The idea that successful famous people can have dyslexia is familiar. Sir Richard Branson has talked at length about his experience with the learning difficulty, and scientists have suggested that Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci had it, too. But few have been as effusive about the benefits of dyslexia as Jamie Oliver.
“I genuinely think that when someone says to you, ‘Johnny’s got dyslexia’, you should get down on your knees, shake the child’s hand and say: ‘Well done, you lucky, lucky boy’,” the chef said this week. He is among the estimated one in 10-20 of us who have dyslexia, which he credits with helping him to build a one-man brand worth an estimated £240m.
“If I’m in a meeting, I just see the problems differently and I obsess about things differently,” he told the Radio Times. “Sometimes, when it requires a load of stuff to be done, I just do it. It’s like I’m a massive, 10-tonne boulder rolling down the hill.”
Dyslexia causes reading and spelling challenges, but positivity about the condition is a growing part of the campaign to improve awareness and coping strategies. The British Dyslexia Association is exploring the theme during the annual Dyslexia Awareness Week next month, with events in schools and the hashtag #positivedyslexia2017.
“I have five severely dyslexic children,” says the association’s policy manager Sue Flohr, who is herself dyslexic. “They’re now a doctor, a teacher, a photographer, a designer and a nightclub manager. Dyslexia doesn’t prohibit anything, and being positive about it encourages children to find their strengths while working around weaknesses.”
The Illustrated Guide to Dyslexia and Its Amazing People, published later this month, is written by two dyslexic mothers of dyslexic children. After a foreword by the dyslexic architect Richard Rogers, it offers practical solutions to particular challenges while also celebrating dyslexia’s advantages. “School can still be demoralising, but when you hear about people doing superbly well in all kinds of careers, it really helps,” says co-author Kate Power.
Research into possible differences in the wiring of the brain is ongoing, but tests routinely show that dyslexics are better at spatial reasoning and “seeing the bigger picture”. “I wouldn’t be able to do what I do if I wasn’t dyslexic,” says Jim Rokos, a product designer and the curator of Dyslexic Design, an exhibition that was mounted in London last year. “I can play with shapes and do experiments in my head in a way that other designers might not be able to.”
Rokos also believes that, if nothing else, the expectation of failure many dyslexics learn at school means they are more willing to take a risk and try new things (you are expected to fail, so why not?). But otherwise, he adds, “If you were to design a system to remove a person’s self confidence, you’d come up with schools. So, for someone such as Jamie Oliver to say this really helps give some hope so that kids can get through to adulthood.”
