Following on from my post about Tom Pellereau on his Apprentice win.

In a totally shameless push for more traffic, I recently followed Tom ( I can call him Tom because we apparently went to the same school) on Twitter and sent him a link to the post mentioned.

Unsurprisingly, his stream has been full of great links and insight, though I’m no quite in tune with his music taste.

One such link is this post by Sally Gardner, an author but more relevantly an Expert Dyslexic | Read post

In it she discusses many of the problems she encountered as a child at school, her self belief that has lead to her success and some encouraging thoughts on how to incubate the talent within what was once an outcast of the educational society.

“I believe we fail too many creative children in this country, whether they are dyslexic or not. If a child is interested in a button, you can teach him the world. Teach him the world and don’t expect him to be interested in a button. We are looking the wrong way down the telescope.”

Both their stories, and my own, got me thinking…

There appears to be an age of epiphany common to Tom, Sally and myself once we had left traditional schooling.

This could be due to a number of things though:

1. The alienation and branding of our ‘disease’ stripped our enthusiasm throughout our ‘formative’ years leading to a renaissance once we entered the workplace.

This in itself raises yet more questions:

• Is the stigma of dyslexia isolated inside education?
• Are dyslexics just better at learning for themselves?
• Is vocation the key to absorbing knowledge?
• Do dyslexics have some kind of latency inherit in their ability to learn?

2. The need to equip all school children with the core skills of reading and writing at the expense of the creative nurturing imprisoned our development.

I feel this affected me greatly, but can appreciate the need to encourage as high a level of literacy as possible.

3. The alienation and struggle to find ones path, opens up a greater variety of avenues in employment and inspiration.

Following a recent conversation in a pub with a teacher friend, I was informed that many of my opinions are widely recognized and solutions have been put into practice.

So number 4 is:

4. Tom, Sally, myself and everyone else of a certain age that connects with some, if not all, of what I have said, is just the product of a poor educational strategy that has since been refined and improved…

I just hope that, if this is the case, in 10 or 20 years time, when the ‘New Breed of Dyslexic’ has passed their age of epiphany, the result is as bold and productive as Tom and Sally (and myself obviously).