02/15/2026
Dyslexia is not the hardest part. Growing up realizing the school and educators do not fully care about your health and wellbeing is the story told by all people with learning differences.
This trauma impacts the child, siblings, parents and extended families.
It’s one of the greatest challenges people experience when they incorrectly assume the wonderful schools with kind and caring teachers will extend that same wonderfulness to students who learn differently. Instead, most families will suffer educational trauma- emotionally, academically, socially, financially, vocationally and continually. It’s massive. It’s also massively ignored, denied, diminished and accepted by the schools around the world as admitting this would require corrective action and hard work. It’s hardly working out for the global dyslexia community. Just tragic and avoidable if they were willing to do the hard work.
But too many schools and educators continue to tell society they are unfamiliar with the past 75 years of education news. They seem to think being in the dark is a good excuse. As if this absolves them from the human rights violations.
A portion of people who are suppose to teach kids how to learn don’t seem to grasp they should also know how to learn. After all, the Google search bar is 26 years old. The International Dyslexia Association is 75 years old. The Learning Disabilities Association of America is 62 years old. The Cox Campus has offered free teacher training for 23 years. The list goes on and on with thousands of agencies trying to help the educators know better and do better so they can teach the kids. So many people are trying to coach, mentor and support the educators. Meanwhile, tax payers are funding their 186 day contract , holidays, 18 billion a year professional development, accrued sick time, lower cost health/dental/vision plans, tenure, pensions, retirement savings options, loan discounts and other benefits without a form of accountability to educate the students with basic literacy and numeracy. Not a popular topic but Australia and New Zealand are trying to create new standards of accountability.
The excuses are endless. The long list of excuses are used as reasons not to fully help the kids. All of these excuses are linked to never ending human conditions and world conditions. The broken systems of the world can’t hold power over educating the kids. Funding. Budgets. Staffing. Resources. Curriculums. Politics. University professors tenure. Departments of Education. Union rules. Union negotiations. Union bargaining for more benefits. Poverty. Pandemics. Problems with parenting. Technology. It’s all part of the human condition and should no longer be used as an excuse to limit the fund of knowledge each educator has.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing has prevented any interested educator from expanding their own knowledge about learning differences. A large portion of educators outright chose not to learn even if given totally free info and society is unaware this happens. Free teacher training offered by wealthy philanthropists has been turned down! Not my job , not paid enough, not interested, not motivated, not what I went to school for, not my problem, not required by union rules, not required for tenure etc.
Highly respected educational experts have coached educators and schools for over 50 years. Dr. Reid Lyon asked “ if we knew better, why didn’t the educators choose to do better ?” in his review of the past 50 year literacy interview.
The past president of the IDA asked if the schools were” just too lazy to do the hard work” when discussing this toxic failure of special education within schools that otherwise have great reputations as long as the child is “ normal.”
Who got to decide that kids with any health, learning or life difference are not valued, welcomed or educated in full? Moral exclusion. Dehumanization. Tough topics. Look the other way. Best I can do . Not my fault. Very similar to the human rights violations experienced by indigenous people all over the world. Day of reconciliation. Day of apology. We are sorry.
We don’t have the answers. A global think tank is needed to deal with one of the largest human rights violations of our time.
Dr. Sanford Shapiro tried to address this before he passed away. He talked about “ wonderful schools with kind teachers who intentionally or unintentionally withhold proper educational remediation are inflicting educational trauma on innocent children “ and society has yet to face this.
Let’s give a happy childhood back to every child with learning differences. We must be willing to do the hard work to do the right thing.
