The Silencing of Dissent: Why the Dyslexia Establishment Keeps Blocking Me (Part 1 of 3)

 

Why I am writing This Series

Since 2010, I’ve blogged about reading instruction, dyslexia, and phonics—always grounded in facts and student outcomes. I’ve taught over 80 children labeled as dyslexic, and I’ve shared what works, freely and openly.

This new three-part series marks a shift. It’s not just about methods—it’s about why those methods get blocked.

I’ve been silenced, ignored, and blocked by educators, researchers, and influencers—not because my results are flawed, but because they challenge the consensus. These posts explore the motives behind that resistance: profit, herd mentality, and gatekeeping.

I’m not here to attack individuals. I’m here to ask:

“Why block a question? What does that say about openness to debate?”

If we want to solve illiteracy, we must be willing to confront uncomfortable truths. This series is my invitation to do just that.

It's been years since I first noticed the pattern: educators, researchers, and self-proclaimed literacy experts on Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, and beyond, blocking me not for harassment or threats, but for daring to question their sacred cows. As the founder of free online lessons that have helped dozens of children—many mislabelled as "dyslexic"—read fluently in under four months, I've become a thorn in their side. My crime? Pointing out that phonological awareness deficit isn't the root cause of reading struggles; it's the confusion from teaching consonants with extraneous vowel sounds like "buh" instead of pure /b/. Kids shut down, disengage, and get funneled into expensive interventions. But why block the messenger?

Definition of grapheme and phoneme

I believe I now know why I have been getting lukewarm reception of educators in the US, the UK and Australia. I believe most of them do not understand what I mean when I say that the pronunciation of phonemes of consonants is not taught correctly.

  You cannot teach phonics of any kind if the pronunciation of phonemes is taught wrongly. 

Sound symbol skills + Oral blending ability = Basic phonics skills.

Linkedin – Forum on how to teach reluctant and struggling readers

                                                              

This is an extract from a forum on literacy for reluctant and struggling readers on LinkedIn. I have changed all the names of the people who had commented.

Emily

I recently overheard 2 reading specialists hotly debating the use of r-controlled vowels in the phonemes er, ir and ur. One was insistent that they should be taught as one sound and the other as two.

Let’s use the example “Fur” – As a Brit living in the States, I’d be interested to hear the different opinions of whether this should be taught “f_u_r” OR “f_ur” – Any thoughts? Does this differ from State to State?

Phonological awareness and phonics - Part 1

                                                               

The terms "phonemic awareness", “phonological awareness” and "phonics" are often used in the field of education. Some writers use them interchangeably, yet they mean different things and have different roles as children begin to read.  There seems to be quite a bit of confusion over the terms “phonological awareness”, “phonemic awareness” and “phonics”

The English language has 44 phonemes. Words are produced by stringing these sounds together. The ability to manipulate and distinguish these phonemes as they are used in words is called phonemic awareness. It is a natural skill developed in children through talking and listening to other speakers of their language.

To teach or not to teach - Phonics

                                                                     

One of my first students, a girl refused to say the word fox despite being repeatedly asked to repeat after me. I have written about this in my article dated 17th February 2010. Children prone to disengaging shut down when something illogical is taught to them.

My student refused to say the word fox as she had learnt from her former tuition teacher that the phoneme for the letter 'f' is “Fur/Fer”. As such, to her, the word fox cannot be sounded out the way I had sounded it out. If the alphabet ‘F’ carried the sound fer/fur then the word ‘fox’ must be sounded out as ‘fur-ox’. As such she had refused to say it the way I had pronounced it.

Now, I would have expected this kind of wrong teaching of phonemes in countries where English is taught as a second language. However, I just found out that it is rampant in the US, Australia and the UK too. No wonder the rate of illiteracy in these countries is on the increase.

Who says dyslexic children are phonologically unaware? & Lesson 26

Many of the articles on dyslexia say that dyslexics are phonologically unaware. A little thought will clearly reveal that this statement cannot be true.

Dyslexia - Phonemic awareness & Lesson 13

Dyslexia – Phonemic awareness.

On the 1st of April a member from a group I belong to commented on my article about the Australian boy in Japan. I have copied the relevant part of her comments below: