Sir Jackie Stewart said Aberdeen pilot project should be
rolled out across Scotland. Picture: Danny Lawson
MOTOR-RACING legend Sir Jackie Stewart will return to Scotland tomorrow to call for all future teachers in the country to be taught how to recognise dyslexia in young pupils.
Sir Jackie, who is head of Dyslexia Scotland and is himself dyslexic, said thousands of pupils are suffering humiliation because their learning disabilities are not recognised quickly enough by teachers.
His comments come ahead of a visit to Aberdeen University, which now offers a special programme designed to help student teachers spot dyslexia in young pupils.
Sir Jackie, who helped secure £1.4 million from the Executive for the Aberdeen pilot project, believes similar training schemes should be rolled out across Scotland.
He said teachers must be taught how to avoid situations similar to the one he experienced growing up in Dumbarton in the 1950s, when teachers mistook his dyslexia for low intelligence.
He said: "I want the future teachers to hear out of my mouth the frustrations I felt. School was the worst time in my life. It was painful and embarrassing and it left a huge hole in my self-esteem. I thought I was stupid until I was 41, when I was finally diagnosed. Being a dyslexic, it has become apparent that, no matter what you do to help people in the later years, it is the early years in which the most damage is created."
He said the example of Aberdeen University should encourage every teacher-training programme in Scotland to identify courses in early recognition. But he added: "The problem is there are 40,000 teachers out there and very few of them have had any experience recognising learning disability."
Sir Jackie said he managed to put his school years behind him by finding success in sports - first as an Olympic standard marksman with a shotgun and then as a Formula 1 champion.
He later became a successful businessman. But he said many pupils never recover from the embarrassment of dyslexia.
He described the type of humiliation he had suffered: "In every class a child is asked to stand up in front of class and read an excerpt from an essay.
"That young man, and it was once Jackie Stewart, stands up and looks down to find a page that would look like a jungle of words and he can't make heads or tails of it because it is beyond his ability. You don't know what to do and the teacher is on your back telling you to hurry up. You are embarrassed, blushing, everyone recognises you are having trouble.
"It's a very humiliating experience. That doesn't stay in the classroom, it goes out to the playground. You are segregated. The smart people and the successful pupils don't want to know you.
"You end up at the bottom end of society and that usually takes you into trouble.
"It is no coincidence that 70 per cent of our prison population cannot read. Many of them are dyslexic."
In Aberdeen, Sir Jackie will also speak to dyslexic students at Kaimhill Primary School, telling them that they have every chance of leading successful lives now their condition is understood.
Ronnie Smith, the general-secretary of the EIS teaching union, said the programme at Aberdeen will help future teachers tackle the growing spectrum of learning disorders they must be able to recognise.
But he added that teacher-training college is a hectic time for students and that further work is required. "There's a need for continuing professional development for teachers to acquire the necessary skills," he added.
A spokeswoman for the Executive said: "We recognise that teacher training is crucial to the future success of Scotland's education system and the £1.4 million we have invested in this pilot project indicates the importance we place on supporting children with difficulties.
"We will be closely monitoring the outcomes of this pilot project and a decision on further funding and the possible roll-out of the project will be made in due course."
Early signs in children
• Learning to talk later than children the same age
• Difficulty saying certain words, such as mawn-lower instead of lawn-mower, busgetti for spaghetti
• Adding new words to their vocabulary only very slowly
• Finding it hard to think of the right word when talking
• Difficulty working out which words rhyme
• Problems learning the alphabet, numbers, days of the week, colours, shapes, how to spell and write her or his name
• Difficulty in following multi-step routines or directions such as those in action songs, games or an activity such as getting dressed
• Motor skills (such as being able to hold and use a pencil properly) develop far more slowly than in other children of the same age
Source: The Scotsman
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