Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley, blamed poor teaching methods forilliteracy and said that children should be taught using syntheticphonics, citing the success of schools in West Dunbartonshire.
Writing on the website manchesterconfidential.com, Mr Stringer said,'The reason that so many children fail to read and write is because thewrong teaching methods are used. The education establishment, ratherthan admit that their eclectic and incomplete methods are at fault, haveinvented a brain disorder called dyslexia.'
He added, 'To label children as dyslexic because they're confused bypoor teaching methods is wicked.'
Mr Stringer said that if dyslexia really existed, countries likeNicaragua and South Korea would not have been able to achieve literacyrates of nearly 100 per cent.
But Dr Daryl Brown, head of Maple Hayes School in Lichfield,Staffordshire, an independent special school that has pioneered its ownmethods of teaching dyslexic children which do not involve phonics ormulti-sensory methods, said phonics was not the answer, because dyslexicchildren struggle to process written text phonologically.
He said tests of whether children can read nonsense words are often usedto identify dyslexia because they highlight a child's struggle to soundout printed words.
Dr Brown said, 'I meet dyslexic child after dyslexic child who cannotlearn using phonics. There is a phenomenal amount of evidence thatphonics is not the only way children learn to read. Phonics may beeffective in teaching the majority of children, but Maple Hayes was setup for those children for whom it doesn't work.'
Children who attend Maple Hayes school have usually had years ofintensive phonics teaching but are still falling behind.
Parents have usually been to a special educational needs tribunal toprove that their child has made no progress and get them referred to theright specialist provision.
Dr Brown said, 'The heart of the problem comes down to identifyingdyslexia. Most young children starting school have problems that areoften described as symptoms of dyslexia, such as spelling words justlike they sound or writing "b" instead of "d".
'It is only when children have been through the first couple of years ofprimary school and these issues have not been resolved naturally thatdyslexia can be identified.'
Mike Fleetham, an author who has a nine-year-old son who is dyslexic,said Graham Stringer and others should 'get past the language andlabelling' and 'make things happen for those learners whose brainssimply aren't wired for language'.