I Am Dyslexic Starring Will Smith
Whoops, my mistake that’s I Am Legend. But Smith is in fact dyslexic, something I never knew until recently. Something else I never knew was that about 4% of the population are severely dyslexic and a further 6% suffer moderate to miner effects, that’s 1 in 10. What’s the point of this? Let me explain…
Last week I received some ‘helpful’ comments on this site from someone whose opinion I valued (and, I surpose, approval I wanted.) I mean, this was after I’d been over it with spellchecker and corrected the worst mistakes, so I must be bad right? Following these comments I was not only ready to stop writing this blog and delete everything I’d already written, but also sell my house and move to a small island off the coast of Scotland, in the hopes of being far enough away from civilisation so as not to infect anyone else with my illiteracy. Thankfully some good friends persuaded me out of this course of action (I say thankfully as it gets cold up there and I hate the cold) and instead to dig a bit deeper to find the root of the problem.
Dyslexia was first recognised by Parliament in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 although it wasn’t until the 1993 Education Act that it was defined as a special educational need. Basically what this means is that if you were a kid going to school in the 70’s who suffered from severe dyslexia there was a chance you might get some kind of special attention. If on the other hand you only suffered a mild form, the chances were you would just be branded as a ‘bad speller.’ I was a kid going to school in the 70’s and I was a ‘bad speller.’
