Great story!

Joshua has written a story for school and I think it is a great story. It shows his frustration with the education system. He feels it is not fair that everyone is tested the same way. Why? He has dyslexia, so reading and writing is a daily struggle for him. The school he is in now, the Canadian International School Bangalore, is very accommodating in giving extra support and making sure he can do his IGCSE exams with all the allowances there are (extra time, reader, scribe).
Joshua is a hard working student, he is very serious and puts in the extra miles to get where he wants to be and I admire him for that!

This is what he wrote (I did not correct his spelling, because I want it to be his story, just like he wrote it):

Inquirer

 

I was in fronton of a building. The building was quite big. It consisted of a cobble stone road to the front of the building, lined with big bill boards with words like "IB learner profile" or "IGCSE". It was shaped like a classic Victorian factory, with the smoke rising from the smoke stacks. As I walked down this road, many others joined me, some where wales, like me, others where monkeys or leopards. By the end of our walk, there where many different animals, with many different skills and attributes, like very muscled legs for fast running, or hands on their arms and legs or fins for swimming etc...

We had to line up, in front of the main entrance that was labeled IQ. This is a test to asses intelligence, but how would it do that?. When it was my turn, I went in. To my surprise there was a tree, why the heck would there be a tree!?. Then came a monkey. He gave me the instructions I had to do to complete my intelligence test. He said, "to make it fair, you will have to clime that tree. Depending on the height you can achieve, will we your intelligence."

I replied,"but how will that show my intelligence?"

 

He, in turn replied, "well, test have shown that 90% of all the animals in this world are monkeys, so this is designed for monkeys to see how far they can clime up that tree. It has proven that animals that can clime trees, are 80% better of than those who can."

 

I said in return,"But I'm a wale! How on earth can I clime a tree!? I have fins not hands."

 

Then he said,"I under stand your disability and I will give you 15min additional to your to your hour given to you for this test. Begin!"

 

I scrambled at the base as hard as I could 1:15hours , but I could not get an inch off the ground. Then he said "stop" and selected a stamp and stamped a number on my forehead.

 

"It is your IQ," he explained, "it is about the same as a retard. We shall not expect big things from you."

 

I shouted at him for fifteen minutes words of abuse and asked questions like; " how can that possibly dictate my future!?" Or " Einstein was a walrus! And he is the smartest animal ever lived and he could not clime a tree either! How on earth can you predict with a number, a so called grade, my future or potential!?"

 

He put me on a moving platform called test it had four stages ; pre school, IGCSE, IB, they kept making me do things only monkeys can like using thumbs. And with each one of them I got a mark.

 

Then it happen, when they gave me my final grade, the world flooded, and all the monkeys died, but I swam. I thought back to that monkey at the IQ. He said that it was useless to learn swimming, since 90% of all success full animals can clime. But now it changed. Yet, why? How did our modern education system end like this?

Written by Joshua Spaander

 

January 2013

Famous people with dyslexia:

Albert Einstein
Richard Branson
George Washington
Alexander Graham Bell
Leonardo Da Vinci
Thomas Edison
Tommy Hilfiger

There are long lists of famous people with dyslexia. They all did pretty good in life.

I read somewhere that dyslexia is a gift, I am not sure if Joshua sees it that way, but I know it has given him the ability to think outside the box and to be very creative in finding ways to help him to study and learn.