Gifts and Talents of Dyslexia: Dyslexic Journalist Richard Engel
Posted Jun 08 2009 7:09pm
NBC's leading foreign correspondent, Richard Engel was once "a frustrated child (who) got into frequent fistfights and struggled with dyslexia". From the Washington Post: "He was down in the mouth and low on self-confidence...He lived in the shadow of his older brother, Mr. Perfect," who is now a cardiologist. In fact, she had only "a very faint hope" that he would be able to go to college.
When he was 13, Engel asked his parents to send him to a wilderness survival program in Wyoming. Frustrated by his learning disabilities, he was eager to escape the comforts of Upper East Side life and try a tougher environment...When the teenager returned, he told his mother: "I learned a lot about myself...Engel says the experience began a transformation that largely enabled him to overcome his dyslexia and school problems. Despite his learning difficulties, he showed early promise in other ways.
'He was a great writer,' says Ross Peet, who was a classmate at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. "But he struggled with anything that had a number on it...' "
From Engel's recent book War Journal: "I have something of a map problem. Brian Williams ribs me about it all the time. Whenever I want to explain the situation in Iraq, I feel compelled to draw maps....I am dyslexic and I understand things better if they are visual. In middle school, my grades were so bad that one of the school administrators advised my parents to pull me out and enroll me in another school with a more developed 'special learning program.' They never did."
Engel's career highlights many of those other dyslexic talents that receive less attention: strong storytelling, vivid personal memory, and an ability to analyze and distill down a complex situation into a simpler form. We have had college dyslexics tell us that they struggled with research until they realized they were outstanding at projects that required field research - research that went beyond the books, but into the actual places where things were happening...
For more stories and videos about gifted dyslexics, join Dyslexic Advantage. The video below is brief of Richard Engel in the field
When he was 13, Engel asked his parents to send him to a wilderness survival program in Wyoming. Frustrated by his learning disabilities, he was eager to escape the comforts of Upper East Side life and try a tougher environment...When the teenager returned, he told his mother: "I learned a lot about myself...Engel says the experience began a transformation that largely enabled him to overcome his dyslexia and school problems. Despite his learning difficulties, he showed early promise in other ways.
'He was a great writer,' says Ross Peet, who was a classmate at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. "But he struggled with anything that had a number on it...' "
From Engel's recent book War Journal: "I have something of a map problem. Brian Williams ribs me about it all the time. Whenever I want to explain the situation in Iraq, I feel compelled to draw maps....I am dyslexic and I understand things better if they are visual. In middle school, my grades were so bad that one of the school administrators advised my parents to pull me out and enroll me in another school with a more developed 'special learning program.' They never did."
Engel's career highlights many of those other dyslexic talents that receive less attention: strong storytelling, vivid personal memory, and an ability to analyze and distill down a complex situation into a simpler form. We have had college dyslexics tell us that they struggled with research until they realized they were outstanding at projects that required field research - research that went beyond the books, but into the actual places where things were happening...
For more stories and videos about gifted dyslexics, join Dyslexic Advantage. The video below is brief of Richard Engel in the field