Dyslexics Rule K.O.
By Steve Sharp
Depending on which research you read, dyslexia affects between 10 and 20% of people. The spread is wide because of the number of people who remain undiagnosed.
I can relate to this because, until my son was diagnosed, I had no idea I was so cursed…or blessed too.
The website dyslexia.com, under its banner “Dyslexia the Gift”, sets out 37 common traits and behaviours that can vary from day to day or minute to minute. “The most consistent thing about dyslexics is their inconsistency.”
At school I could relate to…
Labelled lazy, careless, not trying hard enough. Tick. ✔️
Feeling inadequate. Covering up weaknesses with ingenious strategies. Tick ✔️
Difficulty sustaining concentration on paper-based tasks. Tick. ✔️
Knows answers but can’t demonstrate it on paper. Tick ✔️
Reads and re-reads with little comprehension. Tick. ✔️
Spells phonetically and inconsistently. Tick. ✔️
Ok at arithmetic. Terrible at maths. Tick. ✔️
Left-right confusion. Tick. ✔️
But looking on the bright side…
Talented at art, drama, music, storytelling, designing, sales, and business.
Thinks primarily with images and feeling.
Strong sense of justice, emotionally sensitive, strives for perfection.
Creative.
School was tough and certainly not the best years of my life.
The lazy, careless, not trying hard enough label earned me regular thrashings at a time when corporal punishment was enthusiastically dished out. On one occasion, the science teacher, Mr. Ireland, gave me the cane on both hands for bad writing, immediately before an English exam. I could barely hold the pen for the pain and the shaking.
Cruel and counterproductive.
I was saved by three teachers who saw something that the others didn’t. Once art classes had gone beyond the things I couldn’t do, like trying to draw or paint reality, the teacher encouraged me to use my imagination and creativity.
I could sing very well and so Mrs. Bradley gave me solo spots, which improved self-confidence immensely.
Most surprising was the reaction of the English teacher, a Welshman we called Taffy Thomas. After failing to read out loud, spelling badly, not understanding grammar, and so forth, he told me to stay after class again. But this time the expected rollicking never came.
He told me that my writing, spelling, and punctuation were hard to penetrate, but that what I wrote in compositions and creative writing was excellent. He sent me off just to “write stuff, give it to me, and don’t worry about the writing and spelling. That will come”.
He was right: it did.
There is no cure for dyslexia, you just learn to work your way around it, and eventually how to use it to your advantage.
Nick pictured with his wife, broadcaster Kirsty Young.
Last weekend’s Sunday Times Magazine featured Nick Jones, founder of Soho House, which I have been a member of since soon after it began in 1995. I have long admired his entrepreneurial flair and had not realised he was a fellow sufferer…if that’s the right word. (It isn’t.)
The article followed his astonishing career, but also chronicled his surgery and “lucky escape” from prostate cancer. Now he’s on a mission to encourage men to get tested.
The list of successful dyslexics is very long and diverse, ranging from Richard Branson to Einstein, Picasso, Cher, and Henry Winkler...The Fonz! Research suggests that 25% of CEOs, and 40% of self-made millionaires are dyslexic.
Mercifully the condition is now well understood, detected early, and children are given strategies to work with it. Corporal punishment was banned from schools in England only in 1986 but the banning lingered on in Wales until 1998, Scotland 2000, and Northern Ireland 2003!
So, Mr. Ireland, I did ok despite you.
And thank heavens for Spellcheck.
Stove