My name is Megan McDonald. I am in my eighteenth year of home education and I have ten children, eight of whom have dyslexia. Here is what I want you to know from today: dyslexics are brilliant, and it is the responsibility of everyone to unlock the truth of every single child with dyslexia. We can achieve this by flipping the paradigm through which our population of students is wholly defined.

In the effort to obtain a norm to standardize the success of the masses, we have allowed an artificial paradigm to supplant the innate genius of a significant body of students. Those students are our students, or language challenged, dyslexic students. Right now, those students are failing not only in the educational system, but also the emotional system which measures intangibles such as self esteem, internal strength, feeling of self worth, drive, and true sense of self. Neither outcome, whether marked in academic or emotional, is justified, is appropriate, or is tolerable.

Reading, literacy, is important, and I respect that. We are a literate culture. But it is ONE of the plethora of modalities to learn and it has undeniably become instead, the determinant of success. Considering schools are a more modern concept in the history of our civilization, this is simply ludicrous. In our current text based paradigm our kids will never be permitted to know their specific cognitive gift, the truly academic skill set that is inherent in their biology, because we determine their very worth, their intelligence, by something else. We live in a system, a paradigm, in which “success’ is manifested by a hierarchy of percent. This percent, in turn, is determined based upon essentially phonemic mastery– relationship of letters and or numbers to sounds strung together with words that have meaning. To be able to sound out words, memorize some words, and break down vocabulary words into parts. But this gift set is not intrinsic to dyslexics. Noted dyslexic attorney David Boies tells us:

Reading has nothing to do with intelligence. It’s Just one way of getting information. The important thing is how a person processes that information, the kind of person we are, the contributions we make, and the kind of utility we have for society.

Right now, right here right in this very place, the paradigm in which our dyslexic child has found itself, is a false one. Folklore tells us everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. Truly, we are doing this right now. To our kids. And the falsity of this paradigm manifests in devastation of not only intelligence, of creativity, of mastery, of problem solving, but most importantly, of emotional wellness, of the capacity to lead a full and happy life. No one wants this. We cannot miss the forest for the trees any longer–today is the day and here is the place this must end. I care much less about literacy rates than suicide rates.

I want you to know, first and foremost, that the conclusions I have reached and that I will share with you here came about in a process–far from quickly, and often in spite of me. I have had the privilege of educating, one on one, eight students with dyslexia through their entire educational journey. That includes pre-diagnosis and post diagnosis. I have had the privilege of riding their highs, and definitely sharing in the lows. As a parent, I know first hand how hard this is for everyone. There are times as the parent when you are broken, exhausted, when the financial implications of the situation are overwhelming, when I remember screaming, “Hey, I don’t want to be here! I liked my life before I knew all this!” Many of you may be thinking that right now. Know I have had my own temper tantrums and pity parties. Plenty of them. And I will admit that every one of those reactions were about me, about my inconvenience, about my lack of understanding of dyslexia, both intellectually and emotionally, about my need for control of this journey called life. Only through learning the truth of dyslexia, the truth of the dyslexic, and over time, did I grow to center my thoughts on my student, my child. And that is when the big money happened.

I want you to know that I know your student, I love your student, and so sincerely want to help your student. Please know that I am most sincerely grateful and honored to be on this journey with you here today. It is my most sincere honor to represent this group and I pray sincerely that I am worthy of it and do this population justice.