 Hello and welcome to a summary of all you need to know about Benjamin Zephaniah's essay Young and Dyslexic, you've got it going on. Now I will read and explain this essay that he's written in depth and the version that I'll be reading is what appears in the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE anthology. I'll explain the meaning related to what he's written and language techniques that he's used which you should be aware of if you're writing about this essay and especially about what he is writing about relating to dyslexia and I'm going to go over especially some of the contextual factors that also you need to be aware of when it comes to understanding this essay. So let's get started. Now what I'll do is I'll break the essay up into separate chunks and read through them and then point out and highlight interesting techniques that he has used. So bear in mind that this article has been published in The Guardian Online which is an online newspaper and it was published in 2015 and it was adapted from his contribution to another text called Creative Successful Dyslexic. Okay so hence why this passage really focuses on dyslexia. So I'm going to begin by reading and then I'll pause and talk about interesting techniques from this chunk of the extract. As a child I suffered but learned to turn dyslexia to my advantage to see the world more creatively. We are the architects, we are the designers. I'm of the generation where teachers didn't know what dyslexia was. The big problem with the education system then was that there was no compassion, no understanding and no humanity. I don't look back and feel angry with the teachers. The ones who wanted to have an individual approach weren't allowed to. The idea of being kind and thoughtful and listening to problems just wasn't done. The past is a different kind of country. At school my ideas always contradicted to teachers. I remember one teacher saying that human being sleep for one third of the life and I put my hand up and said if there's a God isn't that a design for? If you built something you want efficiency if I was God I would have designed sleep so we could stay awake then good people could do one third more good in the world. The teacher said shut up stupid boy bad people do one third more bad. I thought I'd put in a good idea. I was just being creative. She also had a point but the thing was she called me stupid for even thinking about it. I remember a teacher talking about Africa and the local savages and I would say who are you to talk about savages? She would say how dare you challenge me and that would get me into trouble. So this opening is really really powerful it essentially establishes Benjamin Zephaniah so if you haven't been familiar with any of his writing he is a very successful and fairly famous poet and author in the UK. However of course his novels have been quite bestselling around the world and it's interesting that he mentions the concept of dyslexia because dyslexia is related to a disability relating to reading and so interestingly a lot of people don't necessarily link this disability with somebody who's actually a very talented writer. So of course what he's doing is changing our conception around the issue of dyslexia. So he opens with a really emotive language. He talks about how he suffered initially, how perhaps the idea of dyslexia was not necessarily understood as he was growing up and hence he found it really really challenging and also the abstract noun dyslexia not only is it interesting it focuses our intention instantly from the start on this disability which actually he turned to his advantage and how we can all turn this to our advantage but of course the repetition of this abstract noun reinforces the central focus of this essay which is to do with dyslexia and also perhaps removing myths surrounding dyslexia. He then uses the personal pronoun my to really show that he's taking more power back he's becoming more empowered. He then uses a really interesting rhetorical technique which he repeats the exact phrase at the end of the passage we're going to see it. He says we are the architects we are the designers again this car pulls with the personal pronoun putting back power in his hands but equally by extension what he's trying to say is that if you suffer from dyslexia actually that's not something you should find discouraging you should feel really empowered that makes you unique. He then mentions the education system and this abstract noun really highlights a systemic issue an issue with the education system that really disempowers dyslexic people and really makes them underachieve rather than get the maximum out of their potential. He then emphasises this with a tricolon no compassion no understanding no humanity and of course the repetition of no show how the education system really stacks the odds against both him but also by extension against dyslexic people and of course what he wants to do is change this. Also his use of polysinditon kind and thoughtful and listening again this further emphasises how to some extent it's not always the teacher's fault and especially during his time it wasn't always exclusively to teachers that were at fault actually also the education system just didn't really give them much room to really feel empathy for the students and of course this polysinditon is the direct opposite of the above which is no compassion no understanding no humanity. Now of course what this is showing is just how difficult it was as he was growing up through the education system though odds were really highly stacked against him. He then even emphasises this and emphasises you know how the past of course he's a little bit older he just shows through this metaphor how the past was vastly different and probably even worse than what the education system is today but of course he also still emphasises that today there's still not that much room that's given to dyslexic people and of course that needs to change. He then contrasts the personal pronoun my with the common noun teachers and what this does is it creates an us versus them dynamics the teachers are basically the institution they represent the institution that he is being forced to stand up against and he of course is quite powerless in their face and on top of that he then struggles with dyslexia so he's really at a massive disadvantage. He then repeats a statistic that the teacher taught them one third of their life people spend sleeping and of course the teacher tells him off then he then repeats the conditional clause if and emphasises if I was God I would have designed sleep so we could stay awake and of course this shows that he is able to think independently and question authority. However, this bold statement which questions accepted wisdom is seen as really bad again this is showing the education system just only reward students who passively taken information and just regurgitate and say the same information rather than actually questioning wisdom and saying hang on can things be changed and of course this is emphasised again when the teacher tells him off the sibilance shut up and stupid is really harsh and brutal. He's a young child and the teacher is really really bruising his ego and he does he does so in response to just Zephaniah asking something relating to just accepted wisdom just exercising some creativity and again this shows just how difficult his life was as he was going through the education system furthermore the repetition of the word bad so bad people will do one third more bad this actually shows whilst Zephaniah has a very positive worldview he's quite optimistic actually the teacher that told him off had a really negative worldview and he was trying to pass on this negative worldview to Zephaniah also the simple sentence I was just being creative highlights the creative gift that Zephaniah had but he wasn't aware of and it was being crushed moreover he emphasises once more not only the systemic educational issues in the education system but also how racism really exists in the education system and especially as he was being taught he uses animalistic language that Africa has local savages and again Zephaniah himself so this is important context he is of Caribbean descent he's a black man therefore he is being taught to accept information that actually looks down on people of his ethnicity and of again he's questioning this and he's thinking about all the teachers that are basically teaching him very racist ideas about Africans and then if he challenges he then talks about news that reported speech here and he says that the teacher would say how dare you challenge me again the teachers really outcast him and get really angry at him for questioning any of this information so let's carry on with the rest of the passage once when I was finding it difficult to engage with writing and had asked for some help the teacher said it's all right we can't all be intelligent but you'll end up being a good sports person so why don't you go outside and play some football I thought oh great but now I realise he was stereotyping me I had poems in my head even then and when I was 10 or 11 my sister wrote some of them down for me when I was 13 I could read very basically but it would be such hard work that I would give up I thought that so long as you could read how much the banknote was worth he knew enough or you could ask a mate I got thrown out of a lot of schools the last one at 13 I was expelled partly because of arguing with teachers on an intellectual level and partly for being a rude boy and fighting I didn't stab anybody but I did take revenge on a teacher once I stole his car and drove it into his front garden I remember him telling us the Nazis weren't that bad he could say that in the classroom when I was in Borstal I used to do this thing of looking at people I didn't want to be like I saw a guy who spent all his time sitting stooped over and I thought I don't want to be like that so I learned to sit with a straight back being observant helped me make the right choices a high percentage of the prison population is dyslexic and a high percentage of the architect population if you look at the statistics I should be in prison a black man brought up in the wrong side of town his family fell apart in trouble the police when I was a kid unable to read and write with no qualifications and on top of that dyslexic but I think staying out of prison is about conquering your fears and finding your path in life now this passage becomes even more powerful so he mentions when his teacher says we can't all be intelligent but you end up being a good sports person so why don't you go outside and play some football and this patronizing question really shows that the teachers had very racist stereotypes and of course this touches on the stereotype that all black people are not intellectuals they don't belong in academia or in work that requires using the brain instead they should be athletes performers and once more this is again part of what he was being taught as a young person and of course his naive response when he says oh great this is a minor sentence again showing that he was being indoctrinated to see himself in this way to see himself as not necessarily intelligent enough to do much academic work but instead play sports but then later of course he realises he's being stereotyped then he talks about later on how he had perms in his head even when he was being stereotyped and this abstract noun is a contrast to sports he wasn't intellectual he didn't realise it but also the education system didn't encourage him to bring out this side of him also he uses the advert basically to talk about how he reads and this shows then that he had very rudimentary reading skills and this was of course as a result of how reading would be such hard work he even says I would give up and of course this is really saddening he doesn't realise the gift that's innate within him when it comes to writing and he doesn't also have an encouraging system which has teachers that encourage him to try harder also the second person pronoun you shows how he rationalises how much the bank note was worth so he basically explains okay hang on as long as I just know the basic survival skills as long as I can read a bank note this focuses only on very basic survival he doesn't he thinks reading is only limited to just survival skills and no more which of course again is really saddening especially because he's so talented as a writer which he discovers much later on he then also uses colloquial language throughout this passage colloquial language meaning casual language he talks about mate and again this makes this article really relatable to us as readers it shows that he doesn't take himself too seriously but also he becomes very likable to us he then mentions how he got thrown out of a lot of school and of course the violent verb thrown shows that he was being discarded from a very young age with the education system there's no way he could have won and on top of that we learned that he was very defiant to authority he was arguing with teachers he didn't necessarily always accept what they would tell him but this then put him at a further disadvantage again he uses more colloquial language here he talks about his street credibility a rude boy and in case you're not familiar with the idea of a rude boy it's just a colloquial term which is especially popular in London which talks about young boys who sometimes are in gangs but have a lot of street respect but not necessarily always academic but of course the sad things that a lot of these people who are in the street sometimes do end up in prison unfortunately he then mentions how he stole his teacher's car and drove it to his front garden and so this complex sentence kind of surprises us because we realize that he's getting into a little bit of delinquent activity but then he justifies it by saying that the teacher thought the Nazis weren't bad and of course this referenced taboo of course the Nazis being led by Hitler who killed over six million Jews in the Holocaust this is shocking for us because we realized actually his teacher deserved it how can the teachers show that it was a racist man wasn't very bad furthermore he uses monosyllabic language to relate to his internal dialogue he thought i don't want to be like that and again this makes zephaniah really relatable to us as readers furthermore it's really interesting that he uses literature to talk about the prison population being dyslexic which of course is a very tragic reality but he uses an interesting form of parallelism here to also say whilst on the one hand you have a lot of people who are dyslexic who are in prison unfortunately there's also a lot of architects very creative people who also are dyslexic so actually if you're dyslexic you could go either way you're not destined for a life of misery a life of poverty a life in the prison you can also be destined to be a very successful architect you're not limited in your choices also of course again he keeps on repeating the emphasis on dyslexia again this reinforces our focus on the core topic of dyslexia as not being disempowering furthermore the adjective that he uses to describe how he grew up on the wrong side of town shows that also he faced a lot of other challenges perhaps he grew up in a very rough place whereby he might have fallen into bad gang activity of course we also learned that his family fell apart so he had a lot of early challenges but what this does actually rather than making us only purely feel sympathy we also feel empowered we realize that just because we've got our own challenges we can overcome them and become really successful also again he uses more colloquial language he says when i was a kid again all this does is it makes him very relatable we as readers feel like we can sit down with him we can see ourselves in his position but of course equally you can also see that we can grow and improve and he reinforces the message which is to do with conquering your fears and finding your path in life and of course this is reinforced by the second pronoun person pronoun your which for us as readers we feel like he's directly addressing us and this really engages us so let's carry on when i go into prisons to talk to people i see men and women who in intelligence and other qualities are the same as me but opportunities are open for me and they miss theirs didn't notice them or didn't take them i never thought i was stupid i didn't have that struggle if i have someone in front of me who doesn't have a problem reading and writing telling me that black people are savages i just think i'm not stupid you're the one that's stupid i just had self-belief for my first book i told my poems to my girlfriend who wrote them down for me it really took off especially within the black community i wrote with love for with love people don't think they were dyslexic poems they just thought i wrote phonetically at 21 i went to an adult education class in london to learn to read and write the teacher told me you are dyslexic and i was like don't need an operation she explained to me what it meant and i suddenly thought ah i get it i thought i was going crazy i wrote more poetry novels for teenagers plays other books than recorded music i take poetry to people who do not read poetry still now when i'm writing the word not i have to stop and think how do i write that i have to draw something so let me know what the word is to come back to it later if i can't spell question i'll just put a question mark and come back to it later so here in this part of the passage he begins by focusing and shifting perspective from us so previously you were talking about your to now he uses first person pronoun i where we can now start seeing things through his eyes also his grouping of people here when he's talking about men and women shows that this is a greater universal issue that he's addressing this is a critical issue and there's so many people who really fall by the wayside purely because they take on the very faulty belief that just because they're dyslexic they are silly which is not the case also he uses the abstract noun opportunities to just explain how some people rather than becoming architects as a result of their dyslexia actually end up in the prison and it's simply because they just missed out on opportunities which he was fortunate enough and of course he uses here tricolon he says they missed theirs didn't notice them or didn't take them and this emphasizes how zephaniah himself also realises he was both proactive he took advantage of the opportunities but also he was partly quite lucky as well also his repetition of the word stupid adds a tone of humour he is basically mocking people who have this very narrow-minded view of dyslexic people dyslexic people are not stupid in fact those people who believe this are the ones who are stupid also the simple sentence i just had self-belief shows this is part of the reason why he's successful why he overcame all of these challenges he simply had a strong belief within himself that he could overcome also he uses and refers to the black community again contextually this relates back to his own community and he mentions the definite article the and the collective pronoun black and especially community which shows how his poetry is so impactful for other black people other Caribbean people who don't necessarily feel very represented in more mainstream writing he also talks about how he phonetically wrote and even still today writes phonetically with love instead of with love and remember phonetic spelling is just writing as the way someone pronounces and it's interesting this phonetic spelling is actually what made him really famous it made his writing really unique and top of that this compound sentence is quite humorous again it ties into how his writing which initially he thought was really silly actually is what made him very unique and very successful furthermore the dialogue here where his teacher tells him later on when he's an adult learner so he takes himself back to school the teacher tells him you're dyslexic and then he responds by saying do I need an operation this dialogue is really humorous and quite disarming again it just shows that he doesn't take himself too seriously but also doesn't become disempowered by what he sees as something that he has to work doubly hard for which is writing reading and he goes into this now once he realizes and understands his dyslexia this declarative sentence i wrote more poetry novels for teenagers plays in other books and recorded music this shows he had an epiphany and after this epiphany this opened a whole new world for him and he then had so much frenzied activity he started writing indulging in all of creative work and on top of that he started getting into music he really learning that he wasn't necessarily silly he just had a condition which he could easily overcome this is what really was a turning point for him furthermore the repetition of the word pro poetry shows that especially the fact that he takes this as to the black community to people who would otherwise not read poetry not only of course black people this could be also young children who don't necessarily like mainstream poetry this could be people from other communities what he is showing is the role that sephania plays almost using his poetry which isn't too mainstream in terms of it the way he writes he's spreading it like a gospel and he himself is the messiah and he's making more and more people love poetry even people who otherwise wouldn't read it people who are dyslexic furthermore the rhetorical question how do i write that shows us his internal monologue as he writes and the challenges that he faces and this again humanizes him he's not this amazing writer who doesn't have any issues he still has issues even with spelling so let's carry on when i look at a book the first thing i see is the size of it and i know that's what it's like for a lot of young people who find reading tough when brunel university offered me the job of professor of poetry and creative writing i knew my students would be officially more educated than me i tell them you can do this course and get the right grade because you have a good memory but if you don't have passion creativity individuality there's no point in my life now i find that people accommodate my dyslexia i can perform my poetry because it doesn't have to be word perfect but i never read one of my novels in public when i go to literary festivals i always get an actor to read it out for me otherwise all my energy goes into reading the book and the mood is lost if someone can't understand dyslexia it's their problem in the same way if someone oppresses me because of my race i don't sit down and think how can i become white it's not my problem it's theirs and they are the ones who have to come to terms with it if you're dyslexic and you feel there's something holding you back just remember it's not you in many ways being dyslexic is a natural way to be what's unnatural is the way we read and write if you look at a pictorial language like chinese you can see the word for woman because the character looks like a woman the word for a house looks like a house it's a strange step to go from that to a squiggle that represents a sound so now in this part of the passage he now shows how he's become a professor himself he's become a teacher and this is ironic so the proper noun brinnell university referring to one of the really good universities in the uk this use of proper noun is quite ironic as now he's in the teacher shoes these teachers who when he was young oppressed him he's now the tables have turned he's become powerful but actually instead of using his power to oppress other students he's using it to empower them furthermore he talks about his title professor of poetry and creative writing so this is really interesting because he doesn't capitalize the word professor and the title poetry and creative writing he doesn't use capital letters to refer to his title because he doesn't think himself above his students actually he's downplaying his job once more this is showing how humble he is and this makes him far more human far more likeable to us also the possessive noun my when he talks about my students shows that he takes a lot of ownership in his work but also a lot of pride in teaching and empowering his students furthermore this tricode on passion creativity individuality this shows how vital this is when it comes to doing really really well and he's trying to teach this to his students not just simply teach them to memorize things passively also he says when he goes to literary festivals he gets somebody else to read his work for him and this complex sentence shows just how much humility he has as he deliberately downplays his achievements and doesn't make it about him it doesn't make his work all about him also the repetition of the pronoun someone is interesting because it's showing that he is thinking of other people who might be you know ignorant of his race ignorant of where he comes from but actually that's their problem furthermore the rhetorical question how can it become white this is dark humor that he's using which emphasizes just how absurd and silly racism is furthermore the repetition of the second person pronouns here is a direct address back to us as readers it makes us feel empowered and again he shows that we can learn something from his journey furthermore he uses simple relatable similes so he talks about pictorial language like chinese to show how actually the english reading system and the written english can be actually very unnatural to our learning process other pictorial languages like chinese languages which use script to actually use a completely different method which is much easier for a lot of us to understand also the cynic duke that he uses here so squiggle that represents a sound as well as sibilance again he goes into detail of different types of language to just emphasize how english can be inherently quite hard so let's finish off with this final two paragraphs so don't be heavy on yourself and if you're a parent of someone with dyslexia don't think of it as a defect dyslexia is not a measure of intelligence you may have a genius on your hands having dyslexia can make you creative if you want to construct a sentence and can't find the word you're searching for you have to think a way to make it right around it this requires being creative and so your creativity muscle gets bigger kids come up to me and say i'm dyslexic too and i say to them use it to your advantage and see the world differently ask dyslexic people we've got it going on we are the architects we are the designers it's like these kids are proud to be like me and if that helps them that's great i don't have that as a child i say to them bloody none dyslexics who do they think they are this is a really really positive way to end his essay and to really empower dyslexic people so here again he continues encouraging us as readers he uses this imperative sentence to just say you know if you've got dyslexia do not be hard on yourself don't be angry if you find it really challenging to read certain passages just give yourself that time and space also this declarative sentence of dyslexic and making more creative what this does is it offers a lot of dyslexic people hope it shows that just like the zephaniah they can overcome the challenges when it comes to reading and become extremely successful writers authors and just successful people as a whole again the repetition of the word kids this colloquial language shows just how impactful he is even on younger people younger people who have dyslexia that can look up to him which is really powerful he talks about how these children they use very simple lexics and lexics just means language words and they come up to him and just say i'm dyslexic too and fortunately for them they have a role model that they can see who's actually made it in life who's done so well and he's done well with his dyslexia it's it's a nascent for zephaniah as i mentioned at the start of the analysis he repeats this phrase again so at the beginning of the passage and now at the end he repeats we are the architects we are the designers and this is a rhetorical technique to emphasize the power that dyslexic people have also uses a lot of colloquial language and a lot of americanisms so this is kind of language related to american speaking so he says it's like these kids and again what this does is it makes this passage far more relatable then he uses the mild expletive bloody expletive just means like a swear word of course isn't a very strong swear word but he does so to add like a playful tone towards the end of his passage and then he ends with a rhetorical question who do they think they are again making fun of non-dyslexics almost as if they are the group of people that dyslexic people have to feel sorry for they don't have to go through this complex journey of growth development actually they think even if they think they're better than dyslexic people actually they're very silly so he ends on a really really positive note so that's all if you found this video useful do make sure you visit our website which is www.firstrate teachers.com there you can find lots of useful study guides and study material to help you when analyzing this and indeed other texts in english thank you so much for listening