy; that students are leaving school without adequate reading, writing and spelling skills, with detriment to employment skills, and therefore to business and industry;  whether or not we think these reports apply only to insignificant others who are not our responsibility, two issues at least are difficult to ignore.

One is that teachers in the school systems are confused about both what they should teach and how they can assess the outcome of their teaching.

The second is that parents are confused about what their children are learning in and out of school. They have no idea as to whether their children will be amongst the possible fifty percent of the school population who, in the foreseeable future, may not read, write or spell in any recognisable way.   

Reliable ABS and other figures repeatedly point to a decline in the overall ability of school students to read the printed word in continuous text. At the beginning of the twentieth century a two percent failure in literacy was the expected norm. How can we describe the current phenomenon of a near fifty percent failure which eventually will echo throughout the world of business and industry?

Failed readers, who are otherwise normal, are usually labelled ‘dyslexic’.  Can it be that this disproportionate number of failed readers are afflicted with dyslexia?  How do we explain it? The Federal Government’s 2005 inquiry into the teaching of reading, which recommended that the ‘whole - language’ method should be balanced by increased phonics teaching, has produced no better outcome.

The seminar on dyslexia will pursue new answers to these questions. It will ask you to forget the ‘whole- language versus phonics’ debate and to look at where and how reading begins.  It will ask you to consider the human brain and the consequences of instructional  methods which neglect its miraculous potential for producing literacy in every individual. 

It will highlight the conclusion that, while it may be possible to deny the effect of illiteracy on the community and on the nation, we cannot ignore the call to remedy individual suffering and desperation occurring as a result of unnecessary reading failure.