Mass literacy is a relatively new social goal. A hundred years ago people didn't need to be good readers in order to earn a living. But in the Information Age, no one can get by without knowing how to read well and understand increasingly complex material. These skills don't come easily to about 20 percent of kids. Not all of these youngsters are dyslexic.
Researchers now think that dyslexia represents the low end of a continuum of reading ability.
The teaching strategies that help dyslexics, those most severely disabled, are also helping kids who require only a little extra attention. These dramatic changes come none too soon. For years people thought dyslexia was rooted in the earliest research. Dyslexia was first described 100 years ago by W. Pringle Morgan, a general practitioner in Sussex, England. Because Percy and others like him had problems with written words, not with spoken language, it was assumed that the problem was visual.