"Dysteachia": Are Reading Problems Inborn or Taught?

When you watch your child struggle to read words that seem to come so easily to his peers, one question echoes louder than any other: Why?

Is it something he was born with, a different wiring in his brain that makes reading uniquely difficult? Or did something go wrong along the way? Is the problem in the child, or is it in the instruction?

This is the central question for countless parents. To explore it, we need to look at two powerful concepts: a simple, functional definition of dyslexia, and a provocative idea known as "dysteachia." At Eulexia Tutoring, we believe understanding both is key to finding the right path forward for your child.

Defining the Problem: What Are We Talking About?

The term "dyslexia" is surrounded by complexity and debate. But at its core, the observable problem is straightforward. The reading researcher Dr. David Kilpatrick offered a refreshingly simple, functional definition, writing that “Dyslexia refers to poor word-level reading despite adequate effort and opportunity. That's it. Pretty simple.”

This definition is powerful because it focuses on the what, not the why. It describes the reality for many children: they try hard, they have the opportunity to learn, but they still can't read words well.

The next logical question is, where does this difficulty come from? While many assume the source is always an inborn, neurological trait, the brilliant and often controversial educator Siegfried Engelmann proposed a different source for many cases of reading failure: "dysteachia," which literally means "poor teaching." Engelmann argued that the problem often lies not in "dyslexia" (a disorder within the learner) but in the instruction itself.

A Working Theory: How Many Reading Problems Develop

So, how does instruction—or "dysteachia"—create a reading problem? Based on our experience working with students, a common and tragic pathway often looks like this:

1. The Child Arrives with a Susceptibility: A child may enter school with underdeveloped skills in phonological awareness. This means he has difficulty hearing and manipulating the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. He isn't "impaired," but he is more at-risk and requires direct, explicit instruction to build this foundational skill.

2. A Mismatch with Instruction: This at-risk child is then placed in a classroom that uses a "whole language" or "balanced literacy" approach. Instead of receiving the systematic phonics instruction he desperately needs, he is taught to "read for meaning." He is encouraged to use pictures, sentence structure, and context to guess at words he doesn't know.

3. Destructive Habits Become Entrenched: Because the child cannot reliably decode using the sound-symbol code (he was never taught it properly), he leans heavily on these guessing strategies. If he is bright, he may become a very plausible guesser for a time. This constant practice of guessing—a non-reading strategy—begins to wire his brain for this inefficient and unreliable habit.

4. The Inevitable Collapse: By second or third grade, the texts become more complex, the pictures disappear, and the number of words to memorize becomes overwhelming. The guessing strategy, which seemed to work for a while, now fails completely. The child is left with no reliable method for tackling unfamiliar words.

The result? The child now exhibits all the signs of what Dr. Kilpatrick described: poor word-level reading despite adequate effort and opportunity. The initial susceptibility, when combined with instructional practices that don’t account it, has cultivated a full-blown reading disability.

So, Is It Inborn or Taught?

The truth is that it is often a destructive interaction between the two. The underlying susceptibility (like weak phonological skills) may be neurodevelopmental, but the profound reading failure is frequently activated and cemented by instruction that ignored that susceptibility and instead taught the child harmful compensatory habits.

The reading problem was not inevitable. It was, in many cases, preventable. And, most importantly, it is still remediable.

Conclusion: Focus on the Solution

For parents, untangling the precise origin of a child's reading struggle is less important than finding the right solution. The concept of "dysteachia" is empowering because it shifts the focus from "what is wrong with my child?" to "what was wrong with the instruction, and what is the right instruction now?"

The solution for a child with entrenched guessing habits is not more of the same. It requires disrupting those habits and building the correct foundation from the ground up with direct, systematic, explicit phonics instruction. Regardless of the initial cause, the path forward is clear. By seeking out principled, evidence-based instruction that directly teaches the alphabetic code, you can provide your child with the tools he needs to finally overcome his reading challenges and become the confident, capable reader he has the potential to be.