Sunday 16 May 2010

The frustration of dyslexia

Regular readers of the blog will know that I'm moderately dyslexic. Generally this hasn't been a problem for me since my early teens, when I developed a pretty decent strategy for dealing with it. In the good old days of the mid 1970's dyslexia as such didn't exist. We were just plain thick. I'm so glad that I don't live in todays namby pamby state where I'd have been statemented, given extra time in exams, had my own classroom assistant. Had I been given all of that, there's no way I'd be the mass of raging anger that propels my love of punk rock and my burning hatred of injustice. Children today don't know what it's like to be called to the front of the class and ritually humiliated "Let's all laugh at the retard" sessions were one of the highlights of my growing years. There was a turning point for me. It happened when I was at Finchley Catholic High School. At the time my best friend was Patrick Walsh. I had transgressed. The then Headmaster of the School, Nick Kelly was taking us for a lesson. He didn't like something I said and decided to humiliate me. He invited Pat Walsh to stand up and ridicule me. Pat stood up and announced that there was no way that he would do such a thing. He turned round and said "You've got something to say, say it for yourself". The rest of the class, like a bunch of hyenas sensing that the old alpha was hurt and the old order was changing all joined in. Kelly bottled it and dragged me up to his office to give me a letter to take home to my parents and told me I was a troublemaker. That was the day I learned the most important lesson of my life. Stand up for what you believe in and don't abandon your friends. If Pat had done what the Head asked, I wouldn't have held it against him, I'd just have taken it. As it was, it made me realise that you NEVER should take it. I doubt he even remembers it. We lost touch when I left aged 15. Much to my shame a year before, I didn't have the guts to take the same stand. Pat had bad eczma and used to have a red raw face. One day, he turned up late for a history lesson. The teacher, Mr Linane, looked at him as he arrived and annouced "Baconface arrives". We all found it hilarious and for a while the name stuck. I thought it was wrong at the time, but didn't have the courage to stand up and say anything (I was about 12).

Do you know how it feels when your friends put themselves on the line for you and win, especially when you have low self esteem? It feels great. After that day, all of the thrashings I received didn't matter. So what got me thinking about this. Well these days there's only thing which I have significant problems with. Filling out forms. Generally I get Mrs T to do that. Sadly she's in Sheffield at a swimming championship with eldest daughter. My anti virus subscription expired and I needed to renew it. For most people this would be a simple task. It took me 45 minutes and a phonecall to the bank to sort out my card. After getting absolutely nowhere I eventually had another look (for the hundredth time) Oh yes. I realised the error of my ways. 01/11 isn't the November 2011.

Happily for me such errors now only make me feel frustrated. I no longer have to stand in front of 40 classmates for a ritual humiliation by the teacher. Whenever you hear radio shows about schools, you year the same mantra. Standards have dropped, the old ways are better, in my day we got a proper education. I see how hard my children work and how good their work is. I had a great education if you consider having a deep mistrust of authority, a raging anger at injustice and a commitment to stand by my friends through thick and thin are what you consider to be a good education. I just wished I'd enjoyed the whole process a tiny bit more.

16 comments:

Mrs T said...

Hey thickhead, how did you get on in the Council elections?

Anonymous said...

Is that a comment about dyslexia from the editor, what the Telegraph reports ( http://ukpolitics.telegraph.co.uk/Finchley+%26+Golders+Green/Mike+Freer ), is the *official blog* of Mike Freer MP? Not very inclusive to call a dyslexic 'thickhead'.

Rog T said...

I suppose thickhead is better than "one handed blogger"

Anonymous said...

Not sure it is RogT, as a non-dyslexic and far from the PC crowd, I think calling someone who suffers from dyslexia "thick" is really offensive and past the mark.

@Mike Freer can you please contact the Telegraph and correct them if this is not your blog and issue a formal statement disowning this blog and it's author. Failure to do this will lead people to think these comments come with your endorsement.

Mrs Angry said...

I can hardly believe my eyes: what sort of person makes a remark like this? What a fabulous advertisement for the Conservative party, and doesn't it say it all about the sort of person who wanted Mike Freer to represent the residents of this area? Laughing at the idea of learning difficulties is acceptable, is it. 'Mrs T'? I have two children who happen to be dyslexic(oh, and very definitely not 'thickheads' btw): perhaps you and a few other local Tory supporters would like to explain to them why you think this is amusing?

Mrs Angry said...

... just paid a visit to this person's blog: there are some appalling comments there just appeared. I really cannot believe that Mike Freer actually approves of this woman's drivel. But who knows?

Rog T said...

Hey Mrs Angry,

I've always been proud to be a Thickhead. I was really gutted when I finally found out that I was dyslexic and had an excuse for my stupidity.

I lovingly remember Miss O'Donovan hitting me on the head with a book and calling me a thickhead at St Vincents so it's nothing new.

Hey do you suppose Miss T is really the ghost of Miss O'Donovan getting her revenge?

Mrs Angry said...

ha: they certainly seem to have certain characteristics in common ...! I thought we had moved on since those bad old days, but I suppose the old knee jerk type of nasty, small minded Tory is back in fashion. Freer must be so proud.By the way, I see that this person is trying to claim anti Freer bloggers are 'homophobic' which is a very unpleasant smear tactic. Strange, isn't it how one may not object to someone's political stance without being accused of such repulsive motives, yet it is acceptable to try to make fun of someone with a learning difficulty?

Rog T said...

Actually, odd though it sounds, I prefer the term thickhead to "Learning difficulty". I learn pretty quickly in most things

Rog T said...

It's quite ironic really. I'm sick to death of blogging about Barnet politics so I write a blog about something completely different and guess what?

caroline said...

Likening Mrs T to Miss O'Donovan is a dreadful smear ... on Miss O'Donovan.

Mrs Angry said...

Caroline: almost with you on that one - almost ... Rog, stop banging on about 'stupidity' - actually without wanting to give you an enormously large head you are quite evidently not stupid and nor are the vast majority of dyslexic people, in fact most are above average intelligence, and a huge proportion of successful creative and entrepreuneurial people are dyslexic. Would you rather be dyslexic like Da Vinci,or idiotic like Mrs T (both of them)?

Jaybird said...

@Mrs Angry
As the mother of a pair of dyslexics I have to disagree with some of your comments.

It is not true that dyslexics have above average intelligence. It is easier to recognise in a child with above average intelligence. Basically if your incredibly articulate, 7 year old is capable of abstract logical thinking but cannot spell his/ her own name or do a 4 piece jigsaw puzzle, it is blindingly obvious that something is going on. It will be equally obvious on testing. But a child with below average intelligence will not present with that kind of discrepancy. A child who speaks English as a second language, or who may have other disabilities like deafness, is more likely to have any reading issues ascribed to that.

Identifying the issue and raising the child's self-esteem seems to me to be massively important. Even without the kind of treatment that Rog describes, school is pretty miserable and humiliating for children with poor literacy skills.

Success stories like Rog or Richard Branson are great, but the reality also includes this

http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag50.html

Rog T said...

Jaybird,

I write blogs about dyslexia because of what you are saying. I certainly didn't feel like a "success story" aged 13 or 14. I've done alright and I'm happy with what I've got, but I remember the carreers teacher telling me I may work for the council as a road sweeper or "do something in a garage".

I never, ever think of myself as intelligent. I sometimes wonder if everyone will realise I've just been connng them all along and I'm really as thick as S**T. Thats what education did for me. If I feel like that with what I've done aged 47, I do understand, believe me I do.

If your children sometimes seem completely bloody minded and awkward, I'd say that's a good thing. They just need to find something which they can get in to. For me it was Punk rock. The minimalistic lyrics and simple energy of the music made sense. I also totally bought into the anti establishment and the anger. All of a sudden, I realised I wasn't the only person in the world who felt like this.

There's no answer to any of this, no cure. I just write this stuff so that maybe someone else out there realises they aren't the only person in the world dealing with this. Does that help? I guess it helped me.

Mrs Angry said...

Jaybird: I also have two children with this difficulty and beoeive me there is nothing you can tell me about it we haven't experienced. Perhaps it is true simply that dyslexia is more apparent in individuals with above average intelligence but there is a connection between dyslexia and an ability to think laterally and creatively: I don't accept that intelligence is measureable only by IQ tests: creative ability, musical ability etc are difficult to define and assess. And rog, that is why I think it is crucial that primary schools become less obsessed with league tables and continual assessment and should give more opportunities to children who are not going to rate highly in conventional testing the chance to shine in some other area. So many children are made to feel like failures because of difficulties like dyslexia, not helped by the crass ignorance and stupidity of idiots like 'Mrs T'.

Rog T said...

Mrs Angry,

I happen to think that in my case it was minor brain damage caused at birth. I suspect that anyone with a brain scanner would be able to pinpoint exactly where if they scanned me and my five totally undyslexic siblings. I say this because there are some things I just find impossible to do. For ecample, I can never remember someones name when they are introduced to me. Never have been able to. If I already know it (ie I have an appointment) then it's fine, but when I meet people and they say "This is Karen, this is Susan and this is Geoff" I am completely stumped. All the more bizarre is the fact that I could instantly remember scientific equations. Similarly I cannot remember what verbs, nouns, pronouns etc are as to me the words have no meaning. I could never learn foreign languages at school but find them easy to pick up when I'm there, for basic functional tasks.

For the sake of clarity, I'm not saying that anyone else is brain damaged because they are a bit dyslexic, but I'm an engineer and that's the only logical explanation I can think of for my own situation.

Another manifestation is I've always had difficulty with balancing. I've done yoga on and off for many years and this does actually seem to have helped in some small undefinable way.