On Being 17 Bright And Unable To Read Summary

Improved Essays
The book “On Being 17, Bright, and Unable to Read”, By David Raymond Is narrative of David tackling the obstacle of Dyslexia. Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that involves the difficulty interpreting words, letters, and symbols. Through out this narrative he speaks about being dyslexic and how it caused him to feel remote from other children his age. He felt as if he was “dumb” and the other children would make fun of him for his learning disorder. In this story he even goes as far to say “ I’d come home from school screaming, “I’m dumb. I’m dumb- I wish I were dead!” This is very disturbing for a child in elementary school to say because at this point in David’s life he didn’t even comprehend what death was yet.

David later comes

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    wanted to like Jack Horner’s “The Extraordinary Characteristics of Dyslexia.” As a teacher, I usually respond really positively to people who take learning disabilities and are able to extract strengths from them. Therefore, I was really on board with someone who wanted to talk about how he had pushed through a dyslexia diagnosis and zero college degrees to great intellectual success. Unfortunately, by the second page of his essay, he’d lost me. According to Horner, people who have dyslexia, “…think outside the box precisely because [they] have never been in one.…

    • 333 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Do you know anyone mentally handicapped? Chances are you do. But have you ever wondered what it would be like to be them? Well, Charlie Gordon in “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, is mentally handicapped. But an operation gave Charlie unbelievable intelligence.…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Author, Malcolm Gladwell, in chapter 4 of his book titled, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, challenges the common definition of the word “disadvantage” by using evidence about people who are dyslexic. He uses logical and emotional appeals and repetition to make the reader question their interpretations of disadvantages, to emphasize we can overcome those difficulties and to suggest that some difficulties may even be desirable. Gladwell opens the chapter expounding upon what dyslexia is and what a disadvantage it can be. He appeals to the logical side of readers with the statement, “What do we mean when we call something a disadvantage? Conventional wisdom holds that a disadvantage is something that ought to be avoided—that it is a setback or a difficulty that leaves you worse off than you would be otherwise.…

    • 593 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Closer Look Into Chuck Close Introduction: Chuck Close is one of the most famous and well-known artists to ever live. Through many hardships during his life, he never gave up and pushed himself to do things that no one has ever done before. The way he knows how to mix colors (similar to Seurat and pointillism) is incredible and a mystery to almost all people.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Learning to Read “I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my own life”(Alexie 18). The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me and Learning to Read both consist of stories recalling the author’s journey learning to read and using that knowledge to help their own race. The authors struggle with illiteracy but use learning to read as an escape from their troubles and it ends up becoming the answer to them.…

    • 1062 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Boies told Gladwell that in a trial “judges and jurors… [don’t] have the time or the ability to become an expert in a subject” and continues to say that his greatest strength “is presenting a case they can understand.” Gladwell convinces the reader that if Boies had not had dyslexia, he would have never been able to become the successful lawyer that he is today because he would have gotten bogged down in details. Gladwell takes a person that became successful and just happened to have dyslexia, and then seemingly argues that dyslexia is a desirable disability. While dyslexia can be beneficial in certain aspects, one has to keep a skeptic's mind realizing that Gladwell has presented two very specific stories; and while he never says anything incorrect, it is important to remember that these stories represent minorities. The fact is that difficulties are difficult.…

    • 833 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Quick Review Reviewing a book like Being Bright Is Not Enough when one has never gone down the path of doctoral studies is very difficult. There seems to be little doubt that the author, Dr. Peggy Hawley, has thought and wrestled through this, but evaluating the book’s worth in one’s pursuit of a doctorate is difficult for the neophyte. No doubt there was plenty of information that seems priceless, but at times it was hard to discern how much of it was applicable to this reviewer’s present pursuit. The premise of the book is that doctoral work is not only difficult, but there are many issues within this undertaking that the student will face that will come as a surprise.…

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sally Shaywitz, “one in five American children that have trouble reading” have dyslexia. (Shaywitz) Garth Cook a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, keeper his secret of dyslexia for fear of what another colleague reaction to the news might think of him. Cook’s immediately regressed back to the unpleasant experiences in school caused by his English teacher’s unkind words. We cannot be held hostage by the lack of our inability to not grasp hold of language because of fear of retaliation. Garth’s conscience and courage to not be held back, by any means possible has led him to writing about his experience living with dyslexia as a journalist to shed light on the subject of dyslexia.…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    House Rules Choosing to represent individuals with disabilities in her novel, Jodi Picoult wrote House Rules (2010), whose main character has Asperger's Syndrome. The novel takes place in Townsend, Vermont, and is narrated by five different characters: Jacob, Theo, Emma, Oliver, and Rich. Jacob Hunt is the main character of the novel, who has Asperger’s Syndrome and lives with many of its symptoms, one of which makes him very detail oriented about his passion of solving crimes. Theo Hunt is Jacob’s younger brother, who has a habit of entering other peoples’ homes and subtly stealing items without their knowledge, and Emma Hunt is the single mother of Jacob and Theo and works as a columnist for the town’s newspaper. Oliver Bond is a small-time…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Superman And Me Analysis

    • 1428 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Growing up being an African American, my parents would always stress how important reading and writing is. My father would always say, "If you are able to read and write, nothing in the world can stop you. " I learned to read and write at the age of three years old. The first thing I ever learned to read and write was my name: Tia Nicole Watkins. My parents would tell my name makes me who I am and holds very high significance.…

    • 1428 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Writing Disability Simulation Simulating to suffer Dysgraphia was actually harder than expected. Not only did I learn that Dysgraphia is a condition that causes trouble with written expressions, but also I got to understand how hard and frustrating it is to deal with this problem for children who suffer this disorder. Moreover, when a child has to deal with the same problem day after day, he or she may be called lazy, or dumb; as a result, he or she gets frustrated. However, if a child has not been evaluated and diagnosed with this specific learning disability; it may be even harder for them to cope with any comments that teachers or classmates make about their writing problems.…

    • 1900 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    They have the same abilities to prosper and achieve their goals that they have for themselves. He claims that people with dyslexia automatically have an unfortunate disadvantage in the classroom because of their disability. What they often lack in mixing up letters in the words they try to spell or say, they make up for in analytical thinking, reasoning, and creativity. Sally Shaywitz, a pediatric neurologist from Yale, asserts, “‘They learn to think outside the box. . . . because they never fit inside’” (302).…

    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Non Reading Autobiography

    • 465 Words
    • 2 Pages

    I graduated from kindergarten as a non-reader. I was the eldest child in my family with two younger siblings. My mother was always occupied both with work and with three children under five, so she didn’t realize that there was anything amiss until the summer after my kindergarten year. She recounts how she was shocked and concerned when she found out that all of her friend’s children were already reading. She would tell you that I had not a sight word in my wheelhouse.…

    • 465 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dyslexia Research Paper

    • 1637 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Dyslexia is an inherited condition that makes it extremely difficult to read, write, and spell in your native language, despite having an at least average intelligence. Dyslexia is very common, but has only been talked about in recent years. It was 1878 when German neurologist, Adolph Kussmaul, first used the phrase “word blindness” describing what we know as dyslexia today. The word dyslexia was first used by Rudolf Berlin of Stuttgart, Germany, in 1887 to describe the inability to read. In 1905 W.E. Burner published the first report of childhood reading difficulties in the U.S..…

    • 1637 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Preschool’s Role in the Development of Literacy Merriam-Webster (2011) defines literacy as the ability to read and write. Many things influence one’s level of literacy. I often wonder why some students are better in school than others. Some students really struggle to achieve average grades while other students seem to excel with little effort. I was always encouraged to read and write by my parents and teachers as a way to improve my literacy.…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays