Anthology Part 1 - Young and dyslexic - You've got it going on

Perspective beyond the label

Young and dyslexic? You’ve got it going on

By Benjamin Zephaniah

This article was published in The Guardian online, Friday 2 October 2015, and is adapted from Zephaniah’s contribution to Creative, Successful, Dyslexic (Jessica Kingsley, 2015).

[1] As a child I suffered, but learned to turn dyslexia to my advantage, to see the world
[2] more creatively. We are the architects, we are the designers.

[3] I’m of the generation where teachers didn’t know what dyslexia was. The big problem
[4] with the education system then was that there was no compassion, no understanding
[5] and no humanity. I don’t look back and feel angry with the teachers. The ones who
[6] wanted to have an individual approach weren’t allowed to. The idea of being kind and
[7] thoughtful and listening to problems just wasn’t done: the past is a different kind of
[8] country.

[9] At school my ideas always contradicted the teachers’. I remember one teacher saying
[10] that human beings sleep for one-third of their life and I put my hand up and said, “If
[11] there’s a God isn’t that a design fault? If you’ve built something, you want efficiency. If I
[12] was God I would have designed sleep so we could stay awake. Then good people could
[13] do one-third more good in the world.”

[14] The teacher said, “Shut up, stupid boy. Bad people would do one-third more bad.” I
[15] thought I’d put in a good idea. I was just being creative. She also had a point, but the
[16] thing was, she called me stupid for even thinking about it.

[17] I remember a teacher talking about Africa and the ‘local savages’ and I would say, ‘Who
[18] are you to talk about savages?’ She would say, “How dare you challenge me?” – and
[19] that would get me into trouble.

[20] Once, when I was finding it difficult to engage with writing and had asked for some help,
[21] a teacher said, ‘It’s all right. We can’t all be intelligent, but you’ll end up being a good
[22] sportsperson, so why don’t you go outside and play some football?’ I thought, “Oh great”,
[23] but now I realise he was stereotyping me.

[24] I had poems in my head even then, and when I was 10 or 11 my sister wrote some of
[25] them down for me. When I was 13 I could read very basically but it would be such hard
[26] work that I would give up. I thought that so long as you could read how much the
[27] banknote was worth, you knew enough or you could ask a mate.

[28] I got thrown out of a lot of schools, the last one at 13. I was expelled partly because of
[29] arguing with teachers on an intellectual level and partly for being a rude boy and
[30] fighting. I didn’t stab anybody, but I did take revenge on a teacher once. I stole his car
[31] and drove it into his front garden. I remember him telling us the Nazis weren’t that bad.
[32] He could say that in the classroom. When I was in borstal I used to do this thing of
[33] looking at people I didn’t want to be like. I saw a guy who spent all his time sitting
[34] stooped over and I thought, ‘I don’t want to be like that,’ so I learned to sit with a
[35] straight back. Being observant helped me make the right choices.

[36] A high percentage of the prison population are dyslexic, and a high percentage of the
[37] architect population. If you look at the statistics, I should be in prison: a black man
[38] brought up on the wrong side of town whose family fell apart, in trouble with the police
[39] when I was a kid, unable to read and write, with no qualifications and, on top of that,
[40] dyslexic. But I think staying out of prison is about conquering your fears and finding your
[41] path in life.
[42] When I go into prisons to talk to people I see men and women who, in intelligence and
[43] other qualities, are the same as me. But opportunities opened for me and they missed
[44] theirs, didn’t notice them or didn’t take them.

[45] I never thought I was stupid. I didn’t have that struggle. If I have someone in front of
[46] me who doesn’t have a problem reading and writing telling me that black people are
[47] savages I just think, “I’m not stupid – you’re the one who’s stupid.” I just had self-belief.

[48] For my first book I told my poems to my girlfriend, who wrote them down for me. It
[49] really took off, especially within the black community. I wrote ‘wid luv’ for ‘with love’.
[50] People didn’t think they were dyslexic poems, they just thought I wrote phonetically.

[51] At 21 I went to an adult education class in London to learn to read and write. The
[52] teacher told me, “You are dyslexic,” and I was like, “Do I need an operation?” She
[53] explained to me what it meant and I suddenly thought, “Ah, I get it. I thought I was
[54] going crazy.”

[55] I wrote more poetry, novels for teenagers, plays, other books and recorded music. I take
[56] poetry to people who do not read poetry. Still now, when I’m writing the word ‘knot’, I
[57] have to stop and think, “How do I write that?” I have to draw something to let me know
[58] what the word is to come back to it later. If I can’t spell ‘question’ I just put a question
[59] mark and come back to it later.

[60] When I look at a book, the first thing I see is the size of it, and I know that’s what it’s
[61] like for a lot of young people who find reading tough. When Brunel University offered me
[62] the job of professor of poetry and creative writing, I knew my students would be
[63] officially more educated than me. I tell them, “You can do this course and get the right
[64] grade because you have a good memory – but if you don’t have passion, creativity,
[65] individuality, there’s no point.” In my life now, I find that people accommodate my
[66] dyslexia. I can perform my poetry because it doesn’t have to be word perfect, but I
[67] never read one of my novels in public. When I go to literary festivals I always get an
[68] actor to read it out for me. Otherwise all my energy goes into reading the book and the
[69] mood is lost.

[70] If someone can’t understand dyslexia it’s their problem. In the same way, if someone
[71] oppresses me because of my race I don’t sit down and think, “How can I become white?”
[72] It’s not my problem, it’s theirs and they are the ones who have to come to terms with it.

[73] If you’re dyslexic and you feel there’s something holding you back, just remember: it’s
[74] not you. In many ways being dyslexic is a natural way to be.

[75] What’s unnatural is the way we read and write. If you look at a pictorial language like
[76] Chinese, you can see the word for a woman because the character looks like a woman.
[77] The word for a house looks like a house. It is a strange step to go from that to a squiggle
[78] that represents a sound.

[79] So don’t be heavy on yourself. And if you are a parent of someone with dyslexia don’t
[80] think of it as a defect. Dyslexia is not a measure of intelligence: you may have a genius
[81] on your hands. Having dyslexia can make you creative. If you want to construct a
[82] sentence and can’t find the word you are searching for, you have to think of a way to
[83] write round it. This requires being creative and so your ‘creativity muscle’ gets bigger.

[84] Kids come up to me and say, “I’m dyslexic too,” and I say to them, “Use it to your
[85] advantage, see the world differently. Us dyslexic people, we’ve got it going on – we are
[86] the architects. We are the designers.” It’s like these kids are proud to be like me and if
[87] that helps them, that is great. I didn’t have that as a child. I say to them, “Bloody non-
[88] dyslexics … who do they think they are?”

Notes

Borstal: a former type of institution for young offenders.
Phonetically: using spellings that represent how words sound.
Accommodate: make adjustments to support a particular need.

Reading the text

The prescribed text is an autobiographical opinion article first published online by The Guardian in 2015 and adapted from Zephaniah's contribution to a collection of first-person accounts by successful people with dyslexia. That source situation explains the blend of personal testimony, public argument and encouragement; it does not make context a separate source of marks.

The article's topic is dyslexia and education. Its perspective is what Zephaniah wants readers to understand about them. Three formulations are especially useful:

• an education system that mistakes difference for low ability can shame, exclude and limit people;
• dyslexia can be connected with alternative thinking, creative workaround and resilience rather than lack of intelligence;
• painful experience can be retold as encouragement, allowing an individual I to become a confident collective we.

The word can matters. Zephaniah is presenting an empowering interpretation of his experience, not proving that every dyslexic person has one personality, one difficulty or an automatic creative advantage.

The article refuses a single label

It would be easy to reduce the opening to teachers treated him badly. Zephaniah's position is more considered. He criticises a system that lacked understanding, yet he does not direct simple anger at every teacher: he suggests that individuals who wanted a kinder approach were constrained. In one remembered exchange, he even concedes that a teacher had a point while objecting to being insulted for thinking differently.

That qualification makes the attack more precise. The target is not education itself, nor every adult in it. It is a way of interpreting difference that turns curiosity, difficulty or resistance into a verdict about intelligence.

Zephaniah's comments about prison, architecture and Chinese writing are part of his persuasive argument, not a complete statistical or linguistic account. Analyse what those comparisons do here without treating a generalisation as proof about every person or language.

The strongest reading therefore holds two truths together: literacy difficulty is real, and it does not define the limits of intelligence, creativity or worth.

Whole-text reframing arc

Chronology alone gives a list of events. Structure becomes analytical when we track who has the power to define Zephaniah and how that power changes.

Four structural movements worth explaining

Other people's words to his own terms. Early remembered dialogue gives institutional voices the power to name and dismiss. Later, Zephaniah identifies stereotyping, describes his strategies and issues advice in his own voice. The article does not merely tell us that he became confident; its arrangement transfers interpretive authority to him.

Past to present. Childhood memories dominate the first half. Present-tense examples of spelling, reading and literary festivals then show that recognition has not removed the difficulty. This prevents a simplistic he overcame it and everything became easy ending.

Individual to collective. The pronoun movement from I through direct you to we/us enlarges the purpose. A private history becomes a message to young dyslexic people and their parents, then a statement of collective identity.

Return to design. The language of architects and designers frames the article near its beginning and returns at the end. The repeated metaphor replaces a deficit model with construction and agency, giving the conclusion a purposeful sense of arrival.