Dyslexia: My New Favorite Asset

I just finished reading Thinking Like Einstein: Returning to our Visual Roots with the Emerging Revolution in Computer Information Visualization by Thomas G. West. West addresses dyslexia, visual-spacial thinking, and current innovations in computer graphics. This was the first time I read something that treated the potentials of dyslexic thinking with enthusiasm and anticipation. I have never seriously investigated dyslexia because I found the rhetoric around learning disabilities alienating. This book collects West’s articles on the topic, specifically in relation to computer graphics, and paints a picture of flexible, intuitive minds not fitting into conventional academic and work scenarios, but developing the most innovative responses to scientific and visual problems.

I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was in 1st grade. The testers at Yale concluded that I was smart enough to compensate for the dyslexia and that I needed no special assistance. This expectation is unsettling when I look back. Even if I made good grades and was often favored by teachers, I found school to be a murky, treacherous place where I would be ridiculed for stupid mistakes and not trying hard enough. This had a long term impact on my relationship to institutionalized learning and my sense of self generally. While I compensated alright, I feel like I had sporadic help at best in identifying and nurturing my strengths associated with dyslexia.

West uses a variety of people as examples of visual-spatial thinking who struggled with or even repeatedly dropped out of school, only to late make major contributions to their fields. The most prominent examples are Einstein and the Wright brothers. There is an inverse relationship between visual-spacial abilities and verbal abilities. Dyslexics can have trouble with written as well as oral language, handwriting, linear organization, and short term memory, among other things. The associated strengths then include visual-spatial skills, lateral thinking, and intuition. There is a joke that you should never trust a surgeon who can spell. This combination of strengths and weaknesses often clashes with the expectations of traditional schooling. West argues that as visual and spacial mediums like 3D computer graphics grow and as the availability of vast amounts of information increases, the skills associated with dyslexia will become increasingly relevant.

In a vivid passage titled “Global Thinkers, Global Tools,” he writes

Many, because of verbal difficulties, may be unable to complete years of disciplined study and intense examination. Others find it impossible to apply themselves to dull repetition of a properly conducted specialist career… But, in time, these same creative visual thinkers with verbal difficulties often have learned, by inclination and necessity, what their unaffected fellows cannot have learned; how to gain the most understanding with the least information, how to learn as much from what they see as what they read, how to be savagely selective in their reading, and how to guess what is inessential and focus only on the really important… They learn the value of their own limits.

The anecdotes and descriptions in this book help me contextualize much of my childhood experiences of learning. The first and only test I ever cheated on was a spelling test in 1st grade. I was caught and humiliated. It took until 7th grade when I read an Isaac Asimov short story to discover reading as enjoyable. I would sometimes entertain myself by tricking my body into feeling like it was spinning vertically in space, no hallucinogens needed. I used to get up early in the mornings to watch the science programs of Mr. Wizard, may he rest in peace. My interest in science faded as soon as math became heavily involved and hands on experiments stopped. I felt terribly cheated by my high school math experience upon learning Processing this summer. I feel like if someone had used an equivalent digital visualization format, I would have remained academically engaged in math and science. It’s really hard to keep numbers in order in lists for a dyslexic, especially when it’s divorced from the visual reality that is represented by the equation. Latin was the vain of my existence in high school. I threw myself into set design for the drama club. I did exceptionally well on standardized art history tests despite the teacher’s failure to cover anything but western art. The year I took the test was the first time it included non-western art.

Do why do I repeatedly get the message from my design school education that my design skills are weak? My best guess at this point is that I am retreating from something I associate with unpleasant early schooling experiences. Even if most of the teachers I have had at Parsons can produce compelling work themselves, I have had few teachers who are keen at teaching visual literacy. If I have buried any innate ability around this under layers of disorienting school experiences, it will take some work to draw it back out. I have conscientiously stared this work, as I noted in earlier blog entries. West’s book has helped me feel confident with where I am and reinforced my confidence to continue where I am going with a little less anxiety and self-consciousness.