03/12/2025
With the rise in youth-on-youth crime, more needs to be done to determine causation, moving away from the blame culture that youth are just 'bad.'
One such risk factor that tends to be overlooked is dyslexia.
I am not saying that if you have dyslexia that you are predisposed to violence, rather, that dyslexia undiagnosed can lead to persons knowing "something is wrong." 'It takes a village to raise a child,' calling for community action.
For a child with a close relative with dyslexia or reading difficulties, this increases the likelihood that the child may also experience it. Sometimes a parent may not realise that they have dyslexia, but they have an aversion to school and avoid obtaining support there because of their own experiences, sometimes traumatic.
Our school systems were designed for the masses, where reading and writing are the main methods of accessing the curriculum. The selected medium for assessing ‘intelligence.’ For dyslexic students, these areas can be the hardest — not because they lack intelligence, but because their brains process language DIFFERENTLY, not deficiently. Dyslexic students require a multisensory approach, tailored through explicit instruction, and multiple repetitions to obtain the skills necessary for reading and writing that traditional methods do not provide. Therefore, early identification is key.
Whilst the education system focuses upon a main intelligence, there are many intelligences. Persons with dyslexia demonstrate theirs within areas schools don’t measure as closely: creativity, problem‑solving, big‑picture thinking, oral communication, empathy, and innovation. When we define intelligence only by literacy mechanics, we miss the brilliance of students whose strengths lie in imagination, design, leadership, and resilience.
When dyslexia is undiagnosed, it may appear to the dyslexic student that school is a place of punishment, for the inability to demonstrate strength in the ‘intelligence,’ “that matters most" - (the perception), - linguistic intelligence. This leads to low self-esteem, low self-worth, and displays of challenging behaviour.
It is estimated that 10% of the general population have dyslexia and within the prison population, this number rises to 30-50%.
In the Caribbean, draconian terms like 'dumpsey' and 'slow' are still used to describe children who are not learning as quickly as others. For the dyslexic student, choosing to be the ‘class clown’, rather than the ‘class idiot’, can lead to exclusion. This speaks to me of the need for diagnosis rather than avoidance of what our children need. It's time to wake up. Children are not born bad. Let's look a little deeper and start exploring causation.
Labelling is too easy!
Our young need us to be the voices that stand for change for early screening and intervention in schools, so children don’t fall behind. And to be the voice for inclusive education that broadens how we value intelligence and creativity.
11/07/2025