What is Dyslexia

The first description of dyslexia occurred in 1896, when a headmaster reported that a student woud be the "smartest lad in the school" if the instruction were entirely oral. Since that time, experts have recognized the real challenges as well as talents associated with dyslexia.

Excerpt: "...we should expect the pace and direction to be set by strong visual thinkers and creative dyslexics who will often ignore conventional verbal descriptions--instead, putting themselves into their own mental models, talking with their hands.

And, perhaps a broader understanding of the importance of rediscovered spatial abilities, coupled with the greater use of sophisticated spatial assessment tools, might help prevent conventional educational systems from dropping by the wayside many of those who are especially well suited to emerging families of new visual and spatial tasks --whether in creating grand computer graphic illusions for Oscar-winning feature films or using scientific visualization and newly-developed analytic techniques to understand patterns in an elusive stock market or in many-layered ecological systems.

It is time to take a long, hard look at visual thinkers and creative dyslexics and begin to see how these individuals and our larger culture can benefit from new understandings about what we used to see mainly as problems."