Clenton Farquarson: D is for Dunce

Transcript

We used to have like A, B, C kind of bands and then D band. And I remember them shoving a piece of paper in front of us and just saying, ‘Fill that in,’ but the paper didn’t make any sense.

I've later learned that why it never made sense what because, you know, I’d been later diagnosed with Dyslexia and reading white paper – and a black print on white paper, it was moving around.

But the problem for me, I just thought that was for everyone and people just managed to decode it and able to input it, but it was just a mass of jumbled letters and I didn’t understand that at all. So we had a time limit to fill this paper in, and all I did was manage to put my name on the top and that was it, because I just couldn’t – I was getting constant headaches, looking at the print so I just kept looking away from it. But I didn’t understand at that time and I got more and more angry. So I got more angry and I remember screwing up the paper and throwing it at the teacher. That started my – classed as behavioural issues and they labelled me as a slow learner but with behavioural issues so I was in the D group, which was later known by the whole school as the Dunce’s group. And that’s how I started my, you know, education.

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