Issue 24: Against All Odds | Dr Jon Durrant

Jonathan is unlikely to achieve a reasonable standard of education by the time he leaves school.
~
Prognosis from the education authorities' chief education psychologist.

It's around 1980, and I am about 9 years old. I don't know exactly what my parents thought of the letter with this prognosis, but I expect there was some crying and anger, but also some stubbornness not to fail me. In hindsight, it has proved one of the most helpful statements about my dyslexia.

The problem-solving challenges that drove me then, drive me now.

A lot of things have happened since 1980. I scraped a school-level education, did well at vocational education, and graduated with a 1st class degree plus a Ph.D. I've managed a successful career in IT, working for big names like Sainsbury's, Legal and General, and PlayStation in senior leadership and global roles. I now run my own business, helping people learn and have fun with 21st-century technology as builders and tinkerers. I provide training, coaching, and sometimes consulting on Robotics, the Internet of Things devices, embedded systems projects and returning to IT Strategy and Architecture as I did for big corporations. I also try to excite people with project builds on YouTube.

In preschool, I was a normal kid. I learned to speak very early, enjoyed stories and was massively into building things. Most of that is still true 50 years later. My builds require less imagination to see what they are doing, but the problem-solving challenges that drove me then, drive me now. I have a brother and a sister, who fortunately do not suffer from dyslexia. My father did, though it wasn't until after my diagnosis that he understood it was dyslexia and not stupidity that he suffered from.

For me, school started quite rocky and then got worse. One of the few memories I have from school was the kids in my class being allowed to play in a paddling pool in the hot summer of 1976, while I wasn't because I could not do my spelling test. This is just before my 5th birthday. No one mentioned that my development issues at school were serious until I got to about 8 years old and moved to junior school. I was moved into a remedial class, and the bullying kicked up a level. This wasn’t just from kids, but teachers, too. The reasons I could not read were that I was lazy and didn't pay enough care and attention to make my writing clear. I remember being hit by kids, my hands held under the burning hot water faucet, and lots of name-calling. Within six months, I had a breakdown and could no longer tell the difference between my nightmares and reality.

I had an IQ way north of the average but was completely illiterate.

I went to a lot of schools as my parents tried desperately to help me. Truancy officers and educational psychologists were frequent visitors to my home. Let's be honest; I was a pain in the a%$. I had an IQ way north of the average but was completely illiterate. In the UK, they had a duty to educate me, but had no idea how to. They never used the word dyslexia, and there was always the story that with a little time in remedial education, I would catch up. I didn't catch up. Spending all my time doing math and basic English turned me off education. I hated libraries being full of useless books that I could not read. Presumably, they were all about Janet and John going to the park with a ball, or so I thought (Janet and John was the standard reading text in the UK). So, the educational psychologist largely wrote me off as being unable to achieve a reasonable standard of education. My future looked quite dark in low-grade employment or, more likely, the wrong side of the criminal justice system. I was too smart for my own good.

I did catch up to an extent. My parents got me into an independent remedial dyslexic-only school that taught full curriculum, and I began to reengage in education. Then, I spent two years in a six-form college doing just three subjects plus English and Math. I walked out of compulsory education with three O-Levels (equivalent to modern UK GCSE), but English wasn't one of them. I've always refused to retake English Language and have stuck to my "ungraded" result.

I wanted to know what happened next, so I had to read.

There was a turnaround moment. At 15 years old, I could only read aloud, slowly and very poorly. I hated reading. A smart teacher introduced me to The Hobbit, which was not a book at the level of my reading ability but a book that played on my imagination and the fantasy world I loved from TV and film. I wanted to know what happened next, so I had to read, though my teacher read chunks to me too. It fed my anticipation and drove my motivation to read. Fortunately, Peter Jackson has not brought the Hobbit to the screen, or I would have just watched it.

Diversity drives commercial value to an organisation.

College and university were not easy at first. I chose to study technical subjects, IT and computer science. In the classes that focused on written communication, I struggled. But in technical concepts, I excelled. I was motivated to show I wasn't lazy or stupid and to achieve what I considered a reasonable standard of education. My anger from my early education drove me through a 1st class degree to post-grad studies and a PhD. You see, what educational psychologists’ say matters, though perhaps not in the way they expected.

In the workplace, I have continued to struggle against prejudice. Dyslexia is not well understood, and some colleagues just have to fix or comment on one's spelling. This is difficult as the spelling issues feel more important than the business content and recommendations you are delivering. In great companies, my skills have been recognised and I have been allowed to deliver projects running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. I’ve applied my problem-solving skills and ability to look at problems differently that comes from my dyslexia and background. I believe this diversity drives commercial value to an organisation.

In my own company, I now teach through video platforms like Udemy and YouTube. I believe that a combination of images and audio helps get technical concepts across and can be backed up by written text and references. Of course, the odd spelling and grammatical errors do exist in my published work. Kind people on the internet point them out. I'm just grateful they don't write "SEE ME" in big red ink letters at the bottom of the page as some of my teachers did.

Diversity issues are hard to talk about. I find it hard to admit I am dyslexic. It comes with a lot of baggage for me from all the bullying that went along with my education. It also changes how others see me as damaged goods. We are all damaged and need support in one way or another. I believe it is important to share our experiences and challenges in all areas of diversity, from dyslexia to depression, baldness to bipolar, gender and sexuality. The different perspectives that diversity provides create strength. We just need to set boundaries with people on how they can best help us.

We are all damaged and need support in one way or another.

Dr Jon Durrant

Extracts from Dystinct Magazine