Greetings, I want you to see the op ed piece in the New York Times written by Blake Charlton who was one of our speakers at the Dyslexia and Talent conference held in April. -- All best, Tom west
May 22, 2013
Defining My Dyslexia
By BLAKE CHARLTON
SAN FRANCISCO — I STARTED cataloging insults in the
second grade. Notable put-downs heard
outside my special-ed classroom included
“dimwinky,” “retardochuckles” and “the meat in the
sandwich of stupid.” The last of which, if you
think about it, is a seriously impressive use of
metaphor for a 7-year-old. I learned all the jokes
about dyslexia, and told them to better effect than
anyone else. Making fun of myself was my best
defense. The other choices — hiding from my
diagnosis or accepting myself as limited — didn’t
appeal.
Fortunately, humor and hard work proved a good
strategy. Also helpful were my crafty parents.
They often read out loud to me and, noticing my
passion for fantasy novels, would stop at the most
exciting point in a chapter — then leave the book
in case I wanted to read by myself. It wasn’t long
before I was sneaking paperbacks into study hall.
Though slow out of the gate — I couldn’t read
fluently until 13 — I went to Yale, then medical
school at Stanford, and I published two fantasy
novels with disabled heroes (think Harry Potter
and the Special-Ed Classroom). At every step, I
used my diagnosis to my advantage, arguing that I
had succeeded despite being dyslexic. It helped me
stand out. Now a growing body of research suggests that I was
unintentionally lying.
Last month, at the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
Conference on Dyslexia and Talent, I watched
several neurobiologists present evidence that the
dyslexic brain, which processes information in a
unique way, may impart
particular strengths. Studies using cognitive testing and functional
M.R.I.’s have demonstrated exceptional
three-dimensional and spatial reasoning among dyslexic
individuals, which may account for the many
successful dyslexic engineers. Similar studies have
shown increased creativity and big-picture thinking
(or “gist-detection”) in dyslexics, which
correlates with the surprising number of dyslexic
entrepreneurs, novelists and filmmakers.
The conference’s organizers made a strong case that
the successes of the attending dyslexic
luminaries — who ranged from a Pulitzer-winning poet to a MacArthur
grant-winning
paleontologist to an entrepreneur who pays a dozen
times my student loans in taxes every year —
had been achieved “not despite, but because of
dyslexia.”
It was an exciting idea. However, I worried that
the argument might be taken too far. Some of the
attendees opposed the idea that dyslexia is a
diagnosis at all, arguing that to label it as such is to pathologize a normal variation of human intellect.
One presenter asked the audience to repeat
“Dyslexia is not a disability.”
Not a disability? My years of functional illiteracy
suggest otherwise. Today’s educational
environment exacerbates dyslexic weaknesses.
Schools misidentify poor spelling and slow reading
as a lack of intelligence; typically diagnose the
condition only after students have fallen behind;
and too often fail to provide dyslexic students
with the audio and video materials that would help
them learn. Until these disadvantages are removed,
“disability” most accurately describes what
young dyslexics confront.
At the heart of the conference was the assumption
that a group of advocates could alter the
definition of dyslexia and what it means to be
dyslexic. That’s a bigger idea than it might seem. Ask
yourself, “What role should those affected by a
diagnosis have in defining that diagnosis?” Recently
I posed this question to several doctors and
therapists. With minor qualifications, each answered
“none.” I wasn’t surprised. Traditionally, a
diagnosis is something devised by distant experts and
imposed on the patient. But I believe we must
change our understanding of what role we should
play in defining our own diagnoses.
Before I went to medical school, I thought a
diagnosis was synonymous with a fact; criteria were
met, or not. Sometimes this is so. Diabetes, for
example, can be determined with a few laboratory
tests. But other diagnoses, particularly those
involving the mind, are more nebulous. Symptoms
are contradictory, test results equivocal.
Moreover, the definition of almost any diagnosis changes
as science and society evolve.
Diagnostics might have more in common with law than
science. Legislatures of disease exist in
expert panels, practice guidelines and consensus
papers. Some laws are unimpeachable, while
others may be inaccurate or prejudiced. The same is
true in medicine; consider the antiquated
diagnosis of hysteria in women. Those affected by
unjust diagnoses — like those affected by unjust
laws — should protest and help redefine them.
The past 50 years provide several examples of such
redefinitions. In 1978, Susan Sontag’s “Illness
as Metaphor” demonstrated how the contemporary
understanding and description of cancer
unfairly blamed patients. In the next decade,
activists began their struggle to enlighten the medical
profession and society about H.I.V. More recently,
the neurodiversity movement has changed how
we understand autism.
I believe that scientific evidence and social
observation will continue to show that defining dyslexia
based solely on its weaknesses is inaccurate and
unjust, and places too grim a burden on young
people receiving the diagnosis. A more precise
definition of dyslexia would clearly identify the
disabilities that go along with it, while
recognizing the associated abilities as well. If the dyslexic
community could popularize such a definition, then
newly diagnosed dyslexics would realize that
they, like everyone else, will face their futures
with a range of strengths and weaknesses.
Of course, if they would also like to confront
their difficulties with wry humor and jokes about
spelling, I’d be O.K. with that too ... even if
their jokes are funnier than mine.
Blake Charlton, the
author of the novels “Spellwright” and “Spellbound,” will be a resident
physician in internal medicine at the University of California,
San Francisco’s School of Medicine starting in June.
