At some point in my childhood, reading just kind of clicked. This happened to most of us. We stopped sounding out letters, or even words, and started to just absorb sentences. That’s the raeosn tihs sitll mkaes snese. Thing is, it didn’t happen to everyone.
Reading becomes instinctual because we have to do it all the time. Book sales may be declining, but the world is still full of the written word, from instant messaging to Snapchat captions to billboards to road signs to most of academia. For most of us this makes sense. Writing is an incredibly efficient way to communicate – as clear as speech but permanent. Reading is the reason we can empathise with Russians from the 1800s, or Romans from the 100s – it’s our best link to the past, a bridge through centuries and culture and wars.
Yet, for a huge chunk of us, reading isn’t so instinctual. I’m not talking about those who never got a chance to learn in third world countries, or those for whom other disadvantages render them illiterate – I’m talking about very average New Zealanders, as smart and reasonable as anyone else, for whom reading is immensely difficult. Dyslexics.
Dyslexia isn’t quite unknown. “Dyslexics of the world, untie!”, right? Dyslexia can manifest itself in the disorganisation of letters, but the term really covers a much wider range of learning differences. “The easiest way to define it is as an alternative way of thinking,” explains Dyslexia Foundation of New Zealand trustee Guy Pope-Mayell. “Basically the brain processes information in a particular part of the brain which is great for creativity, but not for language.”
Dylan Satherley, 21: "Reading was physically exhausting" Photo: Henry Cooke
This results in what he calls the “double-edged sword of dyslexia” – an aptitude for big picture creative problem-solving that is coupled with difficulty reading and writing. The foundation believes that one in ten New Zealanders are affected by dyslexia – that’s around 70,000 schoolchildren.
My best friend is one of them. Dylan Satherley is a 21-year-old sound engineering student who will intelligently discuss anything with you for as long as you want, but couldn’t spell his middle name (“Johnston”) until last year. If he doesn’t know you, he will Google each text message before he sends it for spelling mistakes. Reading a book for pleasure is impossible. Unsurprisingly, dyslexia this strong was an issue during school.
Dylan’s educational history would be funny if it wasn’t so terrible. “For a really long time they thought I had ADHD; apparently that was the trendy diagnosis in the late 90s,” he explains, chuckling – “but I never passed the test.” The Ministry of Education began to formally recognise dyslexia in 2007, well after Dylan had left primary school. This meant teachers continually misunderstood the issue, placing Dylan in Reading Recovery, which was “just a whole lot more of something that I couldn’t do.”
His principal told Dylan he didn’t believe in dyslexia, and eventually, Dylan was placed in an English as a Second Language class. This was not a great time. “Not only did I not learn heaps of stuff everyone else my age was, I was also constantly shown to be worse at English than people who hadn’t spoken it till like a year prior." Dylan’s self-esteem, as you would expect, was terrible.
Dylan’s mother, Reta Le Quesne, had always known something was a bit different, and she didn’t think it was ADHD. She remembers one illuminating moment. “I was leaning over the picture in a book he was reading and he stopped, then tried to remove my elbow from the image.” Why? “The image triggered his recall of the story.” Without it, Dylan was lost.
At age nine, despite being told it was very expensive, Dylan was tested for dyslexia by Speld, a non-profit which focuses on dyslexia. They diagnosed him immediately. “It only cost me $200,” says Reta, “and it was the best money we ever spent.”
She attempted to get a Speld tutor to come to some of his classes, but even if she paid this was “met with scepticism”. A tutor visited Dylan at home once a week, and Dylan eventually moved to a semi-private school that recognised dyslexia for intermediate. They paid for a tutor to come in three times a week, and Dylan’s literacy skills shot up immensely. “It was about getting the fundamentals down,” he explains. “I ended up being able to do things like read adverbs, which was amazing.” Reading simple things like billboards and packaging was, at this point, a huge step. “Until then I could struggle to maybe read the kind of books five years old read. Reading was physically exhausting.”
When I met Dylan, at the start of high school, things had gotten a bit better. NCEA had reader/writer provisions built into its examinations, and the semi-private intermediate had helped hugely. I was fascinated by his dyslexia, obnoxiously asking him to read out the letters of license plates, and continuing to “forget” that he couldn't spell his own last name. My fascination got a bit less cruel as we grew up (I now instinctively read any film subtitles aloud, whether or not Dylan is in the room), but never really left. Why did it take so long for things to get better for Dylan? Did the Ministry care at all?
Things have changed since Dylan’s schooldays. The Ministry of Education now formally recognises dyslexia, and systems are beginning to be put into place to both recognise and account for it. But it’s not an easy fix. “The international evidence supports the view that there is no one way to support dyslexia,” explains Rawiri Brell, the Ministry’s Deputy Secretary for Early Years, Parents and Whānau. “A tailored response to the identified need is appropriate.”
Part of the issue stems from an ambiguity of intent: do you want to teach the child to read and write despite their dyslexia, or to achieve without needing to?
Currently, support for dyslexia varies wildly between schools. “Some schools are doing a great job,” says the Dyslexic Foundation’s Pope-Mayell, pointing particularly to those that are part of the ‘4D’ programme, a learning project aimed at both identifying dyslexia and teaching with it in mind. But 4D is not available at every school, not by a long shot. “It’s a bit of a case of walking the walk but not quite talking the talk.”
While Pope-Mayell acknowledges there is no one easy solution, he believes most dyslexics can be helped by some simple changes. “Great teaching is about recognising that all the students in the class aren’t going to perform in the same way. It’s not rocket science – maybe make the book they need to read available as an audiobook.”
Part of the issue stems from an ambiguity of intent: do you want to teach the child to read and write despite their dyslexia, or to achieve without needing to? Once again, the answer isn’t simple. Some level of literacy is key, but surely if the knowledge is there, children should be able to demonstrate it whichever way they are most comfortable with.
“If you make reading the issue you will disadvantage the students who can’t read well,” says Pope-Mayell. If it is about reading, he says, basic strategies like larger fonts and coloured backgrounds can help most dyslexics. The Ministry does seem willing to step up a bit – even the much-reviled National Standards could help by identifying these kind of problems earlier.
But this all comes far too late to help Dylan. His dyslexia was not only undiagnosed, but also very potent – his type is a bit rarer than one in ten, and requires one-on-one tutoring that most public schools couldn't afford. But Dylan isn’t as bitter about the start he had at school as you might expect.
“I was lucky. I had a really supportive family who wanted to know what was wrong, who put a lot of effort into helping me out. I’m a single child with a very caring mum; not everybody is.” And not everyone can go to a semi-private intermediate.
Dylan is doing pretty all right now, working and studying sound engineering, one of those creative fields dyslexics are reputed to excel in. But that trope is limiting, even insulting. “There are plenty of people who do what I do, well, who aren’t dyslexic. I mean I’m really interested in Economics, but it would be impossible for me to seriously study it.”
It’s easy to forget what Dylan has overcome, but when I do think about it, I get bitter for him. It’s corny, but I want him to have experienced everything wonderful and enlightening about primary school that I did. I want him to be able to study whatever he wants, to demonstrate knowledge comfortably, and to engage in the written world without feeling exhausted after trying. I just hope those who are able to bring about such change want that too.
This content is brought to you with financial assistance from New Zealand On Air.