Dyslexia myth?

I actually spotted this story from my multiple news feeds yesterday, but of course the television media are always a day behind the print.

I'll gloss over GMTV's attempt to deal with this by simply stating long-winded personal account - one paragraph science response - long-winded more personal account - end.

One of the rebuttals to Graham Stringer is that dyslexia has been proved to exist, hmm I had a quick Google around and the proofs seem to be based on brain activity as revealed by functional MRI scans. To keep things simple those able to read use a portion of their front brain and several others areas spreading towards the back. Those diagnosed as 'dyslexic' only use the front brain area and use a lot more of it.

This is of course not proof of the existence of dyslexia as the study then went on to examine pre-readers brain activity and monitor them as they learnt. Pre-readers show the same frontal activity as 'dyslexics' and activity then extends outwards as they progressed.

So am I saying dyslexia doesn't exit? Nope, I'm saying (just like the Duram professor did in his short reply on GMTV) it's more complicated than that.

I think what the message that Graham was trying to put forward (and mangled) is that dyslexia is becoming a panacea for any child that seems to be having any form of difficulty in the same way any child with social difficulties seems to acquire the autistic or ADHD label. How many of these children diagnosed as dyslexic have been given MRI scans? As such how can you differentiate between those children who truly have a abnormally wired brain, those who just can't be bothered, and those who are being let down by teachers or teaching methods.

It's easy just to slap a pre-printed label on a child regardless of whether it fits exactly.