The Upside of Dyslexia

When my cousin was in school, he had to go to Herculean efforts to compensate for having dyslexia – like tape-recording his high school and college classes so he could listen to his teachers in class and then listen again and take notes because it was too hard to write down the new material while hearing it for the first time.

That was the 70s and 80s when dyslexia was a big unknown, so Charlie didn’t get any support to speak of from school, was on his own to invent an system that worked for him and was generally made to feel that something was very wrong.

Thankfully today’s article in the New York Times on The Upside of Dyslexia will change how we all look at dyslexia. Anne Murphy Paul reports that people with dyslexia have been shown to have abilities that traditional learners don’t have.

“In some situations, it turns out, those with dyslexia are actually the superior learners,” according to Ms. Paul.  She says:

In recent years, dyslexia research has taken a surprising turn: identifying the ways in which people with dyslexia have skills that are superior to those of typical readers. The latest findings on dyslexia are leading to a new way of looking at the condition: not just as an impediment, but as an advantage, especially in certain artistic and scientific fields.

Since 2005, both Harvard and Yale have founded institutes to “investigate and illuminate the strengths of those with dyslexia.”

For my cousin, after working his tail off, he attended a top school and graduated with a degree in engineering.  It’s still mind-boggling to me to think of him double-timing his classes, listening to his recordings for hour after hour so he could pick up the full meaning of his teachers.

We all thought he had done so well because he had an unbelievable work ethic.

Now, thanks to the latest research, we can know that his dyslexic brain gave him advantages while it created hurdles.

And that’s a very good thing for kids growing up with dyslexia today and I’m thrilled.