The Creative Brilliance of Dyslexia: Kate Griggs (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Kate Griggs’ talk titled “The Creative Brilliance of Dyslexia” at TEDxBrighton conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Misconceptions and Insights

Six months ago, I started my own sperm bank. Have a look and see what happened. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to have a chat to you about dyslexia. Who would be interested in having a dyslexic baby? What the hell kind of a question is that? The world’s first dyslexic sperm bank, open today.

Hello, good morning. What’s brought you in today? Just a bit intrigued, actually. Tell me, what do you know about dyslexia? I don’t know, like it’s jumbled up with writing. Isn’t that just a pity? You’re kind of spiced it up and put in the special room. A lot of people think that people with dyslexia are stupid, I’ve heard that word used a lot. Given the choice, would you like your child to have dyslexia? No. I wouldn’t kill it. I have a restaurant. Right. My head chef is dyslexic. Okay.

And there’s certain things I wouldn’t give him to do at all. Only 3% of people see dyslexia as anything other than a disadvantage. But look at the people around this room. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, inventor of the iPhone. Who’s more of an icon for genius than Albert Einstein? We’ve got a whole catalogue here full of people who are or were dyslexic, like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone. Dyslexics have a difference in their brains that makes them literally see the world a bit differently.

Quite a lot of good-looking ones. Love. It’s like you’re jealous. Did you know that 40% of self-made millionaires are dyslexic? Say that again. What?

That’s amazing. We hadn’t held anything back. The value of these individuals and their contributions to all areas is just really encouraging. And all of these dynamic achievers need to be given up as positive examples. It does not need to be a barrier to achievement. If you were thinking about how most people see dyslexia, what words do you think people would use to describe them? At a disadvantage. But by the sounds of it, they’re not.

Research and Realizations

Thank you. Quite an eye-opener, really, wasn’t it? And very funny in places as well. That social research film was done in conjunction with some extremely hard-hitting research by YouGov that looked at the public perception or misconception around dyslexia. Only 3% of people see dyslexia as an advantage or anything other than a disadvantage. Yet, we’ve seen from that film, so many incredible people, dyslexic people, have gone on to do incredible things.

That research was also done in conjunction with the launch of my new charity, Made by Dyslexia. The charity is run by successful dyslexics, and we’re building a community from around the world of dyslexics to come together to actually help to change the perception of dyslexia, but also to help people to really understand dyslexia for what it is, which is a different way of thinking, not a disability and not a disadvantage.

Dyslexia is caused by a different wiring in the brain, and that wiring enables people with dyslexia to think creatively and laterally and differently. In the real world, that’s a huge advantage, but in the education system, it is a disadvantage unless those children are picked up early, given the right support, and we focus on their strengths. Our mission is to try and come together as a world and to help to value the huge potential and the huge value that dyslexic people have in the world.

A Personal Touch

Now, 10% of people are dyslexic, but I would imagine in a town like Brighton, it’ll be a lot more than that because there’s so much creativity and art and different thinkers around. But hopefully, my presentation today will help you to realize why dyslexia is important to all of our lives. So, let me tell you a little bit about me. This is my big brother and me as kids.

Don’t you love the old family photographs? My brother and I are both dyslexic. We were hugely, hugely lucky because we were sent to one of the first schools in the world that actually understood dyslexia as a different way of thinking and also supported the difficulties that you have during learning. All of my family are dyslexic, but it’s genetic, so that’s not really surprising.

My father was a botanist and he invented the grow bag. Most of my aunts and uncles went on to careers that dyslexic thinking really supports. They were entrepreneurs and they went into caring professions and have all achieved amazing things. I have two dyslexic sons. One is a poet and the other is a recording artist. So they’ve both followed their passion and talents into the creative field. And I even married a dyslexic, so obviously like attracts like. I’d like to just tell you the story of my school because I think it’s a really interesting story and it kind of sums a lot of things up.

The Story of Millfield

My school was started in the 1930s by an absolutely inspirational and very forward-thinking educationalist called Boss Meyer. Boss was tutoring the Indian princes over in India and it got to the stage where the Indian royal family really wanted the boys to come over to the UK, to England and benefit from the British private education system. So Boss came over with the boys and he did the rounds of all the top schools like Eton and Harrow and everywhere he went, one of the boys was being turned down because he just couldn’t pass the entrance exam.

So Boss was fascinated by this because he knew this lad was just as clever as any of the other boys but couldn’t understand why he couldn’t learn. So he set about doing some research into word blindness or dyslexia as it was just starting to be called back in the 1930s. And Boss went over to America with a team of teachers to Columbia University where he met Professors Orton and Gillingham who were the first people to come up with an intervention programme for dyslexic children.

He got a team of teachers trained in this methodology and then he came back to the UK and he set up Millfield School. Boss also went around to all the top private schools that had turned this lad away and basically said to them, send me your duffers. I want all the kids you can’t educate and I’m going to turn them around. He also went to the parents and said, right, I can turn your children around but you have to pay me four times the going rate that you’ll pay to Eton or Harrow. Because with that money, he gave away three scholarships to children who had the same difficulties but couldn’t afford to pay the fees.

So Millfield School was built on three principles. It was built on Boss’s passion for dyslexia and the fact that dyslexic children and people had so much to offer the world that they needed to be educated properly. He was passionate about different intelligences and the fact that he felt the education system was so narrow it wasn’t nurturing and supporting the creativity and the innovation and all the brains that we know can help the world. And he was also passionate about sport. He actually believed that those three things went hand in hand.

Now Millfield is now 75, nearly 80 years old and the alumni is absolutely extraordinary. I was very, very lucky because as part of the research I’ve been doing to understand dyslexic thinking skills and the whole talents and abilities, Millfield opened up their alumni books and allowed me to write all the old boys and all the old girls to actually ask them what their experiences were from Millfield and what they’d gone on to do. I have to be honest, I was completely blown away by what came back. There were President’s children.

There were Prime Minister’s children. There were children from acting dynasties who’d all gone on to achieve extraordinary things in their own right. But there were also people who had come in on scholarship who were completely self-made, who had gone on to do incredible things like one of the leading lights in fusion power in the USA or somebody who’d gone on to create incredible medical breakthroughs. All of these people had one thing in common.

The education system had called them duffers until they got to Millfield. They focused on their strengths and they got the support that they needed. So you can see why I’m really passionate about helping the world to understand this is something that we really need to nurture because our teachers are still not being trained in dyslexia. And there are still lots of dyslexic children who are going through life and people thinking that they’re just stupid when they’re clearly not.

Now, this is my son Ted who’s actually now 24 so he doesn’t really like me sharing this photograph with you. But I love this picture because for me, this picture tells us everything that is right with our children and everything that is wrong with our education system. You see, Ted here hadn’t quite started school. He was nearly five years old and if you look into his eyes, you see what you see in any five-year-old’s eyes. You see imagination, creativity, hope, inspiration, a different way of doing things, just this amazing excitement for life.

You see superheroes. At that age, Ted thought he could do absolutely anything. But what happens then is we send them to school and our school system is so obsessed with conformity and measurement that all of the creativity that these children arrive with is just educated out of them. Ken Robinson talks in his very famous TED Talk about some research into creative thinking and lateral thinking and when children start primary school or elementary school, 97% of them are genius-level lateral thinkers.

By the time they leave primary school or elementary school, that’s down to just 43%. So all of that creativity has been squeezed out of these children. Now for dyslexic kids, dyslexic people, we’re hardwired for that so the chances are that’s still going to carry on through our education. And certainly when we get out into the real world, we’re going to tap into that to do the extraordinary things that you’ve seen. But if you’re not dyslexic, this is a really big problem because there’s a plasticity in the brain.

It’s just like a muscle. If you don’t use it, it withers away and it’s very, very hard to get it back. So we’re letting this creativity wither away in all these amazing children. So it’s an important issue that we really need to address.

The Impact of Dyslexic Thinking

Just bear with me for a moment. Let’s all look around the room and have a think about something. Most of you will have a phone in your pocket. Many of you will have an iPhone. As you just saw from the film, Steve Jobs, the inventor or creator of Apple, was made by dyslexia. So is Johnny Ive, who does all the amazing designs for the iPhone. And some of you may well have come by car or certainly may well have a car at home. Henry Ford, who created the first car assembly line, was made by dyslexia.

And the light bulbs that are shining down on us here, Thomas Edison created the light bulb. He was made by dyslexia. And the other thing is that GCHQ, the British Intelligence Agency, who actually keep our country safe from terrorists, actually actively employ dyslexic people because of their different way of thinking and their different way of being able to solve things and create patterns. So not only is dyslexic thinking created much of the modern world, but it’s also keeping us safe.

So just imagine, if we were nurturing this type of intelligence, just imagine what that could be doing in our future. As we enter an age which is so exciting but so uncertain, as we enter the age of the fourth industrial revolution as it’s now being called, where robots and artificial intelligence is going to take over a lot of what we do as jobs, we have absolutely no idea what the job market is going to look like in one year, five years, or ten years. What we do know and what experts are agreed on is that the type of intelligences that we need are the type of intelligences that dyslexics have. The innovation, the creativity, the thinking out of the box.

So my big thought here is that why don’t we, instead of actually taking these brilliant dyslexic minds and squashing them into an education system that doesn’t fit and calls them disabled or disadvantaged, why don’t we open up the education system? Why don’t we teach all children the creativity and the innovation so they can actually learn to think like a dyslexic? And that will help to make our future world. Thank you.

ALSO READ: Jacki Hillios: Transcending Addiction and Redefining Recovery at TEDxBoulder (Transcript)