Dyslexia through a 65-year-old's point of view

This week is Dyslexia Awareness Week. To mark this, the Dyslexia Support Group Gibraltar has written three articles to raise awareness. In today’s edition, the final instalment in this series looks at how Dyslexia can shape someone’s life.

By Rob Chandler
I am now 65 years old and society says that at this age, I should be sitting in a chair, drinking a G&T, and talking about the “good old days.” But that is not me and I worry too much about the future for my grandkids. They spend hours on their mobiles and never look up into the night sky to see the Milky Way. They seem cut off from nature and I wonder how they will cope with artificial general intelligence about to disrupt all our lives.

I have Irlen syndrome, a form of dyslexia and my schooling was hard for me. The UK system was strict, narrow, and not made for people like me. I was labelled as “slow.” I struggle with reading and spelling, and mistakes brought punishment. I learned early that the classroom was boring and not built for dyslexic minds.

Yet outside school, I was a kid who was learning all the time. I built a crystal radio to listen to the BBC and Radio Luxembourg. I could fish, cook, and live close to nature. On a farm in Morocco, I learned respect for Muslim friends and soaked up culture from my French family. These were real life skills and real knowledge that did not come from textbooks. Dyslexia made me learn in different ways—ways that were not less important.

In the 1970s, I was in the first year of the new UK comprehensive system when the eleven-plus was abandoned by a government trying to promote equality. I was lucky because I could not have even read the exam paper, let alone pass it. An overzealous headmaster even took me aside for special classes after school, where he decided I needed to learn poems by Keats and recite Shakespeare by heart. Apparently, I murdered all his kind attempts to improve my literacy skills because I was a square dyslexic peg trying to fit into his old, narrow ideas. What I really wanted was not to be caned again for getting my spellings wrong.

At 16 I left school and became an apprentice which was a turning point in my education when I could finally study what I cared about. My curiosity came alive. By 18. I’d built a micro-computer kit that played chess and spoke the time—this was two years before the Sinclair ZX80 became available. I found excellent jobs without a degree because dyslexia gave me amazing creativity when programming and complex problem-solving skills. I could visualize problems from many different angles to optimize and fix complex electronic systems.

School education has improved a lot since my day. In Gibraltar, every child is tested for dyslexia, and their lessons are adapted accordingly. The UK education system still uses the old factory-style of teaching, an industrial model designed to produce workers, not thinkers. Children are pushed to memorise facts, avoid mistakes, and collect top grades. Teaching to test where the creativity is drained out of you and very narrow core STEM subjects are given priority.

Here is the truth: straight-A grade students may struggle most with the rise of AI. They are trained to specialise, but machines will soon take over much of that work. Dyslexic minds are different, and we are used to adapting. We are very creative and can connect ideas in new ways. That makes us invaluable in times of change.

I have since met many wonderfully gifted and dedicated teachers who work hard to nurture students’ talents. However, the education policy makers at the top do not listen to the teachers on the ground. UK politicians are still tinkering with the core curriculum, still clinging to an outdated Prussian system developed in the late 18th century. An education system designed to not educate the masses too much, but to produce compliant workers for factories. Inquisitive and mischievous five-year-old geniuses converted into compliant non questioning employees.

I cringe when I see kids proudly displaying long rows of A grades, knowing that in many cases they have simply been trained to memorise facts for tests and have been conditioned to get up early for work. They are taught to arrive on time, avoid mistakes, look for only one correct answer, and fear failure. Through no fault of their own, many lose the creativity that life outside of school desperately requires.

It is no surprise then that these A grade students often end up working for the more creative C grade students—the ones who learned to joke around, take risks, and not take life too seriously. With the advent of AI, I believe it will be those narrowly trained A students who will struggle the most, while the flexible generalists—and especially the dyslexic “creatives”—will be in greater demand. Organisations will need people who can adapt, imagine, fix things and bring new ideas to the table.

So, at 65, I can say this with pride: dyslexia shaped my life. It was hard, but it gave me strength. It gave me imagination, creativity, and above all resilience.

At 65, I still conduct innovative PhD research at the highest level despite my old school education and headmaster with his eleven-plus.

For that, I thank the Lord and truly hope my grandkids inherit my resilience and self-learning capabilities.

I appeared in a Dyslexia Gibraltar video a few years ago before starting my PhD and wholeheartedly support and encourage everyone to support Dyslexia Awareness Week 2025.

To see what's in store for the week, please check Dyslexia Gibraltar out on Social Media or go to their website.

www.dyslexia.gi | +350 5400 7924 | info@dyslexia.gi