Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Dyslexia is a specific learning disability

that is neurobiological in origin

and characterized by difficulties with reading, writing, spelling or math.

However, people with dyslexia are frequently endowed with talent

in fields such as art, science, engineering and athletics.

Dyslexia appears in all cultures and languages in the world.

JONATHAN MOONEY: Uh, good afternoon.

STUDENTS: Good afternoon.

My name's Jonathan Mooney, and it's a great honor for me to be here.

Every single time I speak publicly, I'm very honest about how for me

and many kids like me with learning differences,

school sucks and sucks big time.

Now... STUDENTS: (CHEERING)

I am dyslexic, I have ADHD, and ya'll know somethin'?

I am proud of it.

I did not overcome dyslexia. I am proud to be dyslexic.

I am proud to be a member of this community.

I did not overcome dyslexia. Y'all know what I overcame?

I overcame "dys-teach-ia." Okay? STUDENTS: (LAUGHING)

I overcame this myth that there's one way to learn,

and if you don't fit that one way, something's wrong with you.

Let me give you an example of how dyslexic I am.

I studied English literature at Brown University, right? Ivy league university,

studied English literature, and I read in the 12th percentile.

Y'all know what that means? That means that I read today,

I'm 30 years old, I read like a 7th grader.

I've written two books and I spell at a 3rd grade level.

Y'all lookin' at someone who spells like a 3rd grader.

I didn't learn to read until I was 12 years old.

I was labeled learning disabled or dyslexic in 4th grade.

I was labeled ADHD, which stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

in 5th grade and I dropped out of school for a year in 6th grade.

That year, 6th grade, 12 years old, I had a plan for suicide.

By the time I was in 9th grade,

I was told three things about myself on a daily basis.

I was told that I was the stupid kid.

I heard that almost every day, "John you are dumb."

Number two, I heard that I was the crazy or bad kid.

And number three, I heard that I was

lazy.

Stupid, crazy and lazy. I was told that every single day.

Anybody else in the audience ever been told that about themselves?

Few of us right?

This guy's going to raise two hands and a foot right?

Yeah you know it. STUDENTS: (LAUGHING)

We're amongst friends now aren't we, you know?

Stupid, crazy and lazy because I'm different,

because y'all are different. That's the message we get from traditional schooling.

We're told everyday that there's one way to be smart.

Now that's a lie. There are multiple ways to be smart,

but in school, often there's one way.

Let's be honest, right? In first grade,

if you spell poorly and you got bad handwriting,

and you don't read well, guess what you're called?

STUDENTS: (MURMURING) You're called stupid. Look, I know that we have

euphemisms for it. I know that I'm not literally called stupid. I know I'm called,

the "at risk learner." Anyone ever heard that one?

Or my favorite. I'm the special learner, right? STUDENTS: (LAUGHS)

Who gets to ride the special bus

to the special class STUDENTS: (LAUGHING)

when there's not a damn thing special about any of it right? STUDENTS: (LAUGHING)

I've spent my entire life chasing this fiction

that if I just fixed my reading, I'd be normal.

If I fixed my spelling, I'd be normal.

When the reality is, normal people suck. STUDENTS: (LAUGHING)

There is no normal. There's only you.

There's only a singular intelligence.

There's only your strengths, gifts and talents interwoven with your struggles.

Normal is a dead end.

LD and ADHD, when channeled correctly

are not abnormalities.

They're differences. They're strengths, they're gifts, they're talents.

Thank you all very much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

STUDENTS: (CHEERING AND CLAPPING)

You know, the challenge in

understanding this story

is to understand

what a monumental negation of who you are,

as a human being, it is to be told you're stupid.

I mean, you know, I can sit around and I can talk about it and

I can tell you anecdotes of growing up in the stupid reading group

and reading out loud, and all of those things, you know, scratch the surface

of what it does to a human being to point at somebody and say,

"Your mind doesn't work,"

or, "You're bad."

The real tragedy here is

the...many of these kids are not only not stupid, they're the opposite of stupid.

You know, they are the

the next generation of artists or innovators or creative thinkers.

They're the opposite of it.

So, not only are you demeaned as a human being but,

your authentic self, you're really disconnected from it.

My last school was

uh, really big.

A thousand, I think, 1,300 kids in the school in 6th, 7th and 8th grade,

and I got beat up all the time.

The classes were so big, I would never get

to have one on one time with my teachers.

They didn't understand me, so all of my assignments were marked down

because I didn't spell things correctly, because of my dysgraphia.

I didn't understand the questions 'cause of my dyslexia.

I couldn't pay attention 'cause of my ADHD.

And, I got in lots of fights with the teachers because they didn't understand what I was

trying to say or what I was going through.

You're always wrong.

You're always working so hard to keep up.

You know that something's wrong.

No one's helping you.

It was just something you just stuffed and stuffed and stuffed in,

like it's just such a painful thing. And...

...it's such a painful thing to be confronted with your...

yourself.

In 2nd grade, when I was starting to be diagnosed, uhm,

my teacher just like,

she, uhm, sat me down one day, as we were going through all these things and

and told me, "Stop pretending."

And that was, like, that was a trip for me 'cause I was like,

you know, I'm like eight years old and stop pretending about what? She goes,

she said that I was pretending to have a learning disability

so I could get attention.

It's just a really lonely feeling.

You don't really feel like anyone else really gets you.

Or really gets where you're coming from.

I mean, it's hard, it's hard to talk about

not understanding something when you don't know why you're not.

You know?

'Cause like, I didn't know. I just thought I was dumb.

I didn't realize that there was anything preventing me from understanding,

and there were some things I was good at, so I was able to kind of hide it

and compensate, you know? For awhile. (LAUGHS)

The teacher would be like, "Go up to the board and spell out this word."

You're in...it's like deer in headlights and it's like,

"Uh, I don't know how to spell it even when I'm not being put on the spot."

And just dreading every day you went to school,

being picked on because you're...

like, considered one of the foul marks of the school. I just didn't like it.

Like, don't pick on me when it comes down to reading.

And like, if they did pick on me to read, I'll find a way just to get out of it.

Like, I'll be the smart one in the class

to make everybody laugh, so they can kick me out of class.

You teachers out there.

Some of us don't know how to approach someone and say we have a problem.

Some of us do. Some of us don't.

And sometimes, if there is a kid like that who's failing,

who basically...why don't you just go up and ask if they have a problem?

Stress takes a toll and constantly being confronted with your weakest

parts, is so frustrating.

Uhm...but

when you don't know any better, when you don't know how to deal with it.

you just kind of take it. You take it and it's like a beating.

You just keep taking it and taking it and taking it, because you're just like...

I should just work harder.

In 6th grade I was suicidal.

And that was pretty bad.

Uh, I was admitted to a hospital for a suicide watch for a couple of weeks.

I just gave up altogether and I would stop doing all my work

because I was so frustrated that I couldn't express

how I was thinking onto paper or into tests, anything.

There will be times when I'll pick up a book and it will be exactly what I wanted to read.

It's...I don't know, the new thing, the story,

and I just really want to read it and I can't.

And it kills me.

Like, sometimes I'll, like, cry.

I'll pick up a book, and I'll go to read it and it hurts.

I'm not going to wake up one morning and read.

My brain is just not wired right.

I'm gonna talk to you again, a little bit more formally about what dyslexia is.

Right. As we were talking about it yesterday,

it has to do with reading, and writing and spelling.

Not with thinking.

Right? It's not the same as a difficulty with learning.

When a person learns how to read,

there's a part of your brain right in here, called the angular gyrus,

that does the translation work of taking those symbols and turning them into the sounds.

Now, this is learned behavior, but some people learn it

and that area of the brain activates very quickly in their lives.

Age five or six they get a little bit of print instruction,

little bit of an idea of how to do it, some practice,

and that area of the brain will light right up.

There are other people for whom this area of the brain is the one that lights up.

It's up here in the pre-frontal cortex.

That means you're trying to think your way through it.

You're really working hard.

You're really working hard to try to decode it,

but a different area of the brain is lighting up along with some of the

things along this side and back here in the visual cortex.

Different areas of the brain will light up

and they're not as efficient as

that area which is the area that processes that very quickly and efficiently.

It's trying to light up as many areas as it can to process that thing

and it's actually, literally, measurably

uses five times more energy to do the same thing.

So, if you get exhausted while you're reading that would be the reason.

Keep that in mind. You're working harder for less gain, often,

than the other people around you.

But it's not because you're not as smart as they are.

I have a question about the ADD and ADHD?

ADD could be attendant on this.

People can have both. Right?

There are some people who are just dyslexic.

There are some people who are just ADHD.

And there are some people who have both.

I think the numbers are something like 25% of dyslexics have ADHD,

and something like 30% of ADHD people have dyslexia.

So there's an overlap.

Yeah. Can dyslexia affect like,

how you write? Like, with dysgraphia?

Uhm, often times if you're dysgraphic, it's a sign that you're having

trouble forming the symbols.

You know, I know people who are beautiful artists

and can't write letters.

That's 'cause the dyslexic. It's hard,

uhm, and sometimes, I always say, "I don't know.

You know, I don't know how some people get up and come to school each day."

Uhm, I don't know how you do it.

We don't either. What?

We don't know either. I know! (LAUGHS)

Dyslexia is very poorly understood

by almost everybody in society, including our students

who also don't know what it is that's causing their frustration,

their difficulties. They've just been

dealing with them for years, uhm, without anybody really explaining

the cognitive or biological basis of the condition.

And so, uhm, the biggest difficulty is the emotional one.

The first thing we have to do is, uhm,

what I call, academic rehabilitation.

Just convincing them

that the school system is not going to beat them up,

and giving them the idea that they are smart.

They can learn, they can learn to read.

They can operate in an academic environment, uh, with success.

And without someone constantly telling them that what they're doing is not

right, when the fact is that what their teachers have been doing isn't right.

When teachers and parents are willing to step out of their own box a little,

and not say that, this is, you know, "You need to be in special ed.,"

and there's so much confusion about dyslexia. It can really help the person that has it

uhm, open the doors for them, to feel good.

Nothing feels good when you're not comprehending and you can't say it,

and you're coming home, like I did, dejected again

with another "D" stamped on your test when you struggled so hard.

You know you know the information but it doesn't come out that way on paper.

And I really didn't want to be stuck in a box.

Who does want to be in a box their whole life?

And so I wanted to fight to get away from that label

or that judgment, that just because I learned different,

I was different, and therefore if I was different,

then now suddenly society thought I was inferior.

And I knew I wasn't. Any dyslexic knows that they're not inferior.

They know that they may be different, but they've got to know

that they can rise to that challenge and overcome it.

Words to look out for,

struggled with, afflicted by, suffered from.

Those types of words imply

(MIMICS SADNESS) "Oh it's so terrible. Oh it's awful."

I was not afflicted with dyslexia. I was afflicted with a poorly designed system

that expected me to be something I'm not.

And those expectations and my reality did not go together.

It is as though the sun will explode if you say out loud, "I read bad."

Right? My name's Ben Foss, and I read terribly.

There's still this element, where you, thou must be able to read.

And proficiently and fast and spell and write, and, uh,

you know, I disagree. You need to read a little.

I'll give you that. You gotta be able to function.

You gotta be able to navigate the internet, for instance.

If you can get to that point, good.

And I'm not saying the internet's going to be your career,

but that would be my litmus test to say you know enough.

You could make up for the rest.

I think you have a learning spectrum,

uh, it's not digitized,

and education has picked a very narrow window within a long spectrum to teach.

And if you're lucky, you fall in that spectrum.

If you're a little to the side of the spectrum, you'll probably do okay,

you'll make it.

And at some point, when you get to one end or the other,

they'll label you with somethin' and dyslexia's a popular one, ADD is another.

I don't subscribe in either of those two, that anyone can pinpoint, this is a disease.

The way I look at it is, you learn outside of our today,

here, United States of America, learning spectrum.

Ah, I always like to get to root cause of a problem,

and the root cause of the problem here is

how we're teaching, not how we're learning.

And so you're labeling

not a method of teaching, but the method of learning when the problem is the reverse.

And so, we're trying to fix the effect and not the cause.

NARRATOR: If a student experiences a great deal of frustration

in a public or private school,

he may choose to attend a school

with a curriculum designed for dyslexic students.

TEACHER: From the beginning. I wouldn't have helped

NARRATOR: The Kildonan School in Amenia, New York

uses a program that addresses the strengths of each student,

while also providing an individual daily tutorial for reading.

...uh, subject, returning to me. I couldn't...

NARRATOR: Although there are a number of these private schools

throughout the country, they only serve 1% of the students with dyslexia.

...uhm, his time.

Export.

(READS SLOWLY) Emancipate. Emancipate. Mm-hmm.

Edifee.

Edify. TEACHER: Good.

(READS SLOWLY) Uh, expedi...tation?

(READS SLOWLY) Expedition. Expedition. Mm-hmm. Good.

Effossi...sive.

This is long.

Effuse...effusieve?

Good. Effusive.

What does that mean?

Well, first off at Kildonan each student receives

uhm, a tutorial,

one hour or so, Orton-Gillingham tutoring period.

Which is a systematic, uhm, very sort of

methodical approach to teaching, uhm, students how to read and write.

I've tutored, now, dyslexics for eight years,

and I've never had two kids that were alike in their dyslexia.

Uhm, there's so many component parts to it,

uhm, that although there is a category called dyslexia,

I do not believe that there is any one dyslexic.

I think that different dyslexics have auditory processing,

verbal expression, long term, short term working memory.

It's all different. It's almost like a, maybe when you edit the film,

there'll be like, uhm, a soundboard. I don't know if you use a soundboard.

They're all at different levels.

No immortal god escapes from you, nor any man who lives but for a day.

And the one whom you possess goes mad.

Even in good men you twist their minds,

perverting them to their own ruin. You provoke these men to family strife,

the bride's desire seems glittering in her eyes that conquers everything.

I have kind of a tougher time learning

than a "normal" person would, you know? I can't comprehend things.

But I'm a fine reader. Like, I can read perfectly...

...basically. But I just cannot comprehend what I'm reading.

So...yeah.

I need one on one help. I couldn't be in a classroom with thirty people.

Public school is just way too, uhm,

way too many people. I mean it's fun, you know?

It's fun being with all your friends and stuff.

But, uhm,

it didn't work out for me, didn't cut it.

You know, dyslexia is a serious thing with me, at least,

and I know tons of kids that if you call them mentally challenged

or, like, retarded, I mean

like, we're not retarded. Like, we're not.

We are actually really smart people.

TEACHER: Okay, so what does this become?

Uh, it becomes X minus 3 squared.

MARA: Then, plus Y

minus 2 quantity squared

divided by one

equals one.

They didn't really quite understand me

because I was always good at math.

Math always came easy to me.

It was a walk in the park. I could do it simply and easily.

And reading, everything just fell apart.

So they were kind of like, "Oh, well she'll grow out of it."

"She's so good at math. She's so good at math that she'll grow out of it."

And then they said this for a good three or four years.

And I'm staying at the same level where I am,

and a year is going by and everybody else is improving but I'm staying behind.

I would never read out loud.

There would be no way, because it would be every other...

not every other, like, every word I'd be stumbling through to get

through, and it wouldn't sound and usually they'd just tell me to stop.

I got through a sentence and I was like,

all, everybody else got through, like, three or four paragraphs and I'm

one sentence.

I was three or four levels behind and they asked me to leave the school because

they couldn't, I mean,

I was so far behind, they didn't

think I could catch up or anything,

which I really needed at that point

some help, because I wasn't reading anything, really.

Know that you're needing help and, like, try to be specific about what is going wrong.

So, if you can tell them,

"This is where it's going wrong."

Or like the reading part, this is where it's going wrong. And the writing part.

Like, try to be specific as possible

to, like, understand your problem and then ask for help.

It, like, ask for help is like, the simplest thing you can do and yet

yet not many people like doing that.

So...and you shouldn't be ashamed.

You should not be ashamed, at all,

for the fact that you're having this problem

or to go and ask for the help.

Unk. Good.

Ank. Good.

Oink. Onk. Not oink.

Is there an "I" in there?

Onk. Onk and ong.

Good. What was this word?

Oink.

(LAUGHS) Do you see any pigs on here?

No but there should be a pig. Okay, but it doesn't say oink.

Okay? It's not a pig word. Okay, so onk. Say it again. Onk.

Onk.

Okay, I get these... I get "o" words mixed up.

Okay. Good. Ong.

Okay, now be very careful. It's not a pig.

Oink. Oing. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)

Onk, onk. Onk.

The school wasn't helping me the way that it should have.

It should have had a program that would help kids like me.

But they didn't, so we had to look at,

we had to look at two different schools.

They said that this school would be the best for me because everybody fits in.

It makes me feel a little happy because

I know that all these kids have something that's,

that's different about them, and

it makes me feel comfortable.

Yeah, but for some reason eating time is a little, uhm,

not on the good side 'cause I cry usually,

on Wednesdays

and that's kind of not that happy.

But sometimes it happens and you can't stop that,

but there are ways that you can.

INTERVIEWER: Do you know why you feel that way?

Probably 'cause at my old school

kids never wanted me to sit next to them.

They were treating me, like,

everybody else in the school was

like, a certain way and I wasn't.

So, they thought that

different was bad. But different is good.

INTERVIEWER: And when did you learn that?

Well, it's just, like, an instinct to me.

When I encountered school,

when my mother took me to the school gates to meet the teacher,

through the school gates and the teacher's waiting for me,

and I was greeted, not greeted.

I suppose I was introduced to an evil woman.

It's just like going into Dracula's castle,

being greeted by somebody who speaks like,

with her head like this, (MIMICS TEACHER) "Are you the new boy?"

Yes, yes.

"You'll address me as Mrs. Adams, and don't you forget that."

And her eyes would go...

"Come along with me and I shall introduce you to the rest of the children."

"Here's some chalk.

Here's the blackboard.

Write your name."

So,I drew a picture of a little man, which was me. (LAUGHS)

Some of the kids started to chuckle. I could hear them laughing.

(MIMICS TEACHER) "That's not your name. Write your name!"

So I just got the chalk and made...

just a circle and then another circle and then...

made a, drew a dog, which was my dog

and drew...whatever.

Because I don't have any experience of writing so

that was it. And then she said to me, uhm,

"Children,

here we have

an exhibition of failure.

He is failure.

This is what not to become.

The reason why

the word failure was written in the dictionary

was because of Willard.

Willard is failure."

When she told me that, I, uhm,

I said to myself then, even though I was only a child,

I realized what she said so,

because she said I was that,

uhm, she destroyed me.

So, I was destroyed.

So, that was it. Destroyed academically.

Obliterated. That is it.

I became a bit of a recluse. I locked myself away a lot.

You know, disappear. Like Howard Hughes. (LAUGHS)

And just stayed there working.

I did a carving of Miss Havisham on a toothpick on the point.

And the first thing my mother said to me was,

"That is beautiful. That is very, very nice.

That is, incredible."

My artwork becomes a defense.

So, I'm going, "I am going to be the greatest.

I am going to be the greatest," in my head.

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

Thank you very much. Yep. Pleasure.

I saw a microscope on the table and I put my hand up to ask a question.

And then he said, uhm,

"You don't need to, uh, know because your brain doesn't have the, doesn't have,"

Mr. Reilly said, "You don't need to know

because your brain does not have the capacity

so it's pointless. Next."

So, when he said that to me, I looked on the table and saw a microscope

and that microscope had my name written on it.

So I decided to take the microscope.

And they went round, you know, each boy,

(MIMICS TEACHER) "Bradford was it you that stole the microscope?"

Bradford would say, "No, not me."

"Whittaker was it you?" No. "Cottle, was it you?"

"Lear was it you? Thompson was it you?"

"Fletcher was it you?" "No sir, it wasn't me."

And he came to me.

"I know it's not you Wigan. You wouldn't have a brain for a microscope.

"Turner, was it you?" (LAUGHS)

Yeah, that was good, a good feeling.

He said,

"I know it's not you because you wouldn't have the brain for a microscope."

So that was good. (LAUGHS)

INTERVIEWER: And then what did you do with the microscope?

I became who I am today.

I continued

to create smaller and smaller sculptures.

Then I started to experiment with my fingers.

As I was sculpting, I was looking at the way my pulse was moving.

I started to train my pulse beat

so I could work between my heartbeats.

The frame is the eye.

If I wanted to put Noah's Ark inside there with

15 animals

or 20 animals, I could.

Me now, I could put 9 camels in the eye of the needle, which I already have.

But my favorite was Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter's tea party.

That was my favorite one. That's one I could sit back and go,

"Hmm. Yeah."

Charlie Chaplin was very hard.

That's one of the all time favorites

because he's on the end of an eyelash.

And then, before I knew it,

I was invited to Buckingham Palace to receive

a medal.

It's one of the highest honors you can get. It's called the MBE.

Prince Charles was there.

I bowed like that and he shook my hands and he said to me,

(MIMICS PRINCE) "That is the most phenomenal artwork I have ever seen in my whole life.

How does one create such works of art? Such wonders. It is beyond belief.

You are a true genius.

Absolutely incredible." And he was shaking my hand for a long time.

So my hand was being shook.

So, Rod Stewart was waiting there and a few more.

And my hand was being shook more than the others. And he was saying to me,

"How do you keep your hand so still to do this work?

It is pure genius."

And then, I'm just thinking,

"Thank you." Because every time he's saying that to me, I'm getting greater, and I'm,

I'm looking back at the past and I'm looking back at the, back at...

...my learning difficulties and it didn't matter anymore.

Dyslexic is actually a gift.

That's what I believe.

One of the things that I laugh about is when anyone says

that reading is a natural act. Reading is un-natural.

Reading is a cultural invention. There is nothing natural about it.

Every reader

had to have

a brain that created a whole new circuitry

for that reading process.

Well, in the case of dyslexia

what we have is a differently acquired circuit

that's new to the species.

It's a blink of the evolutionary eye.

We've only been reading for basically 5,000 years.

It's nothing.

It is a wonderful thing to remember

that this is one of the newest inventions of the species.

But, the children who are among us with dyslexia have always been there,

and they've always been there for a reason.

They have a very important role to play, that brain,

in our design, in our art, in our building, in our thinking in novel ways.

They've been doing that pre 5,000 years.

Only in the last, even, 100 years

have we called it

uh, something that would have a name that would sound like a disease.

The heart, for me, the heart of some of the emotional difficulties

our kids have as consequences of learning disabilities

begins with the fact that people equate

being able to read with being smart,

with intelligence.

Reading involves

many aspects and it involves the use of our intelligence,

but if you realize that reading

only exists as the circuitry that connects intelligence to itself,

it's not about intelligence.

That intelligence already exists independently. It's being connected

to the circuit.

Reading, as you know, is to me one of the great miracles of cognition.

But it's not equatable with intelligence.

Some of our children with dyslexia

are some of our most intellectually gifted humans.

It's a form of intelligence. It's a form

of brain organization that they have that leads them to be

often times our artists, our architects, our pattern recognizers

in radiology and astronomy.

But they think often

outside the box of our conventional left hemisphere thinking.

I love them. Our species

would never be what it is, without that form of brain organization.

The actual discovery was something we did about 25 years ago

where we were trying to understand the basic phenomenon

of how chromosomes are maintained.

So, the chromosomes are in the cell and they have to package

all of the DNA for the genetic material in the cell.

And there was this puzzle about how it is

that they can be copied completely to the end every time a cell divides.

The Nobel Prize was given for Physiology or Medicine

and the medical implications

of the fundamental discovery

uh, weren't apparent until we, and many other people,

had then followed up and understood, that it turned out this enzyme telomerase

plays a major role in human disease.

INTERVIEWER: When do you think you first understood that you had dyslexia?

I didn't understand that it was dyslexia until much later

because at that time they weren't diagnosing dyslexia.

Uhm, I was told that I was a poor speller. I was taken out of classes,

uhm, given remedial training and I always thought that I was really

kind of stupid. (LAUGHS)

I mean I got Ds and Fs in my English class,

which of course I didn't really care because it wasn't going to count for anything.

But looking back at those then years later I thought, "You know,"

"Maybe there was really something going on here."

Uhm, and then when it came to the standardized tests, uhm,

I just did very, very poorly on standardized tests, both the SATs and the GREs.

The only thing that I can figure out is this connection between, uhm, you know, my

complete inability to see a new word and pronounce it. I still can't do that.

Reading when my kids were small. Reading dinosaur books.

I couldn't do it. (LAUGHS)

All those dinosaur names I would pronounce them wrong every single time.

Unless I would memorize them. Like triceratops, I can get that one now.

Or ichthyosaurs, but that's only because I've memorized it.

And then when my son was dyslexic,

I had a little bit more understanding when he had,

when he had trouble in school and needed the tutoring and all of that sort of stuff.

It was very clear to me

that it was going to be helpful for him to get tutoring really early.

And then I read all the books on dyslexia, uhm, and, uhm,

decided that, you know,

to help him along. And he's done very well now,

and he's in regular school, so...

But now, you know, having thought more about the dyslexia

and all that sort of stuff and read more about it, uhm,

I go back and I question, you know,

"Maybe I really wasn't as stupid as I thought I was?"

And, you know, I learned that I had to work hard,

but maybe I was putting myself in a different category

uh, because there wasn't anyone around to say,

"It's not because you're stupid, it's because you have this other, uhm,

this other issue," which I can now say to my son.

I can say, you know, "Look, I'm a professor at Johns Hopkins.

Just because you're dyslexic doesn't mean you can't do anything you want to do."

So, we acquire two types of images,

those that contain functional information about where there's brain activity

and another that gives us information about brain anatomy.

And this scan here, which is our participant's brain at this point.

And we're just scrolling from the left side to the right side of the brain

and we can begin to see the brain structures that we're interested in.

The goal of using brain imaging

is to help us understand how the brain is specialized for different

functions, and the function that we're interested in is reading.

People who doubt whether there's such a thing as dyslexia,

I think there should be no doubt in their mind because the research is so clear.

The technology that we use, brain imaging,

is one of the areas where I think it's really helped people to understand

that even though this is an invisible condition,

it's now become visible because we can see it in the brain.

It's been known, for almost 30 years now,

that when you look at the brain anatomy of a person

with and without dyslexia, that there are some differences that

you can see almost with the naked eye.

And what people have found is that when you at readers who

are skilled readers, we see a network in the left hemisphere

involving regions in the temporal lobe

and then up in parietal areas and then in frontal regions.

Three areas that are the sort of the typical network involved in reading.

And what we find in people who are dyslexic readers,

areas in the back of the brain don't tend to be engaged during the reading process

like they are in non-dyslexic readers.

And what this is showing you is that areas in the left hemisphere

tend to be under activated in people with dyslexia.

That they're under activating

areas back here in the brain in parietal and temporal cortices.

But what's striking here

are the changes that we've observed in the right hemisphere.

We don't think of the right hemisphere

as being that involved in the reading process.

And the change seems to have been brought about in part by the right hemisphere

chiming in to what is normally considered a left hemisphere function.

So developmental dyslexia is, is a learning disability

in, in the field of learning disabilities, it's the most prominent learning disability.

It accounts for about 80% of all learning disabilities.

Why do children have dyslexia? Well,

for a number of reasons.

Again, it's thought to be inheritable so you will see

uhm, in some individuals who have dyslexia that they have it in their family.

If you have a parent with dyslexia,

the chances that their child will have dyslexia are between 35 and 40%.

So it runs in families. We know that.

I think it's important to recognize

that when you work with a student who has dyslexia

that this is a lifelong issue. It just doesn't go away. So,

it helps in terms of having them develop the right attitude

to recognize that they will always have to deal with this.

But the majority of the population with dyslexia is adult.

And people shouldn't give up on the adults.

The problem is that the adults are no longer in an educational setting

where they receive interventions.

And so they don't often have access to continue to improve their reading skills.

But what we and others have shown is that, that

when you teach an adult with dyslexia to learn to read they can still make gains.

And the brain is really quite plastic. It shows a really

significant way in which it's organized for reading.

There are those who believe there is something to do

with a literal configuration of the brain,

the ability to process certain ways

and uhm,

that it is a disorder, a deficit, a dysfunction

within the brain. That is a medicalized view.

Uhm, the other view that I prefer and tend towards is

this is just human variation

and people are born all different kinds of ways.

Whereas if you think the human race is divided into two peoples,

the learning disabled and the non learning disabled,

it gets super questionable because people

think, uhm, that's what defines that person.

But, in essence, a label has been given to them, uhm,

and it's meant to be beneficial in theory.

But in many cases and in sometimes the majority of cases

it could be detrimental to the kid depending upon

where their school is located, the quality of their

teachers teaching them. All that kind of stuff.

They become sort of 2nd class citizens.

The system did not recognize that.

Special Education, as a field, does not really recognize that,

which is very troubling indeed.

Uhm, people who have been labeled, that label kind of sticks with them for life.

It's like it becomes inscribed upon them

and they internalize it and they kind of come to think of themselves as not as good,

uhm, inferior to, not normal, ah, etcetera etcetera.

And I think psychologically that's very cruel to do to kids.

I mean Special Education really,

I hate to put it this way. It's dressed up and it's called "special,"

but it really is education of students who have been labeled disabled.

It probably started

when I was in elementary school

uhm, when I was, uhm, pulled out of a regular 6th grade edu...uhm, regular class

into a Special Education class.

They never labeled me as special or as different.

They just said I was really slow in comprehending and, uhm, doing my work,

especially with math and reading and writing.

INTERVIEWER: Did they ever say you were dyslexic? No.

They just said I was slow.

Sometimes when you're an inner city kid locked into a box

with limited socio economic skills and things like that,

you can't really see yourself as being beyond a learning disability child or student.

Uhm, I think that label sometimes really places students in a box

where they limit their abilities.

And they really, it's hard for them to see what they're good at

once they're labeled.

So I sat, did my work, and just moved on,

uhm, never really receiving much help but

I guess because I was in a smaller class I was supposed to, but not really.

INTERVIEWER: How long did you stay in Special Ed?

Until I graduated high school.

Once the kid is placed,

the kids used to call it the Roach Motel.

Remember the advertisement, "Once You Check In, You Never Check Out?"

And something like 2% of kids go back into general ed.

or become de-certified and don't have their I.E.P.,

some minuscule amount, like 1 in 50 or something.

The kids who possibly are labeled dyslexic...

I have to go on record, as there are very few, uhm,

really good programs for kids who have been labeled dyslexic in public schools.

I would say that, uhm, at least, at least 50% of kids, uh,

with learning disabilities drop out,

especially in the, uh, self contained classroom.

So, it's always been a big issue for me that kids who are labeled disabled,

whether it's learning disabled or anything else, really should have access

to all of the other kids and every learning opportunity, too.

Because it's, uhm, more of a question of civil rights in a democracy.

Like, who's to say you shouldn't really be in a classroom

with the 95% of your non-disabled peers.

Who benefits from labeling kids with disabilities? Who benefits from it?

Often times, they're not the ones who benefit from it.

Schools can run smoother, more efficiently.

Teachers can be trained in clipped programs. "You learn this. You learn this."

But does it really benefit the kids who are labeled disabled?

Not the majority of them in my, uh, experience.

So after high school, I, uhm,

I tried to apply to Community College of Philadelphia.

And, uhm, I took a test, the entry-level test, and I failed.

And uhm, I went to a counselor and she said,

"Who told you you can be here?" You know,

"How did you even get this far?"

I mean, she yelled and screamed and

that was the worst experience I ever had.

Uhm, I gave up for a while.

I gave up for a while and I thought that this was my life.

I started, uhm, cleaning. Really. I thought that, "Okay, this is it."

I actually ended up cleaning for the School District of Philadelphia.

Uhm, and I was in there, I was actually cleaning for quite some time, uhm,

because I thought that this is my ability.

This is all that I can do.

I still had that drive somewhere deep inside of me

that I knew I could do better, but I really didn't know how.

Uhm, my faith kept me going honestly, my faith.

My faith and

just knowing that there had to be something better than this.

I couldn't be limited to just,

just being told that I was dumb and stupid

and just embracing it.

I knew it was something better for me.

I just didn't know how to get it.

Dyslexia is a special way of seeing things. I like to call it a different kind of mind.

What kind of mind? In Theo's case, first rate.

He has the brainpower. He just has a glitch in the way he takes in information.

A glitch?

Yes, he just has a problem in the way that he processes language.

Does that mean that there's nothing we can do? Not at all.

There are specialists who can help dyslexics overcome their learning problems.

All he has to do is work with the program they set up. You mean if my son

does what they want him to he can be helped? Yes!

From an episode of The Cosby Show, that's actually I thought,

"Wow, I struggle with reading and writing." They were talking about how

Theo's challenges were with dyslexia. And I never knew what dyslexia was at the time.

I really, a light went on and it was a relief

because all these years I never knew what I had.

I just struggled. I went on to college or I went back to college (LAUGHS)

with the help of a tutor, Judith Mazur, who's still a tremendous support to me.

Uhm, I worked with her for three years prior to going back to college.

And I applied to, uhm, Harcum College and I got in.

I got accepted and I completed Harcum within

two to three years with a 4.0

I believe dyslexia is a part of who you are.

But it's not,

it's not who you are as a person. It's just what you have.

NARRATOR: More students with dyslexia are attending four year liberal arts colleges

like Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

If a student discloses her disability,

she is protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act

that insures she receives the accommodations needed

to succeed with college level work.

I have been still dealing with this anxiety about going into a classroom

and it takes, it does take a lot, it takes a lot of energy

and people don't realize how that wears down on you after awhile.

And kind of how easy it is to just give up and fall through the cracks.

It's actually taken a while for

me to be able to talk to my housemates

and have them not go, "Why are you here?" Like,

but to really talk to them about

the struggles that I'm facing. Because for,

I think for them in their minds, uhm,

you have this limitation. (MIMICS HOUSEMATES) "Why, why are you here?"

What I really want to do is definitely give you this accommodation letter

and make sure you understand everything that's on it. Okay.

Alright. Good. That's a good place to start. Okay.

This is kind of always a balancing act for me, uhm,

whether or not, how much I want to disclose.

One of the reasons why we try at least teach in two or three different modalities

because we have lots of people with different learning styles in the class.

We have a young man who's slightly autistic and has asperg.

(STUTTERING) Asperger's?

Say it again. Asperger's Asperger's.

And then we have, uhm, two people with dyslexia

(STUTTERING) and uh, one person with anxiety, extreme anxiety.

So, I've got to watch got to watch her rhythm and how much she can take.

And so that's why we try to focus the learning

so not only the instruction

deals with different learning styles and different patterns

but also the presentation.

I taught, uh, mime one time to a woman who was blind.

And that was such a great experience for me because it really taught me about

how many of my, uh, references were visual and how much I used the blackboard.

So, I had to switch everything around to make sure that she,

you know, could, uhm,

that she could understand the concepts and stuff.

And do a lot of, you know, tactile stuff using your hands and things.

So yeah, the major thing is for you to achieve success.

So, however, you know, we just say where the shore is

and then you can choose whether you want to breast stroke

or whether you want to crawl or whether you want to do it under water.

Okay, so uhm, for me visual processing is

probably the best, uhm, Mm-hmm. Mm-Hmm.

it's helpful for me to look back at notes.

But I don't take notes as fast as I would like to. Okay.

I think that, what might be interesting to try with you,

which hasn't worked with other professors, but I think it might work is just, uhm,

maybe after class coming up and expanding on some of the things I've jotted down.

Perfect.

'Cause usually something resonates with me

and I want to keep talking about it. Okay.

I don't really understand how other people

get through.

I think some people kind of hide it or, uhm,

I have no idea 'cause this is how

I've learned that

I get what I need to get through.

Uhm, by having these types of meetings

and we are supposed to have these types of meetings

in order to legally have the school provide these services.

But I've been told by some professors who have been here for years

that sometimes I'm the first student who's ever done that with them.

Uhm, and I'm not sure why that is.

That scares me a little bit.

Uhm, but also that

dyslexia is associated with all the other

disabilities and all of a sudden once you say "dyslexia,"

all of a sudden what pops into their head

is all the other students who are having issues in the class.

And so there isn't an understanding

by professors on what that actually means.

The U.S. government continues to give huge tax breaks and pay outs

to the oil, gas, and coal industries.

Meanwhile, the fledgling solar and wind industries are left to beg and plead

just to get extensions of their modest tax credits.

One of the things that I've just kind of realized is that

I...

like, not not being able to read as

at a young age made it so that, uhm,

I don't have a lot of the

strategies that other people do. Uhm, and I don't have,

even with assistive technology,

I don't,

I haven't really developed

the skills of comprehension,

comprehensive reading, uhm,

and so I feel like I'm constantly kinda playing catch up with that.

I can feel that, uhm,

your brain has to think in a completely different way when you're reading text.

And...

my brain hasn't completely adapted to it yet.

From a battery powered radio, they heard

that the media were talking about the encampments.

If this is the first friend you make at college,

(LAUGHINGLY) let's just say it's not a very welcoming sort of environment.

...encampments.

Officials were being asked what they were going to do

with all the families living along the freeway.

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

PHRED: There are so many times where

I never thought I'd make it.

If I could project myself back in time

and tell my kindergarten self

you're gonna be here.

There's no way I would have believed it.

For a long time I'm thinking, like, "This is a privilege have to work for."

That this is a privilege I will never have innately

but I kind of have to fake it to make it.

But really, I feel like

at this point I need to believe that

I have just as much right

to be here as anyone else.

When I've tried to express to people that books

cornered me in the form that they were in,

they didn't want to hear it.

They didn't want to hear I had a hard time reading.

"Well, not my son," or, "Well, well, you struggle a little bit."

"But really, if you focus,

if you really bear down, you can probably do it."

Well, someone in a wheelchair

can get up stairs. I've seen them do it at protests.

My friend David Carmel, he could do it.

Throw himself on the stairs, and with his elbows

pull himself up one by one. Right?

But that's not, in our colloquial sense, "getting up stairs."

Right? He's proving that they need a ramp.

Overcoming dyslexia is a catch phrase that

belies an interest in fixing people.

I don't need to be fixed

you know? And by the

external measures, I've done it, I've succeeded. I have a JD/MBA from Stanford.

I have a job in Silicon Valley. I have a happy life. I have a wonderful wife.

I have a home. I have everything everyone's supposed to get in the American Dream.

Do I need to overcome?

No.

I read terribly.

I spell abysmally.

I am in the bottom 1%

in my ability to identify a letter when you show it to me.

Off the charts. I have MRI's that show

zero activity in my temporal parietal lobe.

Not zero, but very, very, very, very little

which is where most people have, like, a Christmas tree of activity.

The act of reading the word

is like taking me back in front of the stairs

and having me go up them on my elbows every time. At some point,

you need to let go of that,

and move forward because the interesting part about dyslexia

is the future.

It's not what happened. It's what's gonna happen.

Moving forward,

I've gotten accommodations. Now,

I can take a device and take a photograph of something and have it read to me.

I can, uh, scan it with a flatbed scanner

and turn it into speech so that I can hear it.

I used to

fax my term papers home to my mother and have her read them to me over the phone.

Right? Now I have a computer do it.

The computers are doubling

in their capability every two years, every 18 months.

So I knew that soon I'd be able to put it all together in one box.

And I started thinking about how to design that.

Uh, and what I came up with was

take a picture...

...and hear it.

Point. Shoot. Listen.

Uh, now I turn on the camera

and I take a picture, like so.

Long before that

as many efforts always have,

they go stand inside among the row of narrow chairs,

each one turned to face the street. She looks for their waiter but can't...

That's it reading, and so

That waiter.

Waiter.

I probably couldn't spell that word.

"w-a-i-t-e-r."

We just took that text off the page and are able to read it.

And that gives me access to the text. It's that simple.

I have access. Now,

I believe that this technology

is a ramp into a book.

And this is one embodiment of it.

There are many others that will be out there in the future.

And I'm committed

to making it available to more and more people

because if you have this access,

then you have access to that text,

and ultimately you have access to hope

and self-respect.

You know we're a foundation that focuses on the formation of new businesses.

The last thing on earth a foundation that deals with businesses

would ever focus on is the question of dyslexics?

And the connection of these

traits in individual human beings

with business formation.

Success. Dyslexia.

Here are four or five people who created huge, critically important companies

to the United States and to the world.

Dyslexic? How can this be?

The real issue is

who has the talents

to put together huge, new companies

and create the new?

So one of the questions was,

"Are these people more visionary?"

"Can they see things differently?"

They come to a realization that

that society keeps pronouncing the number of skill sets

that are necessary for success, they don't seem to have.

And they go out and build

the environment in which they will succeed.

That's, sort of, my working hypothesis to explain

why all these entrepreneurs exist who have traits of dyslexia.

And lots of those people didn't go to college.

I am amazed again and again even in technical businesses

where people see

a business they can start. And you know,

that may be startling but if you think about it,

you don't have to have a degree to become an entrepreneur.

And it's these people who are the resistors, the outsiders.

Who make inordinate contributions

that benefit humankind.

They expand human welfare.

Entrepreneurs expand human welfare.

And to the extent we have more dyslexics doing this,

you might say that dyslexics have a particular license

on the capacity to expand human welfare.

I think when you start,

you start, by taking, uh, really big risks.

And you've got nothing to lose, oftentimes.

In my case I had nothing to lose. I had no money so you just went for it.

Whatever you could possibly do,

and if you made a dollar and lost it the next day, no one's worrying about it.

I still think I take risks

but they have to be far more calculated. There's far more responsibility.

Say I'll put a million dollars aside to work on a project

and if we lose it, we lose it.

And believe me I've done it. (STUTTERING) I've

fortunately made more than I've lost

and therefore managed to stay above water here.

Uh, but, uh, I've lost millions, and millions and millions of dollars.

So I was 24 years old, 23 years old, when I first saw a pellet stove

and I went to this stove shop and said, "Geez this is an amazing thing.

I've never seen anything like this. And they have these pellets in there and I, uhm...

He said, "So, are you interested in buying a stove?"

And I said, "Yeah, I kinda am. It's kind of new. Where do all these pellets come from?"

And he says, "Well, Montana." And I said, "Well that seems a little crazy. Montana."

I don't buy my firewood from Montana, my split firewood,

and everybody around me would never buy firewood from Montana.

"Why would this come from there?"

He said, "It's the only place that makes them."

And I said, (STUTTERING) "Why doesn't anybody make it here?

And he goes, "I don't know. Why don't you make it here?"

STEVE: It's a pretty good sized facility.

This is one of the larger ones in the country.

There's about five weeks of wood behind us here,

and this pile, by the way, extends much longer than it is wide.

And it comprised about 25, 20

20, about 20 tractor-trailer loads a day of wood.

And here's one coming in right now.

STEVE: Each of these plants is off setting approximately,

producing something around a thousand, twelve hundred gallons of oil

equivalent of energy per hour.

Somewhere in the eight, nine, ten, eleven million gallons a year of oil

that we're displacing with these facilities.

My ultimate goal is to have dozens and dozens and dozens of these facilities.

I think technically it was in the 2nd grade that I was labeled with dyslexia.

I knew at an incredibly young age that I had, uhm,

difficulties achieving things in school that everybody else was achieving

and I was expected to achieve.

And, of course, the curriculum I was given,

reading, was one of my challenges. Still is.

And probably a combination of not being very good at it and also

having so many awful memories of (STAMMERING) those days in school,

uhm, you know, I really don't read at all.

I've read two books in my life.

So, reading was brutal and I spent years and years and years having people,

tutors, trying to get me to read. And it was right around,

it's probably around 8th grade is where I first actually learned how to read.

I faked it. I got through school really not being able to read.

Oh! And the high school machine shop, that was the one thing in high school

I could go in and just eat alive.

Uhm, and the teacher just loved it. I mean that was

the only pat on the back that I got that I knew wasn't sympathy.

And, uhm, Pasanka, was his name. And he...

...he would stay after school and just let me play.

And, uhm, that's where I learned.

And all the other classes you could take away.

(WHISPERING) Just not that one.

Sorry.

(CRYING)

In school,

it was amazing to sit in...

You know, I really suffered through school.

And I finally got to high school and they had these shops,

you know, really amazing places.

And these teachers really liked what I did.

INTERVIEWER: What were you making? Oh, anything, everything.

I mean, there were parts and pieces of machines,

and I liked bicycles so I was creating new parts.

I couldn't afford the really fancy bicycle parts, so I would copy them

and create them in the machine shop.

And then the wood shop next door,

and I'd build molds and come up with ideas and models

and I'd go over to the metal shop

and they had this auto shop.

I would work hours and hours in that shop at night.

Wasn't allowed to be in there. I mean, they even tape the damn thing off and uhm,

uh, he would turn on the power and let me go.

So.

But systematically

the school shut down all the shops.

(VOICE CRACKING) And it was the last blow.

(SNIFFS)

INTERVIEWER: So, it was during your time, your time in high school they closed it?

(WHISPERING) Yeah.

(SNIFFS)

(VOICE CRACKING) It was deplorable.

And, uh, ultimately,

obviously I got out of high school, made that attempt at college.

Uh, that failed and then I heard that this machine shop was up for sale.

So, they were gonna auction everything off

and, uh, I was the first one in line and that same Joe Pasanka was there to

help them figure out what was worth what and sell it and he was in charge of selling it.

I very carefully took the two thousand dollars

and adjusted what I felt the values were on everything to make sure

it spread over evenly, and I said, "Jesus, this isn't enough money.

There's nowhere near enough money and this isn't a fair price."

And

then he told me that, uh,

he said the value of something is what someone's willing to pay,

and you're the only one here. So you're paying exactly what it's worth.

And, uhm, I'll never forget that term.

So, I uh, I bought it

and loaded up all the machinery and took it home.

And uhm, I loaded it in my basement and reconfigured this whole thing.

I didn't even have enough electricity in my house,

so I had to re-jigger the electricity outside

and set up all these electric transformers and things in order to power all this stuff.

I needed three phase power and managed to get it all going.

And, uhm, and in that basement, I started creating this company.

And, uh, so out of my house,

with that high school machine shop, built this entire factory.

I mean, literally stuff from the dump.

I went to rubbish heaps and piles, and

and, 'cause I just didn't want to spend money on anything.

And we were making pellets there.

It did work.

You asked, you know, is it a gift?

Absolutely. I can assure you. You couldn't offer me

a hundred million dollars right now to take away my dyslexia,

if that's what you want to call it, and put me into normal learning.

There's no amount of money you could give me right now,

and I would have paid you anything in school

to make it go away.

So, it went from a huge burden

and this terrible disease

to a gift, that, that I am very confident is why

I'm as successful as I am and hope to be far, far, far more successful.

And so for me, the learning disability, I felt locked in there.

And I had to get out. And I found a way.

And anybody else with a learning disability can do exactly the same thing.

The mind is huge. The mind is incredible and there's not just one way that it works.

So what works for you, and you know it.

You can feel it in your gut.

When I read,

I'm not reading necessarily to comprehend.

But I'm photographing and memorizing everything that I see.

And I can go back and I can tell you

where that is, what number it is.

Just like I can still remember Roberta Walker's number in Hinkley 760...

and I can place that number on the keypad

and put it into my brain.

And I remember things that way and it actually became

my gift, in my way, to be successful in my career.

Even being a paralegal, secretary, assistant, anything that I was doing work wise,

if someone said, "Well, you wouldn't know how to do that."

Because maybe you'll pick up on my dyslexia

or you'll ask me to read and I'm not comprehending it right. Therefore,

they'll see something and think she doesn't know what she's doing. Yes, I do.

The minute I've been given that challenge, you will see.

And I think that it's something that, I'm very driven still,

uhm, when public health and safety is put in such harm's way

with so little disregard in making it right. I can't help myself

but to come forward and have to really be a voice for those people.

So, uhm, no again, I am not afraid of dyslexia at all,

nor should anybody else be.

I said in the beginning and I'll tell you again,

in hindsight,

it was my gift.

I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't have dyslexia.

And it opened a whole lotta doors for me.

It challenged me. It got me outside of that box.

I didn't want to be labeled. It taught me to stand up

and use my voice and be proud of who I am, and I do.

If you look at history, if you look at the people you've interviewed

and the studies they've done, um,

I think it's a great gift.

I think it's a wonderful form of intelligence. I really, really do.