This is why a dyslexic mind is genius! | Angelos Y. Pomevo | TEDxUniversityofCapeCoast

[00:00:00]Few years back I started a research journey into why our education system often mistake a child struggle with reading and writing for lack of intelligence.

[00:00:20]And what I discovered was that our traditional education system always evaluates children by how much they can memorize and reproduce verbatim rather than their capacity to create, innovate and solve problems.

[00:00:39]So my question for all of us here today is if intelligence is only based on academics what happened to our brilliant mechanics what happened to our brilliant farmers our artist and the most importantly what happened to the dyslexic mind.

[00:01:00]Today I'll be speaking on the power of a dyslexic mind to help us shift our perspective about dyslexia and change the way we approach learning differences in our day-to-day life. So let me tell you a little bit about me.

[00:01:18]It took me a long time to be able to read and write. At the age of 12, I struggle to adapt to how we are supposed to learn in the classroom where we have been asked to follow daily lessons without proper explanation of the reason behind them. I was always thinking outside the box and constantly asking why to every single exercise I was asked to do. I guess you know exactly what kind of student I'm talking about. The ones who always ask question in class and never stop asking until they satisfy their curiosity.

[00:01:54]Yes, I was one of them. And I'm pretty sure that there are some of us sitting here right now in the audience. Hi guys.

[00:02:05]Eventually this habit of asking question led me to several punishment for my teachers followed by low score in almost every subject in class.

[00:02:16]My confidence level went down the drain and I lost hope completely. I didn't know what to do to perform better. Even though I love the idea of going to school, which seems to be the only things to do at that time, but deep down my heart, I was scared of going to school every day just because school was not an emotionally friendly environment for me. I was very sad. Yet I had no choice but to forge ahead. Even when all I wanted to do was to give up. But guess what? I never gave up. Two years along the line, I discovered something that changed my life entirely.

[00:02:57]I discovered that I was gifted with a dyslexic mind. Now you must add, what does that mean? It simply means that my brain is wired with a unique strength to see beyond conventional patterns.

[00:03:13]Knowing this about me change the way I process information. I stopped asking myself questions and I stopped forcing myself to to learn by memorization and I began to rely on my virtual imagination and big picture thinking connecting concepts and images. I also turned my constant learning question into my greatest academic strength and I also empowered myself to always to always understand the concept behind every subject in class and once I understood the reason why something work my brain could remember forever.

[00:04:04]My honest confession for me this morning is I didn't just overcome dyslexia by accepting my cracks.

[00:04:17]I overcame the limitation of the classroom by accepting my unique cognitive design.

[00:04:25]People with dyslexia may struggle with comprehension, reading fluency and decoding. However, behind those challenges lie powerful strength.

[00:04:36]Strength in creativity, innovation, and big picture thinking.

[00:04:42]This les also possess an incredible problem solving skills and deep interpersonal skills making them exceptionally great at reading body language.

[00:04:55]So let's look at some of the personality who actually exhibited this kind of intelligence.

[00:05:03]We have Richard.

[00:05:05]Richard dropped out of school at the age of 16 just because he couldn't read.

[00:05:12]However, he used his big thinking, his dyslexic mind to build a global empire, a business that today the whole world is aware of.

[00:05:28]Let's look at big gate as we all know use his big dyslexic vision to change the narrative of our world today.

[00:05:42]Adata Christi.

[00:05:46]She was considered the slow student in class. However, she dictated a thought to become the best novelist of all time. Angelos, a multilingual professional speaker in finance and technology and a founder of Lantech Academy who now master six international languages all by using his dyslexic mind.

[00:06:19]The Arbishop Danka Williams here in Ghana a struggle in school.

[00:06:26]However, today is one of the best spokesperson that we know.

[00:06:34]Rosalyn Nati, the founder of the Africa dyslexia organization.

[00:06:41]She's changing the narrative of dyslexic in Ghana by promoting inclusion.

[00:06:47]All these personality were once called lazy, stupid and slow by the education system and by some of their family members and I still believe that there are lot of student out there going through life and experiencing this and people think that they are just stupid when clearly they are not. It is for this reason that I together with the Africa Dyslexia Organization, we are passionate about raising awareness, advocating for and provide support to individual with dyslexia and related learning differences.

[00:07:28]According to the according to the international dyslexia association research shows that the global population between 15 to 20% has dyslexia making it one of the most common learning differences.

[00:07:50]Imagine if you could nature this type of intelligence, what could our continent be?

[00:08:00]As we now enter an age of the fourth industrial revolution where AI and artificial intelligent and robot are going to take a lot of what we do as job. We have absolutely no idea of what the job market is going to be in the next 5, 10 or 15 years. What we know and what research has approved on is that the type of intelligence we need is the type of intelligence of a dyslexi. The creation, the creativity, the innovation, the big picture thinking.

[00:08:36]So my big thought here this afternoon is this. We must stop assessing student by how much they can memorize and reproduce verbatim and begin to award them by what they can create, innovate and implement in our society. If you want an Africa that will lead this world in the next 5 years in technology, innovation, finance, agriculture, why don't we rethink our education system to think creativity and innovation so that all our student can learn to think outside the box. Thank you.