Become a Social Justice advocate for students with dyslexia and dyscalculia:
- Share what you learn about dyslexia/dyscalculia with your child, their teachers, their principal, and your family. The very act of awareness and sharing your knowledge on a personal level in your everyday life is revolutionary and will have a positive impact in your child’s life. #SayDyslexia (the Decoding Dyslexia hashtag for dyslexia awareness)
- Write a letter to your school board, school district, and state representatives (find templates here)
- Speak up at the next School Board meeting – share your story and what steps you are asking the members to take to enact meaningful change (advice for speaking at meetings here)
Why is Dyslexia a Social Justice Issue?
Social Justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. Social Justice issues include:
- Race
- Gender
- Age
- Sexual Orientation
- Religion
- Nationality
- Education
- Mental or Physical Ability
Students with dyslexia/dyscalculia have a genetic brain difference in processing information and are in the minority (approximately 20% of the general population) and the vast majority of students with dyslexia do not receive effective, evidence-based services and supports in U.S. public schools.
Students with dyslexia do not receive equal access to effective educational methods as compared to their non-dyslexic peers, thus cutting them off from opportunities for employment and wealth: this is a social injustice.
Publicly-funded education in the U.S. is tasked with providing “free and appropriate” education to all students, including providing appropriate supports and instruction for mental and physical disabilities, such as learning differences and disabilities like dyslexia and dyscalculia.
What are the effects of not receiving equal access to appropriate educational methods for students with dyslexia?
The effects are myriad and negative. As parents, we know how our own child’s self-worth and attitudes about school are dramatically impacted by not receiving the appropriate support and teaching methods at school.
The effects of the failure of U.S. public education policy to serve students with dyslexia on the overall population can be seen in these statistics:
Dyslexia affects about 20% of the overall population, yet the prison population has a disproportionally higher rate of dyslexia than the average population: 40-48% – almost half of all prisoners in the U.S. are dyslexic (source1, source2).
This is a social justice issue: Dyslexia is a genetic characteristic that unnecessarily makes people more likely to end up in the criminal justice system because the public school system has failed to address the educational needs of students with dyslexia.
And what about the high rate of dyslexics as entrepreneurs? Does that mean that everyone can and will succeed with dyslexia? Here is where privilege and unequal access to educational services and opportunities affect students with dyslexia again:
You’ve all heard the success stories of Dyslexia: the Einsteins, the Richard Bransons, the John Lennons, the artists, the actors, the athletes, the inventors……but do you hear about the 40% of the prison population that is dyslexic?
Do you wonder what happens to dyslexic, intelligent, creative kids who don’t come from privileged families in privileged communities and can’t afford private tutoring?
Do you wonder what happens to students with dyslexia who don’t have an adult in their lives able or willing to invest the many, many hours advocating for them in the public school systems in an attempt to get the services they need?
Do you wonder why families of students with dyslexia pay thousands each year out-of-pocket for private tutoring and why effective teaching is not offered through publicly-funded schools, including special education programs?
Do you wonder why when 80% of U.S. students in special education programs have dyslexia (source), that 0% of special education teachers hired to work at public schools are required to have training in dyslexia or required to use evidenced-based teaching methods for their students?
Do you wonder why we screen adult prisoners for dyslexia, but not all first graders in public schools?
Can you imagine how life would be different if we screened all first graders for dyslexia and trained teachers, instead of screening prisoners for dyslexia after the institutionalized neglect of the school system has done its damage?
I do. I wonder. I question. I imagine that world. I work toward making that world by talking about it, learning about it, and tutoring dyslexic kids, including my own. I look forward to “losing my job” as a private tutor one day because all public school teachers receive effective and evidence-based training and all public schools include accommodations for multiple learning styles and my work is no longer needed. DYSLEXIA IS A SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUE, because equal access to effective education is a social justice issue.
Imagine if we gave all students with dyslexia equal access to effective education: could we offer that 40% of the potential prison population who are now just kindergartners the chance to use their dyslexic strengths to join those successful dyslexic entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, athletes, actors, artists, before they join the criminal justice system simply due to lack of action and awareness on the part of public education policy-makers?
We’ve known how to teach for dyslexia since the 1930s, yet public education policy, teacher training, and curriculum has not caught up with the latest neuroscience research, and has not even caught up with the research conducted 80 years ago! Imagine, 80 years of failing students with dyslexia in public schools and now we have a 40% rate of dyslexia in prison populations. Let’s reverse that.
Advocate, Demand, and Fight for Social Justice
Decoding Dyslexia, a grassroots dyslexia support group, is advocating for the following policy goals:
- A universal definition and understanding of “dyslexia” in the state education code
- Mandatory teacher training on dyslexia, its warning signs and appropriate intervention strategies
- Mandatory early screening tests for dyslexia
- Mandatory dyslexia remediation programs, which can be accessed by both general and special education populations
- Access to appropriate “assistive technologies” in the public school setting for students with dyslexia
Proven programs exist for teaching reading, spelling, and mathematics to students with dyslexia and dyscalculia, and not only that, these programs are effective teaching methods for all students – everyone benefits, even non-dyslexic students, when effective teaching methods are used (source). We need decision-makers at all levels of public education policy to be aware of this social injustice and willing to take action.
Become an Advocate
Become a Social Justice advocate for dyslexic and dyscalculia students:
- Share what you learn about dyslexia/dyscalculia with your child, their teachers, their principal, and your family. The very act of awareness and sharing your knowledge on a personal level in your everyday life is revolutionary and will have a positive impact in your child’s life. #SayDyslexia (the Decoding Dyslexia hashtag for dyslexia awareness)
- Write a letter to your school board, school district, and state representatives (find templates here)
- Speak up at the next School Board meeting – share your story and what steps you are asking the members to take to enact meaningful change (advice for speaking at meetings here)
