Here is a post on Facebook that I commented on and I received a message from Admin saying that my comment has been removed as it is not verifiable. Please scroll down to see my notes.
The Dyslexia Parent Circle — Your Dyslexia Expert
Here is the post and comments.
For more than a decade I have argued that phonological awareness deficit (PAD) is not the cause of children failing to read in English. Since 2010 I have written to Chapman, Tunmer, Elliott, Shanahan, Pamela Snow and others, presenting evidence from my own teaching and observations. What did I receive? Silence, blocking, or polite dismissal.
James Chapman did not block me, but he refused to think—even when I presented new evidence. His 2010 email to me epitomizes the problem: researchers who cling to their published theories as if they were gospel, unwilling to revisit them even when reality contradicts their claims.
Since 2010, I have repeatedly found myself suspended or blocked from posting in online dyslexia support groups. The pattern is familiar: I share evidence‑based comments, avoid personal attacks, and even refrain from linking to my blog — yet administrators still restrict my ability to contribute. Why?
Scroll down and you will find the actual discussions in this group before I was blocked.
The reasons are not hard to see:
For over a decade, David Boulton’s Children of the Code project gathered insights from more than a hundred experts — reading scientists, neuroscientists, linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, and educators. Thirteen years of interviews produced a vast archive of reflections on why children struggle to read.
I stopped posting on my blog in 2012, feeling I was going nowhere. To make matters worse, I lost my blog title and could not renew my weblog. My earlier site was at www.parentingdyslexia.com.
In 2015, another student was referred to me, and I wanted to continue with my blog. To my shock, I discovered that I had lost my blog name — someone else had taken it over. Thankfully, my son managed to retrieve the old posts, and we opened a new account under dyslexiafriend.com, where I reposted the earlier articles from parentingdyslexia.com.
I did not attack, challenge, or criticise the work of Litigating Literacy. I did not even post links to my own writing. All I did was point out a fact: many intelligent children leave school as illiterates. I asked a simple, honest question—does anyone know why so many intelligent kids shut down from learning to read?
A post on Facebook said:
Litigating Literacy
We cannot expect teachers to provide effective reading instruction if their own preparation programs never taught them how. And we cannot expect children with dyslexia to simply overcome the consequences of that training gap.
If we want better reading outcomes, teacher preparation has to be part of the conversation.
#untilallkidscanread
In my previous post, “How Pinyin Is Being Taught Wrong: A Widespread Pattern,” I showed that the practice of teaching initials as “bo, po, mo, fo” (and the rest of the hudu-style syllables) is no longer an isolated classroom habit. It appears in popular videos, widely used materials, online charts, and even official school settings across mainland China. Children store distorted sound units instead of clean alphabetic components. They can often write characters from dictation, proving their auditory memory and motor skills are intact, yet they falter with flexible syllable combinations. Many simply shut down.
That pattern did not appear overnight. It is the direct continuation of a deeper, long-standing error that I have documented for years: the importation of Zhuyin/Bopomofo initial sounds into Hanyu Pinyin instruction.
This article continues the discussion from my post yesterday ‘Why Reading Standards StayStuck’ (August 2026), focusing on the misplaced resistance to rote memorization of high-frequency words.
For decades, the literacy debate has been framed as a battle: phonics versus whole word. Each camp insists its method is the only legitimate path to reading success. But caught in the crossfire are children—especially those struggling to read—who need practical solutions rather than ideological purity.
I responded to a post on Twinkl Australia Parents which said:
Hi @everyone It's time to add your learning tips for the week please! We would love to hear from you!
I shared a simple truth:
Children learn best when we use all the tools available — phonics, rote memorisation of high‑frequency words, context clues, syllable building, and more. Almost all kids can become fluent readers when these methods are combined.
A venomous snake once found a sleeping porcupine. It wrapped itself around the animal, feeling warmth, safety, perfection. Then the porcupine woke. Its quills rose instantly. The snake felt pain. But instead of letting go, it squeezed tighter. The tighter it held, the deeper the quills pressed. Still, it refused to release its grip. It believed holding on would somehow make things better. It didn’t. The pain only grew worse. In the end, the snake lost everything—not because of the porcupine, but because it refused to let go.
When I first saw a video by teacher Melody JY Lyu (@Mandarin Melon), I thought it was an isolated case. She introduced initials with attached vowels, turning consonants into syllables. But since then I have seen the same practice repeated in classrooms, in popular teaching materials, in online charts, in podcasts and even in official school settings. This is why many children shut down from so‑called Pinyin: they are not failing the system, the system is failing them. Link
Please click on the link above and see how Pinyin is being taught. Please read the comments on that video link. There are many other such videos being circulated on social media.
Most discussions about education focus on what needs to be taught. Far fewer ask what needs to be unlearned. Yet for many children, the barrier to progress is not a lack of exposure to correct information, but the persistence of incorrect prior learning.
Why Unlearning Matters
When a child has absorbed inaccurate knowledge — whether from earlier instruction, cultural messages, or even well‑meaning teachers — the brain does not simply erase it when new information arrives. Instead, the old mapping remains dominant. The new teaching collides with the earlier model, often producing distortion, rejection, or disengagement.
A common observation from Chinese primary teachers is striking: a substantial number of Grade 1 and 2 pupils can write characters correctly from dictation, yet they falter when asked to read or write accurately from Pinyin by itself. Accuracy with less familiar or novel syllables remains weak.
This pattern helps explain why some observers feel that today’s pupils handle pure Pinyin less confidently than cohorts a decade or more earlier. Several factors are at work.
Children do not enter classrooms as blank slates. They carry prior learning — sometimes accurate, sometimes flawed — and it shapes how they interpret every new lesson. If we ignore this, we risk teaching content that never lands.
Diagnostic teaching is the practice of continuously probing for prior knowledge, surfacing hidden misconceptions, and adapting instruction in real time. It shifts the teacher’s role from “What did I teach?” to “What did this learner experience — and what must now be revised?”
