Young and Dyslexic by Benjamin Zephaniah

The first thing it's important for us to understand is who Benjamin Zephaniah is. He is a poet, novelist, and musician from Birmingham. And he has performed all around the world. And in the piece young and dyslexic, he specifically wrote that for a book, a collection of writings called creative successful dyslexic in which well-known media people and entrepreneurs all with dyslexia talk about the challenges of dyslexia in ch childhood and how the strengths of dyslexia have helped them to achieve success in adult life. So this is key for us to understand because so much of his young and dyslexic article is about him and it's also heavily defined by what it is written in which is creative successful dyslexic.

By knowing this we can clearly see his purpose in his writing. His purpose is exactly what I believe I took that from the blurb of creative successful and dyslexic. That is exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to highlight the challenges, but also the strengths of dyslexia that's helped him in life. And he's doing all of that through his lens as a poet, a musician, a writer from Birmingham. With all of that in mind, we have to ask ourselves that classic basic question of what does he think and feel? Because by understanding that, we're basically going to be able to handle any kind of question that can come up on this text. And there are a few things that he thinks and feels. Firstly, it's that the education system

is restrictive. Secondly, that he is a creative and self- assured person. Someone who is self- assured is very confident and sure of their abilities and their skills. He also thinks that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being dyslexic as society would have us believe. So, society has a stigma around being dyslexic, but he disagrees with that and thinks there's nothing wrong with it. and he in fact thinks that dyslexic people develop valuable and different thinking skills and so actually dyslexia has a lot of advantages for dyslexic people. So these are the four main ideas I'm going to look at. I'm going to talk you through the text as a whole looking at how we could analyze and prove that he thinks

and feels these things. All right. Now my camera is off and that can only mean one thing. We have so many things to write down about this text. there just isn't the physical space for my face to be on screen. So, we're going to go through this and we're going to start with the title. Don't forget in that top left corner, you've got the different ideas from Zephaniah that we're going to see in this chunk. I would recommend if you're making your notes, you maybe have them colorcoded, but if not, I'm going to have them color coded on here for you. And we're going to start with the headline because when it comes to articles, headlines are always really important. So many ideas are foregrounded in a headline in a title

and it's really how they build that initial relationship with a reader. So you want to examine that. And in the case of our title here, we have got a bunch of different techniques going on. We've got a rhetorical question, we've got direct address, we've got colloquial language, and all of that comes together to create a confident celebratory tone. Young and dyslexic, you've got it going on. that rhetorical question and direct address in the U. It's immediate connection with our reader there as well as that colloquial language of got it going on feels conversational almost they are talking to you as the reader and it really shows the confidence in our speaker. They are confident in themselves and their language as well

and they are sort of projecting that to you to the reader as well. They're going to try and convince you of that. So to a certain degree it sets up part of its purpose of site persuasion there of trying to persuade us to the strengths and benefits of being dyslexic. If we then go to the opening we can skip over that bit in bold about you know where it's published blah blah blah cuz I've already talked about that earlier. If we jump to the actual opening now the opening is really important in establishing his key message and that's why I have put it in all three of the colors because all three of the key messages are established in this opening. Now, I'm not going to read through the text. If you haven't read

this already or you haven't read it in a while, make sure you pause the video to reread. But I'm just going to keep talking about it, assuming you've read it and you know what I'm on about. And so, the first thing we see is that emotive language. So, as a child, he suffered and he's part of the generation where teachers didn't know what dyslexia was and there was no understanding, no compassion, no humanity. There's loads of different emotive language going throughout this text. And in terms of what emotions it's trying to build in our reader, pathos. So that's the combination of sadness and pity for him and the difficult situation, the unfair situation that he couldn't help but was also born into. There's also an anger, a

frustration with the education system being built as well. Like it's so wrong. Those darn teachers, man, who the hell would become a teacher and be so cruel and have no compassion, no understanding, no humanity. What's important to note about that emotive language, I would say it's mainly contained within that very opening phrase, as a child I suffered. But what structurally happens is he very quickly moves on from that emotive language of creating a bit of pathos for him to a much more positive tone instead. He doesn't want us to dwell on that sad. Same with when he talks about, you know, there was no compassion, no understanding, and no humanity. While we could argue that's an emotive um language building our frustration and

sense of injustice about the education system, he also very quickly shifts that back to I don't look back and feel angry with the teachers. So structurally he keeps things much more focused on his celebratory positive tone, his reflection on the system as a whole. He's not one of your writers that just constantly is plaguing. He's not painting himself as a victim basically is what I'm trying to say. That's not the goal of the emotive language at all. He then uses this possessive pronoun, my advantage. Learn to turn dyslexia to my advantage. There's a lot of control there. There's a lot of ownership over the positives to dyslexia. And that's followed by a string of metaphors also with the first person plural. We are the

architects. We are the designers. So, first of all, that first person plural is obviously about similar to the direct address in the headline. It's about creating that relationship with the reader. And the slight difference between the U in the headline versus the Wii here is that the Wii is now placing Benjamin Zephaniah in that similar pool as our readers. Whatever Benjamin Zephaniah is saying about himself is now to an extent he's also saying that about being dyslexic. Now the reason I say to extent he's obviously not saying all dyslexic people are writers and musicians that have grown up in Birmingham and had his exact life. He's not saying that. that the bigger picture ideas of what he's saying about himself,

he is saying about all dyslexic people. So when he is saying he sees the world more creatively and turns it to his advantage by now shifting from the first person to the first person plural, he's pointing out he isn't the only one to do that. Loads of dyslexic people do that. And of course with our um metaphor of we are the architects, we are the designers. I mean to a certain extent that is literally true. He's making a reference there to statistics about how common it is to find dyslexic people in careers like being architects. But it's also a metaphor because of the connotations of architects and designers. So the metaphor is created in saying they are those things. They are all those things cuz they're not. What

he's trying to do is create a comparison between the skill set of a dyslexic person and the skill set of an architect and the skill set of a designer. And the connotations of their skill set is skill, creativity, leadership, innovation. And so all those lordy connotations of architects and designers are what he is trying to say he has about himself. Continuing on in that opening, he focuses more on the education system being restrictive. And of course, he explicitly says it's the education system. He doesn't blame any individual people. He instead uses that abstract noun, the education system. that concept of it being a whole institutional issue and we see the issue with the education system via that

semantic field of insensitivity versus a semantic field of empathy. So you've got this bit where he says no compassion, no understanding, no humanity. That's your semantic field of insensitivity and that's juxaposed against the idea of being kind and thoughtful and listening to problems just wasn't done. If we think about all these different concepts, kindness, thoughtfulness, listening, compassion, understanding, humanity, being told that there isn't any of that in the system really foregrounds the harsh atmosphere of the education system that he experienced. And in case you've forgotten what foregrounding is, foregrounding is when a writer makes a particular idea stand out. And the particular idea that

Zephaniah is making stand out here is the harsh atmosphere of education, how unforgiving the education system was. So he looks at that in a sort of big picture of the problem with it. And then he comes back in structurally. He shifts from looking at the macro of the education system as a whole and the problems with it to a micro of looking at him personally. If you don't know what I mean by macro versus micro, you need to have a look at my video on how to analyze the writer's focus. He shifts to the micro of his personal experience of school now and we have this anecdote where he's challenged something a teacher has said. I've left this note in green but it arguably is also part of the orange in showing how creative and

self- assured he is because even as a child he was ready to contradict teachers. Teachers are classically symbols of authority and knowledge. And so a child challenging that suggests that child is very self- assured and also a different thinker too. But actually, you know what? In fact, it serves all three. His point about dyslexic people having different thinking skills, he's demonstrating that here, too. So, this anecdote, although it's in green, really demonstrates all three points. Another interesting point about this anecdote is the fact that it uses direct speech. We've got the speech marks of exactly what people said, what he said, and what the teacher said. So, on the one hand, it shows the power of

this memory on him. The impact that the restrictive education system can have. We've already been told its impact with as a child, I suffered. Now I see more of it impact with the fact that as a grown man he can still remember really really well things that happened to him and exactly what was said. And throughout this anecdote we have the juxosition between his positive intellectual dialogue versus the blunt rude simplistic and negative dialogue of the teacher. Look at how long the dialogue is for Zephaniah's chunk. We've got all of this, right, where he's really coming out with some incredibly thoughtful ideas about the way the world works and the concept of a higher being and all that good stuff. And the

teacher's response, "Shut up, stupid boy." And this contrast in their dialogue really shows the differing mindsets. It's not suggesting our teacher isn't intellectual, but it's suggesting the really differing mindsets they have in terms of the openness of their mindset. Zephaniah is about considering different potentials. There's interrogatives in there. He's really like critically thinking and questioning. Whereas our teacher is blunt de declaratives. Bad people would do third more bad. It's much more certain and concrete. So there's a lot less flexibility there. It's much more rigid. Again, reflecting that restrictive, rigid education system. And that is of course what Zephaniah himself points out. He says, "She also had a

point, but the thing was she called me stupid for even thinking about it." So he's not suggesting she doesn't have an argument. She does. The issue is her refusal to engage in discussion in critical thought. She is just this is this end of conversation. This anecdote could very easily make us build more posthos for Zephaniah. You know, more pity for him about the injustice he has experienced as part of the education system. But he is not here to be no victim. He is really self assured. He did not let the education system get him down. And that's shown immediately by what he follows that teacher's negative dialogue with. I thought I put in a good idea. I was just being creative. You've got that simple sentence. Ah, I'm fine.

It was a good idea. I was being creative. There's a real confident, defiant tone in the face of that teacher and their very limited way of talking about things and thinking about things. In our next chunk, I've removed the point that um he talks about dyslexic people having valuable and different thinking skills because it is very focused on his personal experience and he is going to more explicitly bring it back to dyslexic people as a whole later. But what he does in this section is he goes through more anecdotes, more experiences of his life and we have him slowly aging in chronology as he goes through as well. And the point of that is that it's about showing the repeated instances throughout his life. Like the

education system being restrictive, this is not a one-off at one point in life. This is throughout life. But also him being creative and self assured. It's throughout life, too. So to a certain degree, what we're also seeing here is how the stigma of dyslexia impacts individuals as they grow up. And what these repeated anecdotes do is create a pattern of restrictive, prejudice, and harsh behaviors. and he talks about the discrimination he faces on multiple fronts, the low expectations he people would have on him. If we think about all of the anecdotes that he's told and the discrimination he's faced, none of those have explicitly been about dyslexia. No one knew he had dyslexia, as he's going

to tell us later, like it wasn't really known as a thing. He didn't know he had dyslexia. the discrimination he's facing is about race and the low expectations people had of him because of his race, but also not so much in this bit. A little bit later, he's going to suggest it's about classism as well. So, there's discrimination on multiple fronts and that discrimination takes the form of low expectations of him. You're going to be a good sports person. Go outside and play some football. Now, of course, being a footballer, great profession, incredibly skilled career, but the sort of broad brush stroke of, you know, black boys are only good for certain things and one of those things is playing football, that is a form of

racist discrimination based on having low expectations of somebody. And what I really like also about these anecdotes is he's almost examining the intersectionality between his dyslexia and the other forms of discrimination that he is facing. So the first anecdote is, you know, it's the racism said by a teacher and he's trying to challenge that racism that she's expressing and that is what gets him in trouble. But at the same time, he's also finding it difficult to engage with writing. So it's like there's multiple things going on, multiple challenges going on for him all at the same time. And when we combine his dyslexia with the racism, that's when we really get the problems with the low expectations. People

weren't seeing his dyslexia to a certain degree because what they were seeing was a black boy and they were sort of assuming that was the cause of why he was struggling with writing as is the case in this anecdote here. Despite all of this discrimination that he faces, he is still creative and self- assured. I had poems in my head. Even then, that adverbial phrase even then, it's like even when he was 10 or 11 years old, he has been creative and different. He's really trying to highlight that these positive attributes of his is something he's always had. It's not something he developed, you know, as an adult or whatever. It's something he's always had despite the education system. He has always been really creative and

different. And what's interesting about this little anecdote here because this obviously comes in the middle of to about school. So, it's much more about who he is outside of school. And we see his positive attributes and by telling us he had poems in his head. poems conotes a lot of craft, creativity and deep thought. So them being already in his head is quite impressive really. Um because obviously we would think of poems being something that have to be written down and somebody has to take a long time to figure them out. So the fact that they exist in his head highlights his creativity even more. And when that's juxtaposed against the fact that he tells us that he could read very basically and he would give up on the

reading and his sister had to write down the poems with him. When there's that juxtaposition between the connotations of poetry and his low reading skill, the point he's making is that creativity and intellect are not defined by hard skills like can you read, can you write? Those soft skills, if you will, transferable skills of creativity, self- assuredness, critical thinking are not defined by can you write the alphabet down in a particular way. Now, of course, what we saw with the earlier anecdote is that for our teacher, it absolutely was right. If you can't have the hard skill of writing, you can't be intelligent. That's the anecdote from our teacher. So, he's really challenging that restrictive way that the education

system and perhaps to a wider extent general society uh view intelligence and intellect. It's not about if you can read or write. It's about who you are inside and the skills, the soft skills you have inside. Even in this anecdote though where he is talking about the poems in his head and the positives of who he is outside of school, we do still see how the restrictive education system has had a negative impact on him because he tells us, I thought that so long as you could read how much the bank note was worth, you knew enough or you could ask a mate. Now that's significance because of what bank notes symbolize. They symbolize basic necessities. So in other words, he to a certain degree has

low expectations of himself. He's like, "Yep, I know what money is, so I'm good." So it is also acknowledging the impact that the restrictive mindset of the education system has had on him. The fourth anecdote that we have in this section is that he got thrown out of a lot of schools, the last one at 13. Already at just the young age of 13, he's been through a lot. He's experienced a lot of challenge and he almost seems to be now on the edge of I was going to say society but certainly on the edge of the education system by constantly being expelled. He's really presenting himself as a sort of outcast from the education system. And the reason he is an outcast again fills our sense of injustice because it's because

he was arguing with teachers on an intellectual level. and the idea that critical thought would be stifled in the education system is abhorrent to us. But then he does also acknowledge it's partly for being a rude boy and and fighting as well. Now, I know my audience is a lot of teenagers who probably do not need me to define what a rude boy is for you, but I'm also not going to make the assumption that you already know about Jamaican culture and Jamaican slang and know what a rude boy is because he's not just saying rude boy as in, "Oh, you are a very impolite young man." It's an actual slang term, Jamaican slang term. And it was one of the sort of first youth subcultures, teenage subcultures of Jamaica. And of

course with the large Caribbean and Jamaican communities in Britain, there is also a rude boy culture in the British Caribbean communities. So there are a couple of connotations to being a rude boy. The first is somebody who has experienced a lot of hardship, poverty, racism, poor housing, all that kind of thing. because the Rub boys uh originally sprung out of gangs in Jamaica who were dealing with all of that kind of prejudice and more which of course was also experienced when they came to Britain and experienced the racism of Britain but it also has connotations of an incredible culture where it's about music with scar and reggae incredible fashion uh community so on the one hand him saying that he

was a rude boy is part of him exemplifying how much he didn't fit with the mainstream system of Britain of the time. He was a rub boy. He was part of a subculture on the fringe of society, if you will. And it also speaks to the impact that his poverty has had on him. So, he's clearly presenting himself here as a rebel, as being different, but almost based on the number of anecdotes we've seen so far of the prejudice he's seen, we almost understand why he's on the edge. You know, we understand why he is a bit of an outcast. um why he is different because it feels like he was not allowed to fit in to be himself. And again, it's such a shame because what this anecdote shows him to be is really perceptive with a really strong moral

compass, sense of justice, really defiant. And we see that when he's at BTO, which is a young person's prison, and he's really observant, looking at people's behavior. And of course, he says it helped him make the right choices as well. He's really reflective. those critical skills that he has have really placed him in goodstead. So when we see that he doesn't fit into this restrictive society, it's incredibly frustrating because of all the qualities we've seen him have up to this point, he should be celebrated, right? He just is clearly such an insightful child. And so we as the audience are angered by the idea that he was pushed out that he ends up in BTO, you know, he ends up being treated as a criminal. Granted, okay, he

did drive a car. He did steal a car and drive it onto somebody's front yard garden and that is illegal. That is technically criminal behavior. But we can almost see how he got to that point in a world that didn't listen to him, that didn't respect him. So we can think of this section almost like his origin story. Everything that had happened to him, that had a big part of shaping who he was. And there's this overall conflict between who he is as a insightful, creative, different from the norm person that doesn't fit with the mainstream and therefore is increasingly pushed to the edges to the fringes of society as a result. And his point here that he's now going to go on to in this next section is that it's not about him.

society is the problem and the way society has treated him and people like him is the problem. He starts off this section with a statistic about the high percentage of prison population being dyslexic and a high percentage of the architect population. He also then looks at himself specifically. So if you look at the statistics I should be in prison and he provides this list of all the different reasons. Essentially what he's doing here is highlighting the consequences of the restricted and prejudiced concepts of intelligence that we have in society because of that juxtaposition between connotations of a prison population of you know criminals moral people versus the connotations of the architect population kind of people

we talked about earlier skilled innovative leaders. When we see that a high percentage of both have dyslexia, we see, well, dyslexia isn't the problem. And instead, he identifies what the problem is by talking about himself and all the reasons that he could be in prison. So that list, a black man, race, brought up on the wrong side of town, class system, whose family fell apart, family structures, in trouble with the police when I was a kid, upbringing, unable to read and write with no qualifications, education system, and on top of that, dyslexic. He builds up the mounting range of ways that society can put limitations on you. But again, he never allows it to get to the point of us feeling loads of pity for him because

he follows that with more self assuredness because he says, "But I think staying out of prison is about conquering your fears and finding your path in life." And both of those metaphors are about being confident and tenacious. So conquering that idea of a battle of overcoming something, finding your path, the present participle there as if you're actively searching for things, you're being proactive. And he then contrasts himself against other people who have gone to prison. And he sees similarities in them in intelligence and other qualities. They are the same as me, but opportunities open for me and they missed theirs. Didn't notice them or didn't take them. So what he juxtaposes is not intelligence. They are just as

intelligent as him. He will meet people who also have dyslexia as well. The difference in them is not the dyslexia. Again, dyslexia is not the issue. There's nothing wrong with that. The difference is the other soft skills, the confidence and self assuredness that they have. And he again expresses that with this metaphor, opportunities open for me. And he contrasts this with this tricolon of they missed theirs, didn't notice them or didn't take them. In contrast to his finding your path in life, they didn't notice, didn't take, missed it. So there's a passiveness there. Dyslexia isn't the issue. How proactive you are, how determined you are is the issue. And what a key thing that makes a difference along with, of

course, all the other prejudices of society that he mentions before. He's not trying to suggest that all people need to do is believe in themselves. and you know, society won't be an issue. He's suggesting that it's part of how he fought back against society. And he really emphasizes that with the simple sentences that followed. I never thought I was stupid. I didn't have that struggle. Again, creating that really self assured tone of I was fine. I was confident in who I am. And he has that again with that dialogue of his um internal narrative. I'm not stupid. You're the ones that stupid. I just had self-belief. So there's a suggestion there that perhaps that is another thing that makes him different from these

people that have ended up in prison is they perhaps have allowed the low expectations of society to truly affect their mindset. Whereas he never fully did. He had the self-belief. He didn't listen to society. And in this story with this I'm not stupid, you're the one who's stupid. We have this motif of stupidity. We've had stupidity mentioned multiple times. And a motif is a repeated image or symbol in a text. And in the case of stupidity, what that word symbolizes is essentially society's view of dyslexic people and society's limited concept of intelligence. If you don't tick these criteria, you must be stupid. So whenever you see stupidity being mentioned in his article, that's what it symbolizes. It's so much more than just

being stupid. Is about society's view, the stigma they have for dyslexic people. And we've got another two anecdotes. Now his article for a lot of it is essentially a string of anecdotes that exemplify and illustrate different issues and points that he wishes to make. But of course now linked to that chronology he is now reaching the point of adulthood at 21 I went to an educa adult education class and then in the anecdote before that for my first book so he's now into adulthood and this is where for the first time we see him find out about his dyslexia and when he says he responds to being told he's dyslexic with do I need an operation and I thought I was going crazy both of those words canote really serious physical and

mental illness which is again part of seeing how society views dyslexia. Um that it's like you know he really thought something was really wrong with him because of his dyslexia. And of course his point he's making elsewhere is no there's nothing wrong with being dyslexic actually is an advantage. The problem is society and how society views dyslexia and how that therefore leads dyslexic people to view themselves. And this anecdote greatly contrasts with the anecdote that's come before it because actually we see from this story about how he did his first book. It's so straightforward. His dyslexia was was not a problem. His girlfriend wrote it down for him. People thought he was writing phonetically. Like there's

there's no problem. And in fact actually he has a success. It really took off especially within the black community. So there's a huge contrast there between the judgmental attitudes from education and also that really serious way that society views dyslexia, you know, operation crazy, etc. It's really not that big of a problem. He is able to live his life perfectly fine. Interestingly though, that anecdote of the simplicity comes before the anecdote where he even knew what his dyslexia was. So, it's like when it's still an unknown entity, when you don't know what it is you're dealing with, you just find ways, you find strategies, whether that is your girlfriend writing it down or whatever. And so, in our chronology of

our anecdotes, we see the progress of his journey with his perception of dyslexia, where up to this point, he's been constantly challenged by society as being stupid, as you know, lacking intelligence, blah blah blah. As an adult, he just gets on with life. It's simple. He has his way that he works around it. And then he finds out actually okay here is what is going on and suddenly it becomes a really serious thing again because it's got a name, it's got a label and he's concerned about what that means for him. What changes though in our next section is it returns to that simplicity of how he deals with his dyslexia and we see the successes of it. You know there was it's not a serious issue whatsoever. If we

start off with the first line of this section, I wrote more poetry, novels for teenagers, plays, other books, and recorded music. There is a list of successes there. Those concrete nouns, poetry, novels, plays, music, all canote really diverse skill to be able to do all of those. And then the structure of the sentence as well with that asytic listing creates a really fast pace suggesting at the fast creation of that works too. again alluding to the sheer amount of creativity that he's producing all of these different creative works and he describes what he does as taking poetry to people who do not read poetry. So it's a really beautiful image there because of course as we know from earlier as a child he was the one on the

sort of fringes of society being pushed out and now he's bringing the the sort of the mainstream the literature that everyone thinks of with you know education systems and so on and he's bringing it to those who feel like it isn't for them. He is changing things. He is different and he is enacting change which is a really wonderful image of him. And with all of these successes, they're put in the exact same paragraph as how he manages being dyslexic. And [snorts] we have this temporal adverbial phrase. Temporal just means time. So still now he's talking about like a period of time. And so it's showing his dyslexia hasn't changed. He he's still got it. It's just how he deals with it is different. Like he can still have

success and he just needs to think about things. You know, he says, "I have to stop and think. How do I write that? I have to draw something and so on. Like it's not that complicated as suggested by that. Just I just put a question mark and come back to it later. Such simplicity and ease. It's not a big deal. It's not a big problem that has perhaps been made out to be in the past with him all those suggestions of him being stupid and things. It's not that case at all. He's able to have great success and manage it absolutely fine. And he talks about that more in this next anecdote as well where he's now a job of uh got the job of professor of poetry and creative writing at Brunell University. So he is actually now part

of that restrictive education system and he's very aware of the power and authority he has because he says I knew my students would be officially more educated than me. Note that adverb officially there like in an inst education institution way in society's definition of intelligence they are more educated. That was a slight tangent. Anyway going back to the my students that possessive pronoun he knows he is the one with the power now. And what's interesting is how now that he is in the system and he is the one with the power. He is again changing things and being really different because he talks about that adverb officially. you know they have the hard skills as also suggested by like the good memory that sort of

hard skill of how well can you memorize things and he contrasts that with the soft skills passion creativity individuality just as a side note here as a teacher I wholeheartedly agree with this so many students think that the key to education is memorizing stuff to get a good grade when actually it's about so much more than that and this tricolon is showing that that semantic field of soft skills passion and creativity individually. It's shifting the concept of intelligence and what should be valued in society. It's not about can you get an A. It's about can you be creative? Can you be different? And he clearly feels really strongly about that because he says there's no point that quite strong I would say almost hyperbolic

point he's making there about the purpose of education. The purpose of education is not about achieving a grade. The purpose of education is about developing yourself as a person. So he is just really changing the education system all thanks to the creativity, the self assuredness, the critical thinking he has always had as a child and now as an adult in the education system actually gets to put forward and really push. We also in this other anecdote have another temporal adverbial phrase in my life now. So he also is again looking at his successes this time in the second anecdote. His successes about how he's managing to change the education system and be a force for good in the education system. And again he

also talks about how his dyslexia hasn't changed but it's just how it's perceived. So I find that people accommodate my dyslexia. So it's gone from him being told just go be a footballer to actually people are fine with it. People don't have an issue with it. And again, the solutions doesn't have to be particularly difficult. Having an actor read it out for him, poetry doesn't have to be word perfect. These are not complicated solutions that have allowed him to be a great success in the literary world. And in this last chunk, he takes all of the points that he's sort of been implicitly alluding to throughout his different anecdotes and he makes them hella explicit and he makes them really clearly apply to all

dyslexic people. really hammering home his point that there is nothing wrong with being dyslexic and dyslexic people have really valuable and different thinking skills. First of all, again with that simple declarative sentence opening with that defiant tone. If someone can't understand dyslexia, it's their problem. And he links it back with this analogy to racism as well because of course in society it's much more normal today for us to understand racism is wrong and racism is the problem of the racist, not the person of color. And so he highlights that he makes that analogy between the two to point out that dyslexia is normal and there's no need to change dyslexia. It's society that needs to change because dyslexia

and race have things in common in that they are innate abilities. A key part of someone's identity that they have no control over and also has no need to affect their lives in the way that it currently does in society. He comes back as well to that direct address. If you're dyslexic and you feel there's something holding you back, just remember. So that imperative as well. And remember it's not you. In many ways, being dyslexic is a natural way to be. So he's shifting now from his personal story into that clear message for his reader and being really explicit on that message. I mean, if you think about that word natural, like the denotations of natural is it's normal. It's nothing different. So it fits with his whole

point. Dyslexia is normal. There's no need to change that. And he then juxtaposes that with what is actually the unnatural thing and the unnatural thing of the societal contracts we have created. So he contrasts the naturalness of being dyslexic with the unnatural expectations of society and he does that by contrasting different languages. So he gives an example of a pictorial language like Chinese and then also which seems really simple with a house looks like a house contrasted to our language English where it's like a squiggle that represents a sound. So again his point is the problem is the language not the individual. Dyslexia isn't the problem. Society is and the way we operate in society. He follows

that with some more imperatives. So don't be heavy on yourself. more colloquial language in there as well. So, it's more of that advice, that encouraging, reassuring tone that we've had whenever he's spoken to his audience. You are not the problem. You are wonderful. Society is the issue here. He also shifts his audience slightly as well in this paragraph. If you are a parent of someone with dyslexia, don't think of it as a defect. So defect again has connotations of like some sort of physical or mental disability or problem but connotations of the old way we used to think about disability. A lot of the stigma around physical and mental disability also was you were born with some kind of defect.

They literally called it in medical terms that you were born with a body defect. By speaking to the parents, it's more of that encouraging, reassuring tone as well because of course a parent will worry for their child about how they're going to be perceived, how they're going to be treated. And he's really explicit on why this isn't a problem. Dyslexia is not a measure of intelligence. You may have a genius on your hands. So there's really positive connotations of genius with its high level of intelligence. Contrasting again, you know, the way if we think of that motif of stupidity, the way society often stigmatizes dyslexic people, having dyslexia can make you creative, that simple declarative. He's really

confident. He's really self- assured in his positive view of dyslexia. And he gives an example of why that is true by talking about how they have to think of a way to write round it when they're faced with a challenge. So he points out again those soft skills of problem solving. This requires being creative. So your creativity muscle gets bigger. So there's that analogy there of a creativity muscle. So we think about a muscle conoting strength and skill. And so when we think about a creativity muscle getting bigger, we see how it develops these soft skills in us when we have dyslexia and how it helps us develop those different thinking skills. In his final paragraph, he really brings it back full circle to the start of his

piece because he gives a final anecdote. You know, he started off as being the kid. Now he's got kids coming up to him. So it's about how things have changed as him as an adult and how he is changing things for this next generation, this younger generation and trying to ensure that they don't go through the same kinds of struggles that he did. Because of course he started off with as a child I suffered. And instead what he says to dyslexic children that come up to him is use it to your advantage. See the world differently. Us dyslexic people we've got it going on. That's obviously exactly what he said in his title. We are the architects. we are the designers. That is exactly what he says in his opening. So by repeating these

lines and having this direct address, it's bringing together that nice point that all of his story has served as an evidence of the point that he made at the start that we are the architects, we are the designers. And what's also great with this ending is that we now get to see the positive impact of his message because he's not just given this message in this article. The whole point of this anecdote is clearly he gives this message a lot to other dyslexic children that he meets and we can see how things are changing because he says it's like these kids are proud to be like me and if that helps them that is great. I didn't have that as a child. So he points out how things have changed from the start of his article and the start

of his life versus now in society. And he has this really sort of tongue andcheek ending that I think also speaks to the rebellious nature of him that he's he has also shown that he has because he has this dialogue of bloody non-dislexics. Who do they think they are? So first of all there's that taboo language creating the mocking tone but also what he actually says. Who do they think they are? It has echoes of how he was spoken to before. How he was treated before. like how dare you child like challenge me as your teacher for speaking up and so on and so forth. So it's a very tongue-in-cheek way of mocking the fact that society is the problem and how society judges others is the problem. So he's pretending he's not

actually judging non-dislexics, but he's pretending to not judge non-dislexics. And I think it also really neatly ends the article by ending on that key message of there's nothing wrong with being uh there's nothing wrong with being dyslexic. society is the problem. Who do they think they are? And in that way, I think it almost works as a kind of rhetorical question for our audience as well because yes, he is speaking to dyslexic people. They have been the clear focus of his audience, but there's also no denying that this being published in the Guardian as well as a book called Creative, Successful, and Dyslexic. He was also writing to non-dislexic people as well. He revealed that a little bit when he said like if

you're the parent of someone with dyslexia, but with such a broad audience that the Guardian newspaper would have, he is aware that his article is speaking to a wide readership, including those who do not have dyslexia and perhaps have the stigma against dyslexic people. He ends on that almost challenge to society. What's the matter with you? Why are you thinking this way? Because clearly we dyslexic people are