Richard Hogan: Growing up in the 1980s an issue with spelling meant you were stupid
Did My It Me Daughter Talking 'i Worked Dyslexia ' To To Hard From So To Have Like Keep
Working in education has given me such a unique insight into adolescent behaviour. Over the years I have seen how destructive a learning difficulty can be for a young mind. The sheer isolation and embarrassment a student can feel because they do not learn at the same pace as everyone else. Of course, the idea that we should all learn at the same speed is an error in our system, but it’s there. And it impacts massively on a student’s sense of self.
Out of all the learning difficulties I have worked with there is one that stands out above the rest. Dyslexia. Oh boy, what can I say about that word? Even now, years out of my formal education, it torments me. Like a malevolent shadow that cannot be erased, it has stalked me my whole life. Even when I turned out the lights to mute its shadow, there it was, talking to me.
Before I had children, I worried I’d pass it on. I suppose I viewed it as some genetic flaw, sneaking down through the generations to torment whichever poor, unfortunate soul it landed on. A random twist of genetic fate that stayed with you a lifetime. Well, that is how I used to view it.
I grew up in Cork and went through primary-school education in the 1980s. Not exactly a time when the educational system took student wellbeing into consideration. It also wasn’t a time when dyslexia was particularly well-understood. An issue with spelling meant you were stupid. So that internalised voice was certainly there when I crossed my fingers hoping my children would be saved from it. But I recognised its dark presence in my eldest daughter, very early on.
I could see that she was talented at language, and yet struggled to read. She used to learn the entire story off by heart, so when she was reading it was flawless. My wife was very impressed that our three-year-old could read such complicated stories. Ah, but I knew what she was up to. I had been doing the same thing 30 years earlier.
Trying to out-smart dyslexia, out-think it. A futile exercise, like keeping out the tide with a spoon. Every time I came up with a new way to outmanoeuvre it, it shape-shifted and popped up to embarrass me. Even now as I write this, there is a little voice that says ‘don’t tell them about dyslexia, they’ll think you’re stupid’. That’s the problem with something as insidious as dyslexia, it makes you guarded. Like you have something terrible to hide.
I have worked so hard to keep dyslexia from talking to my daughter like it did to me. So, it’s a joke between us. When she tries to spell something we both joke; ‘bloody dyslexia’. Or when one of my other daughters asks me a spelling, Hannah my eldest daughter jokes, ‘don’t ask dad, he’s dyslexic, like me!’ I have worked to take the stigma out of it.
I have told her she’s in good company, Albert Einstein and John Lennon were both dyslexic. So, you can have it and be very intelligent. I tell her this because I know what something like dyslexia does to that inner monologue - it changes it. I see it in students in school. I hear how they talk to themselves about living with it. I hear the same ill-fated, self-fulfilling prophecy, ‘I’m not book smart’. Dyslexia is far more than just an issue with spelling, it is a voice. It speaks to you: ‘you can’t do that, you’re not good enough', ‘don’t spell that word, they will know you’re stupid’.
I even meet it in my clinic working with adults. I had a doctor recently tell me that he has been hiding it for years and has to repeatedly learn off the spellings for prescriptions. It massively impacts self-esteem. It is a corrosive thing when it isn’t challenged. The educational system needs to learn how to manage children who are dyslexic so it doesn’t feed that insidious, destructive voice. And we must challenge the paradigm that dyslexia means you are not clever.
There is something incredibly significant in your development when an outsider from your family really sees you. I remember the first teacher who did that: Ms O’ Grady in 5th class Douglas Boys National School. She saw through the complicated layers I had constructed to hide the fact spelling and maths were problematic.
I had landed in 5th class without anyone ever seeing it. But I knew it was there, or at least I thought there was something wrong - my brothers seemed to move with such ease. She was the first teacher who helped me change how I saw myself. But even then, I remember thinking I must help others who feel like this. It has taken me a considerable amount of time to unpack all the negative labels I received or internalised as I made my way through that educational system.
Thankfully, the system has moved on and progressed since then. In fact, last year I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to travel to America to carry out my research in a leading American University into how Irish and American schools can better promote inclusivity in the classroom. It is that child in me, who felt different because he couldn’t spell like the other kids, that drives me in this pursuit of inclusion. Children should be taught we don’t all learn the same way. We must teach our children to celebrate their difference.