Translator: Tanya Cushman
Reviewer: Peter van de Ven Here's the moment of truth:
Anybody in this audience have dyslexia? Show of hands. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Some more. Thank you. That's almost a fair assessment. We've got about 20%
of the general population has dyslexia. That's one in five people. And I think that dyslexia
is most commonly understood as this reading issue, you know, we have a tendency of flipping
our b's and d's and our q's and g's, and that's, you know,
I think that's a fair assessment, at least in the symptomatic department. But I want to take this opportunity to speak a little bit more in depth
about the neuroscience of dyslexia. So, we have this outer layer
of our brain called the cortex. And we all know that we have -
or maybe we don't know - but we have these little things
called minicolumns, okay? And these minicolumns serve
as the telephone poles, if you will. What strings together
on these minicolumns are axons. Okay? Now, people with autism, for example, have axons that are extremely closely
located in proximity to each other, and as a result, their axon lengths
are very, very finite and short, and as a result they are able
to do these incredibly detailed, highly specific patterns
and behaviors and skills, right? Well, dyslexics are
on the other side of that spectrum; we have our minicolumns
that are spaced very, very far apart. As a result, our axon lengths
are significantly longer. And this actually lends
to some significant cognitive advantages. We have an ability to look at a situation and identify seemingly disparate
pieces of information and blend those into
a narrative, or a tapestry, that makes sense to us
that most people can't see. So this translates
into an exceptional level of success in four major vocational paths. That's entrepreneurship,
engineering, architecture and the arts. I just want you to please remember that,
as it comes up later in this discussion. Dyslexia comes with a cost though, okay? We have an incredibly difficult time
doing what's called phonetic decoding. Okay, that's the most complex
word I'm going to use, and I hope you're impressed by it. Phonetic decoding
is essentially our ability to identify these squiggly lines, translate those lines
into a sound in our mind and then string those sounds
together to compose a word. For dyslexics, that takes five time more energy
than a normal brain. So, to give you a little bit
of a historical context on dyslexia, I'll go back and start off with the first nine-tenths
of human existence. Societies were largely based
on apprentice models, right? From hunter and gatherers
down to the trades in more recent times, people learned by observing
and then doing kinesthetic learning. Now, this happens to be
the wheelhouse for dyslexics; this is our prime opportunity to learn. Then there was this little twist
in history, okay? It was called the Industrial Revolution. And what happened
during the Industrial Revolution is the society said, "Okay,
we've got this new form of economy. What we need to do is educate the masses to become effective worker bees
in these factories." Now, this dovetailed historically with the importation
of the printing press from Europe. And so everyone was incredibly excited
that they had this newfound technology that would enable us
to embed knowledge into a format that could then be scaled
and distributed on a national level. Now, this served society
tremendously well, except for the fact
that at that very moment, you essentially locked the door
on 20% of the population, right? Those of us with dyslexia. So, what does the dyslexic
experience feel like? Of those that raised their hands,
we certainly know, but I'll illuminate it
for the rest of you. I ask you to take a stroll back to those sepia-toned images
of your 7, 8, 9-year-old years, where school was sort of this montage of recess and nap time and snack time; the world was a really good place, right? And then, all of a sudden, at one point, they kind of tightened the screws a bit, and said, "We're going to introduce
our first benchmark of intelligence." They didn't put it that way; they said,
"We're going to learn how to read." And all of a sudden, for those of us with dyslexia,
our world changed overnight. We realized, looking at our peers, that what everybody else
was doing effortlessly, we had an incredible time trying to do. And we actually
not only failed on day one, but we failed on day two
and three and four, and so on, and the years started to compound where we were exposed
to this level of failure that became so commonplace that we started to wear
this shroud of shame. There's a psychologist
named Dr. Gershen Kaufman. Dr. Kaufman studies shame. Dr. Kaufman says that people
who cannot read or who have difficulty
learning how to read feel the same level of shame
as people who have engaged in incest. So you can imagine what it's like - again, you see that in yourself,
you know, many, many years ago - and you realize that after a while,
you're burdened with this shame, and then you get this reinforcement, negative, albeit, where you're walking down the hall,
and you hear things like, "That guy Dean. Kid's so dumb
he can't even read." Right? Or the best one is
the teacher-parent conference where they're like,
"You know, Dean's a smart kid, but if he just tried harder. I think he's a little bit lazy." Okay? And so what happens is that you formulate
this malignant self-esteem; you start to believe - no matter
how strong your personal resolve may be - you start to believe
what everyone is telling you. So it should come as no surprise: you transition into
middle school, then high school, thinking, "Okay, who am I going to be?" We all remember that.
Horrible experience, right? Trying to define who we were going to be
in our cult, our pack, our community. And we knew that we're not
going to be the smart kid. I mean, albeit the wrong assessment, but we knew we weren't
going to be the smart kid. Maybe we were the gifted jock, but chances are we looked at the kids, after school, smoking reefer
on the bleachers, or the kids throwing rocks through glass or somebody maybe even getting involved
in a little bit of gang involvement. And we'd think to ourselves
they've got a very low barrier to entry; I can be that guy; that's very easy. And so we naturally gravitate
towards those identities. And statistically, it's a very sad story. You know, 35% of all dyslexics
drop out of high school, and 50% of all adolescents involved
in drug and alcohol rehabilitation have dyslexia. Another whammy is 60% - in fact, the professionals
say it's more like 70%, but I think that's outlandish - the people that work
in the juvenile detention system say that 70% of all juvenile delinquents have dyslexia. So, that is a very strong
and depressing narrative, obviously. But we all have heard - I heard
an earlier speaker talk about Einstein - we've all heard how Einstein was dyslexic. JFK, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo DaVinci, Richard Branson, Charles Schwab. I mean the laundry list is endless, right? In fact, dyslexics,
when they are fully empowered and they recognize
that innate intelligence, represent 35% of all entrepreneurs. They represent 40%
of all self-made millionaires. And you know those
rocket scientists down at NASA? One out of two of them is dyslexic. My favorite, because I live
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is this easy-to-get-into
school called MIT - they call dyslexia the "MIT disease." So, I've kind of toiled with this notion of why it is that my people - right? - suffer this huge delta in outcomes. And about a year-and-a-half ago, I found myself in
a learning-disability conference - which is the worst name
you could think of - and I was listening to these professors,
and they were really impressive. They had, you know, three or four
acronyms behind their last names, and they were sitting there saying
the way we need to teach dyslexic learners is through two things. We need to teach them social/emotional learning
executive functioning methodology. Okay? That's code word
for sequencing and time management and emotional intelligence. And I sat there, like you all did, and I was just getting
a little hot under the collar. Like, man, what they don't get is that adding another discipline
to an already frustrated student is like, "Alright, kids,
you headed off to the Gulag? Here's an 800-pound sledgehammer, called social/emotional
learning executive function. Take this. It's really
going to help when you get there." Makes absolutely no sense. So I was frustrated, and I went
into a conference breakout session that was hosted by the Carroll School,
which is up in Lincoln, Massachusetts, K through 8, dyslexic only. And the head of the school, brilliant guy
named Steve Wilkins, was so smart. He said, "I'm not going to talk
to a room full of educators. Let me put my kids up there." So, I remember this one eighth-grader, this gangly little dude,
he went up, he's all nervous, standing in front of a room like this. And he reaches into this backpack, and he pulls out this
size-11 basketball high top, and on the heel, he's got
this like erector set attached, right? and this long cord leading out of it. And he explains to everybody
that this is his prototype for a shoe that enables him
to charge his cellphone while he walked. And everyone is like,
"That's really good, man, right? Yeah, there's some technical issues,
right? but that's details." But the beauty was that the moment
this kid's presentation ended, every arm in the place shot up, right? And all these very impressed educators
going, "How'd you think of that? That's so creative." And I watched this kid - literally - this little 8th-grader,
like, blossom into this deity. That kid was going to walk out
of that presentation hall, and he was never ever going to believe
that he was stupid or lazy or indolent. In fact, the kid is probably,
five years from now, going out to Palo Alto and
giving Zuckerberg a run for his money. Right? He's going to displace Zuckerberg. This kid was so empowered. And I thought to myself,
"Here's the answer." Here's the answer. What we have to do is we have to take these students
who are so disenfranchised, so frustrated, so thirsty
for positive reinforcement and introduce them to
that cognitive skill set they have, which is a direct result
of the construction of their brains. As I said earlier, entrepreneurship,
engineering, architecture, the arts - what we need to do is take
those subject matters, those vocations, distill them to an age-appropriate
middle school level, and then once we've got
these learners hooked, we can embed it with
that social/emotional learning and executive functioning methodology because I can attest
that once you've got a captive dyslexic, they are ravenous; they are thirsty; they've built up this moxie and this grit, and then, all of a sudden, you're revealing something that
they're better at against their peers - this is a brand new message. And so I'm in Cambridge, like I said,
the Saudi Arabia of academics, and I went to the best institutions: I went to Harvard School of Education,
Tufts University, the Carroll School, and I said this is what I want to build. They said, "We're down."
Said I was brilliant. Nobody's done that. Not brilliant - I hope
they said that's brilliant. They said, "We're interested." (Laughter) A little artistic liberty, I guess. Still working out
some issues from my youth. (Laughter) But the beauty was they got on board, and then I was faced with the question, "Okay, how do I avoid the mistake
of the traditional educational path?" Right? How do I avoid text
as that barrier to entry? So I hunted around, and it turns out
that Harvard, MIT and Stanford University have created something called edX. edX is a state-of-the-art
internet platform where they provide their MOOCs -
their massively open online curricula. And because these three universities
have the GDP of a small country, each one of them, they said part of building this
and part of our social responsibility is we'll open source our software, which means that anybody can utilize
this state-of-the-art technology to create their own MOOCs. So, I found a company that works
between me, as the content provider, and the software, and we determined that I could actually offer
every single one of my lesson plans through a variety of modalities. I could offer my lesson plan
through a video presentation; I could offer it
through an audio presentation or a graphic or
a pictorial representation, which enables that dyslexic learner
to access the information without having to stumble
over text as that barrier. Now, I don't want
to ever be mistaken for saying that dyslexics don't have to learn
how to read; they absolutely do. But the point is this: if we can get to these kids
when they're in middle school, we can access or reveal to them
what their inherent capacities are before, as my friend Ben Foss -
another friend in the field - says, "Before the cement
of their personality is solidified," we can, theoretically -
and I hope to prove this - we can take these kids, empower them in such a way that we can not only
reduce attrition rates and reduce drug and alcohol
and incarceration rates, but, better yet, is we can
give birth to these kids; they can access within themselves
a new narrative, an empowered narrative, where they can go out, and they can join the ranks of those
famous dyslexics that I listed earlier, but more importantly, so these individuals
can become self-actualized, satisfied, content,
confident human beings. And I'll end it on this: There are a lot of problems
facing today's society. I think the previous speaker spoke about
the environment riddled with problems. Some of the most creative,
innovative minds are at this moment atrophying behind bars. And that's all a result of a system that insists upon the most archaic form
of educational medium - text. So, I hope I'll get
invited back in five years, and I'll be able to explain to you - no, better yet - I'll be able
to put up a panel of my students - that's non-TEDx, but let's say - put up a panel of my newly empowered,
little, dyslexic brothers and sisters and let them show you
what it is they've invented, or what they are going to do to solve
some sort of environmental problem. So, I'm so grateful to have had
this opportunity to speak to you all, to hopefully tell you a little bit more about this dyslexic potential
that we're trying to unlock. So I thank you so much for being here. (Applause)
People with dyslexia can also have ASD. However, it's an interesting video.
Nice feel good presentation. Truth is dyslexia is a bitch and you have to deal with it your whole life.