Dyslexia Disability or Different Ability

[Music]

this

is my brother eli he is a hard-working

personable young kid and i’m lucky to

call him my brother

he is so so musically gifted he can play

literally every instrument and

is so self-motivated that he took a

semester off college

just to teach himself japanese four

different coding languages

and the art of day trading clearly he’s

an incredible kid with

many talents but unfortunately for eli

he cannot draw he struggles with

creating steady straight lines

artistic perspective and shading

yeah eli felt pretty bad about his

artistic abilities

and those feelings were only exacerbated

every time he walked into the art studio

for class

no matter how much i tried to help he

really just couldn’t get the hang of it

but the good news for eli is that

art only took up about 45 minutes of his

days back in high school

and once he graduated he never really

had to deal with those feelings of

inadequacy ever again

for the remainder of his time his days

were filled with classes where his

logical thinking abilities and natural

academic intellect could shine through

classes like math and english for

example so all in all

this struggle withdrawing or inability

to draw

didn’t really impede a sense of

self-confidence all that much

it was just a skill that he would try to

avoid

well what if i told you i had a very

similar story

like my brother i consider myself to be

a bright student

and also like him i struggle with

something but for me

that thing is reading i have dyslexia

so similar to how eli struggles with

artistic perspective and shading

i struggle with spelling and reading

fluency those feelings of inadequacy

that eli felt every day during art class

is how i felt about pretty much every

other class that wasn’t art or physical

education

i noticed very early on too that

everyone

parents teachers alike seem to care a

lot more about the things that eli was

good at

than the things that i was good at so

even when i excelled in art

for example it just never felt good

enough

because it wasn’t math

so as you can see i couldn’t just follow

in the footsteps of my brother and

dismiss my struggles with reading

or wait till i graduated high school to

escape it

no i had to face my struggles for hours

a day

every day and still do because my one

weakness

is the very foundation of our education

system

in other words if you struggle to read

you’re struggling to learn

but at the end of the day though both

reading and drawing are

just skills so why is it that i’m

labeled as disabled

am i disabled or am i just differently

abled

let’s look at the brain so our brain is

divided into two hemispheres

right and left this left hemisphere of

the brain is specialized for activities

like reading and spelling

so for non-dyslexic people like my

brother for example

they utilize this area of the brain to

read write and spell with relative ease

my brain works a little differently so

instead of experiencing this increased

activation on the left side

it’s actually happening on the right now

this right hemisphere is not specialized

for reading and spelling

but rather for more holistic non-linear

abstract thought

so how does this affect reading um well

imagine trying to use a spoon to cut a

steak

it’s possible but it’s by no means the

most efficient way of getting the job

done

similarly that’s how the dyslexic brain

works we’re using the part of our brain

that’s not specialized for the task at

hand

which then makes the overall task of

reading something that’s a lot more

laborious and frustrating

and this gives rise to things like

spelling errors

and misreading words out loud which you

know granted

might not seem like the biggest deal but

i can tell you this it is not the best

feeling

in fact it’s kind of a bad feeling when

you’re a senior in college

and still struggle to spell the word

comfortable reliably

it’s pretty uncomfortable actually now

for me in art class

this is not an issue but as soon as i

walk into english class or

am assigned an essay for homework i’m

once again forced to confront my

struggles

and i’m not alone it’s estimated that as

much as 17 percent of our population

has dyslexia and with many more cases

unreported

although dyslexia is highly heritable

there’s really no way to know at birth

if you have dyslexia or not if your

parents have it

you have a good chance of having it but

you can’t just know straight out of the

womb

and so the only way to know is through

going through school and then showing

signs of struggle which are usually

detected around ages seven or eight

and so up until this point and in many

cases even after this point

many students go through school hearing

things like oh

she’s really bright she’s just lazy

or you know if she would just try a

little bit harder and be less sloppy

with her work

she would do great in school and

i can tell you from personal experience

hearing these and all these things

throughout your childhood

and into your adult life is totally

crushing when you are actively trying

your hardest

a sense it crushes your sense of

self-worth and self-confidence

and without diagnosis or a strong

support system at home helping you

through school

many dyslexic students feel so hopeless

as to drop out completely

because they don’t feel like they belong

in fact some of our world’s most

extraordinary minds gave up on a classic

education

because they failed to think in this

linear way

what does the model t automobile

incandescent light bulb

indiana jones and the theory of

relativity all have in common

they were all created by dyslexic

geniuses who struggled and in some cases

even failed out of school

so what does this say about our

education system why is it that some of

our world’s most successful people

felt so unsuccessful in their education

system

as to give up completely in order to try

and succeed in something else

i think these success stories are

particularly interesting when juxtaposed

against the estimate

that 50 percent of prison inmates have

dyslexia

now that’s not to say that dyslexics

have this innate predisposition to be

criminals

but rather to illustrate the potential

and severe consequences of growing up

feeling like your best isn’t good enough

and that you will never be enough

our education system grades our students

ability to think and perform within a

box

our understanding of material is graded

by our ability to regurgitate

momentarily memorize information onto an

exam in the course of an hour

our intellectual capacity is measured by

our ability to compute math equations or

read

as quick or quicker than our peers even

our sense of self-worth is indirectly

determined by something as trivial as

being able to shade in the right bubble

on an answer sheet

but what is this really testing i

believe that the reason why people with

dyslexia opt

out of trying to succeed in the system

is because

our thinking doesn’t work in this

mechanical linear way

we constantly think and perform outside

of this box

and go through school getting penalized

for it with bad grades and persistent

feelings of inadequacy

there’s an old quote i recently learned

that says if you judge a fish on its

ability to climb a tree

it will grow up its whole life believing

it’s stupid

i mean yeah it’s a seemingly ridiculous

quote why are we speculating about the

metacognitive abilities of a fish let

alone its ability to be out of water

long enough to climb a tree but

that’s exactly what i’m trying to say

it’s ridiculous we are literally judging

a human’s intelligence based off of its

ability to perform a single task

that doesn’t even directly prove the

very thing it claims to be testing

so working with this metaphor

what if we taught in a way that didn’t

exclude 17

of the population what if we nurtured

this difference

like a gift and taught dyslexic students

how to take advantage of their

different ability instead of letting

them think they have a disability

don’t get me wrong i’m not trying to

discredit the struggles of dyslexic

students

i am very familiar with the

disadvantages that come along with

struggling to read

write and spell in our classic education

system what i am trying to do

is shift our definition of dyslexia away

from focusing on the one associated

weakness

and start to finally highlight the

unique exceptional abilities that the

dyslexic mind

truly possesses what do those look like

you might ask

well let’s ask magic johnson magic

johnson

is one of the world’s most successful

athletes he’s a famous point guard

and he was in fact able to succeed on

the level that he did in part due to his

dyslexia

so one of these dyslexic gifts is this

enhanced sensitivity and awareness for

peripheral motion

and so he was able to utilize this skill

in order to carry out these sneaky

no-look passes where he wouldn’t even

have to move his head

to shoot the ball with somebody to the

other side of the court

and these gifts don’t just stop in the

world of athletics

translates into art and something that i

thought was super interesting was

astrophysics so in a study conducted by

scientists at the harvard smithsonian

center for astrophysics they found that

dyslexic astrophysicists were able to

pull out

graphical simulations of black holes

amongst a bed of noise

much quicker and more accurately than

the non-dyslexic astrophysicists

all right i’m no pro in the world of

astrophysics but from my research i have

conducted that this was a very desirable

trait for the industry so

two points dyslexia in fact galileo

the very father of observational

astronomy was speculated to have

dyslexia

and it was because of his holistic wide

lens way of thinking and seeing

that he was literally able to see

patterns in the stars

which then led to the discovery of

jupiter’s four moons

when you think about the sheer number of

scientific breakthroughs

number one hits revolutionary inventions

and ingenious works of art that have

been

carried out created or developed by

dyslexic thinkers

it’s truly remarkable and perhaps the

most paradoxical part of it all is that

most all of these people

were made to feel inadequate or stupid

in school

maybe even disabled but were these

people disabled

was cher disabled was muhammad ali

disabled

as matthew schnepps an incredibly

successful dyslexic astrophysicist once

said

it’s not that i did all these things and

just happened to have dyslexia

it’s because i have dyslexia that i was

able to do all these things

and i resonate with that imagine if we

had

a specialized institution like that

which we have for the musically gifted

that work towards nurturing the dyslexic

abilities i mentioned before

imagine if we had a juilliard school of

music

but for the talent of dyslexia

instead of identifying these people as

having disabilities

what if we recognize and foster their

unique abilities

how many more einsteins or edisons would

we have sitting in our school system

rather than our prison system think

about that

it’s possible that the very person who

might grow up to discover the next major

planet

might not be reliably able to spell the

word astrophysics

but why does that matter what is that

even measuring

it may seem to be the best option to

educate for the masses

but when you think about thousands of

kids struggling through school

believing that they are handicapped in

some way

we might just be excluding the next f

scott fitzgerald or

henry ford from pushing and advancing

our societies forward

we really need to change the way that we

think of education from this

one-size-fits-most

model to a more holistic well-rounded

collection of styles

for every dyslexic genius like walt

disney or

louis pasteur who reinvented their field

through sheer dedication and intellect

there are thousands of kids who feel

hopeless and lost

just because they struggled in school

and as a result feel they don’t have a

place in our society

i can say that from my personal

experience as a dyslexic learner

simply typing my notes re-reading

textbooks and taking written exams

won’t cut it for me i failed enough

exams to say that confidently

what took me until freshman year of

college to realize is that

the way i study looks a whole lot

different than the way that i was taught

to study in school

and what i’m still learning till this

day is that’s okay

through my research i have found that

dyslexics have this natural affinity for

colors and shapes whereas non-dyslexics

might have it for letters and numbers

letters and numbers are what are seen as

practical and thus are valued more in

our society and we’re taught to forget

about

you know colors and shapes and grow up

out after elementary school become

adults

but what why that’s not how i work

that’s not how dyslexic people work when

were you ever given a proper lesson

on the art of color coding in school or

how to use image associations to study

for an exam

never right these are both very valid

ways and

for some people more valid than a study

guide ways of studying for an exam

but we’re just not taught them in school

so through my own collection of trial

and error throughout my entire academic

life

i have finally found the most effective

way for me to study

and i can tell you this it is not

through typing up my notes

it’s through the use of these things

called mind maps

now mind maps are artistic

representations of how terms and

concepts connect

so pretty much by sketching them out

shading them in turning them into art

i’ve been able to commit years of

material to memory

that i can still retrieve till this day

now i cannot say the same about the

hundreds of study guides i made back in

high school

so to my brother or maybe even to you

a non-dyslexic thinker this collection

of drawings

might look like complete chaos but to me

this makes sense

to me a full page of a textbook looks

like complete chaos but

to each their own is this better or

worse

than a study guide no it’s just

different

is eli less intelligent than me because

he struggles to draw

of course not that’s ridiculous so

why is it that i should feel less

intelligent than him when i struggle to

read

see what i’m saying here spelling and

reading fluency are not the only two

ways of measuring intellect

and we’re finally starting to realize

this and make the necessary changes to

include other thinking styles

for example stem an interdisciplinary

curriculum designed to educate students

for careers in

science technology engineering and math

is

largely now being changed to steam to

include an a that represents the arts

this is a step in the right direction

but there’s still so much that needs to

be done

if you do not have dyslexia and you’re

watching this

the next time you see a classmate or a

colleague maybe stumble on a word or

spell something wrong

know that there’s more than what meets

the eye she’s not stupid or incapable

if she was she wouldn’t be giving you a

ted talk today

and to those of you with dyslexia no

matter your age

the next time you fail an english exam

or spell something wrong in a

professional email for the

15th time this week i hope that you feel

proud before you feel embarrassed

you have worked twice as hard to get to

where you are today and no one can take

that away from you

it is through these struggles that you

have built the perseverance and

character that are trademarks of a

person with dyslexia

my ultimate goal is that our education

system

diversifies its teaching methods to

match the neurodiversity of its students

there’s not one brain type so let’s stop

educating people and teaching them as if

there is

i believe the first step in doing this

is changing our framework with regards

to dyslexia

and other learning differences for that

matter let’s stop looking at them as

disabilities and finally start to

recognize

and foster their unique different

abilities

thank you