dyslexia, dyspraxia and prejudice

            I have considered for quite some time what to write in this the first of my regular blogs. The decision I have made is to talk about my experience living with dyslexia and dyspraxia maybe segueing into a brief rant about prejudice. However, some points need to be clarified; this blog is not about me and my life I aim to keep biographical information out of the blog as much as possible.  What this blog is about is my observations and musings unencumbered by biographical details. Although I will probably slip into using examples from my own life, with names changed to protect the guilty.    

So whittering statements of intent over are you sitting comfortably then we’ll begin. I have dyslexia₁ and dyspraxia₂ and I was diagnosed at a young age. I have all the usual difficulties and idiosyncrasies associated with both.  So from a young age I was aware of certain deficits I have now at this point there are two possible ways for a body to go one either; gives up and accepts a life away from academia, or (this was my choice) attack these piffling difficulties with great fervour.  I think I can trace many of my passions back to this, my love of reading, my love of language its nuts and bolts (English, foreign and dead languages) and my poetic and authorial ambitions. I have seen people go both ways giving up or fighting through adversity. In fact by the time you hit university you have strategies in place that seem to almost compensate for your difficulties, by pouring in effort mainly.  

What is interesting is the response you get from others, especially teachers.  When you go into a classroom a known dyslexic many teachers equate the condition to teaching a blithering idiot. It is assumed that you will need extra help and will probably not be able to cope with the work. This is not a million miles away from being reasonable most dyslexic children will have trouble with written work.  That is to say that they will have trouble with spelling, maybe style and definitely grammar.  What this does not translate to is  a lack of worthy ideas, a lack of understanding or even, as one harridan of a high school history teacher claimed, a lack of care. When I was young I chose to do a history GCSE and this woman told me that due to the amount of written work involved I would probably fail.  This was before she had seen any of my work. History will record that I did rather well in my history GCSE because; it turns out, what a history GCSE doesn’t test is the ability to spell and construct sub-clauses. I suppose the point is that teaches sometimes value presentation more than ideas and from this I suppose I can see where the dyslexia = stupidity idea comes from, nonsense though it is. This prejudice that I have faced forced me to prove myself to each new teacher, educator or support worker.   This hasn’t impeded me too much I am by nature a stubborn, wilful creature who presented being challenged will attempt to overcome. But has this prejudice harmed others being told again and again that you can’t do something has a dire effect on the confidence.

This got me thinking about other predudices. I knew a black man who was convinced that black men couldn’t swim. It is true that black people often have a higher bone density than my Caucasian brothers making it more difficult for them to learn to swim.  So this particular prejudice has a basis in fact. The question is where does fact and observation become prejudice?    

1 Dyslexia is a difficulty in reading and spelling often manifesting as slow reading, poor (read dreadful) spelling, poor organization and time management skills.

2 Dyspraxia, for me fine motor skills difficulty and extreme clumsiness and lack of balance.       

Why I think that if my handwriting could be read I'd own a quill

            I feel that my attitude to technology is quite an odd one. That is to say I don''t know many people who feel the same; or I know few who, feeling the same, act and acquire in a similar way to me. Since it has been possible for me to download music or films I have not deigned to use such outdated formats as the CD or DVD. Digital, I often pronounced was better. It is indeed more convenient, cheaper and more flexible than traditional media. However present me with a record player made 30ish years before I was born and I will fawn all over it like a cat presented with a tuna fish covered in catnip. Records, I am wont to argue, feel different when you listen to them almost live. I will squeal with ill-concealed delight at the crackling sound the needle makes when it is first lowered to the exquisitely solid and, usually, black ridged disc that somehow, with voodoo I assume, transmits sound. I happily weather skips and scratches whilst pointing out that the fact you can't choose a track preserves the artists intention  for the album, even when forced to listen to four truly horrid Bonnie Tyler tracks to get to total eclipse of the heart.  
  
             Whilst this seems a relatively minor eccentricity (it is I wont apologise for that because if this blog is for nothing else its for discussion of inconsequential topics in a grandiose whitttering style.) it becomes more odd and difficult when attached to my creativity. I cannot handwrite legibly yet I absolutely insist on writing poems with a  pen on preferably Mokeskine paper note pads. To an outsider it seems an idiotic folly for me to write illegibly on  expensive paper especially when what I am writing is often important to me. to defend my sanity I say this; I find it hard to write when I have the backlit screen of a laptop blaring back at me. Quite beyond this I love the experience of writing on high quality creamy paper.  I enjoy savouring the experience of writing. The only black spot the one thing that bothers me, beyond my not infrequent fury at being able to read the slice of genius that I wrote the night before, is the pen I use the mass produced brio. Its as crass and soulless as the computer I avoid. I cannot reasonably use a fountain pen because... well you can only clean up so much ink before it gets old. I have recently come upon an idea to cure this preposterous difficulty, and now the idea's in my mind it is inevitable, I intend to buy an antique type writer to write poetry, fiction and most likely shopping lists and notes and other miscellanea on.

            Why this obsession with outmoded formats and antique tools? I think if I was to try and explain it i would have to use the word weight. The older something is the more solid it seems in an almost spiritual sense more real. When you write on a mokeskine note pad the very paper seems to say what is written here matters. Not only to me but because the notepad itself has a, questionable, history connecting it to my heroes; Van Gough, Hemingway and Picasso among them. Not an odd and shallow and faddy aesthetic principal but an appeal to history.