Julian Elliott’s Decade of Dodging the Truth
🎭 The Master of Evasion
In the lucrative world of dyslexia research, where labels fuel billion‑dollar programs and “special interventions,” one figure has perfected the art of sidestep: Professor Julian Elliott. For more than a decade, Elliott has danced around the real reasons children struggle to read — and the silence from his peers is just as telling.
He admits dyslexia is “a severe and persistent problem with reading.” Fair enough. But if that’s true, why ignore the simple fix that has transformed over 80 children under my guidance?
📩 The 2010 Promise That Vanished
Back in 2010, I wrote directly to Elliott. My message was clear: dyslexia isn’t a brain glitch — it’s a teaching failure rooted in distorted letter sounds. Children aren’t “wired wrong”; they’re wired to learn. The problem lies in how English phonics are taught.
I urged him to read my blog, filled with real‑world solutions that turn non‑readers into fluent readers in months. His reply? A polite nod: “I will read them.”
Fifteen years later, nothing. No follow‑up. No acknowledgment. Instead, Elliott confessed in a 2024 interview with Dr. Martin Bloomfield: “My questions were not being answered by anyone I was speaking with… People who are supposed to be experts in the field.”
The irony? The answers were sitting in my blog all along — from why kids master Malay or Pinyin letters effortlessly, to why English collapses under sloppy sound teaching.
📚 The Cure Ignored
Elliott’s books, including The Dyslexia Debate, circle back to redefining dyslexia as “persistent reading problems.” But why redefine the problem while ignoring the cure?
I’ve taught over 80 so‑called “dyslexic” children to read at grade level in under four months. One case: a boy with an IQ of 130, labeled dyslexic, who became proficient in less than three months once his consonant sounds were corrected. His psychological report confirmed it. Yet Elliott, perched at Durham University, pretends the debate rages on.
💰 The Multi‑Billion Dollar Silence
In that same Bloomfield interview, Elliott admitted: “Dyslexia is a multi‑billion‑dollar business.” He’s right — and part of it. Labels mean grants, therapies, apps. Real fixes? They threaten the gravy train.
That’s why challenges vanish into silence.
Timothy Shanahan (2015): I shared data from 50 students. His verdict? “Not enough of a population for evaluation.” Really? As the Tamil proverb says: To test if rice is cooked, one grain suffices. Shanahan never replied again.
Sam Bommarito: When an Australian mother reported her son reading fluently after two lessons with my method — after a year of failed “systematic synthetic phonics” — Bommarito shrugged: “He probably met the right teacher. No two children are the same.” Thread closed. No curiosity. No follow‑up.
And Elliott himself? On LinkedIn, he dodged evidence with methodological nitpicks, never addressing the core truth: children shut down from bad teaching, not mythical “processing deficits.”
🚸 The Human Cost
While academics debate, children suffer. Bright teens drop out illiterate because experts won’t admit the fix is free: retrain the ear with clean sounds — /b/ not “buh,” /k/ not “kuh.”
My book Shut Down Kids lays out the three non‑neurological reasons children disengage. Testimonials pour in:
A California grandmother’s grandchild reading fluently after virtual sound tweaks.
Alanna’s son in Australia, now a bookworm.
Rose’s high‑IQ boy, thriving after correction.
⚠️ The Verdict
Elliott, Bloomfield, Shanahan — your silence isn’t oversight. It’s complicity. Families are bilked, children are doomed, while the cure sits ignored.
Read the blogs you promised. Answer the challenges. Or step aside for teachers who deliver.
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