Welcome to DANDA Developmental Adult Neuro-Diversity Association,
for people with conditions such as Dyspraxia, ADHD, and Asperger's Syndrome.
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Famous people in History with ND
DANDA (2005) enthuse that neurodiversity is often linked to enthusiasm, creativity, originality and lateral 'outside the box' thinking. They assert that many of the world's innovators such as Einstein are ND and have found their forte in excellence. They have made a very significant contribution in terms of art, drama and science. ND people are often hard-working, determined and compassionate and sometimes have unusual memories; however they excel in remembering detail.
Some ND people are especially good at seeing the whole picture (ibid). Gavin Reid and Jane Kirk (2005) discuss that "I saw the crescent and you saw the whole of the moon" sung by the Waterboys was not relating specifically to dyslexia but may well be referring to the learning style of dyslexia.
Thomas G .West (1997) argues that gifted and famous scientists such as Faraday, Telsa, Maxwell, Einstein and Edison, politicians and soldiers such Churchill and General Patton, and artists and writers such as Dogson, Poincare, Da Vinci and Yeats all had dyslexia or similar learning disabilities. It is questionable . Why West has mentioned neither black people nor Ethnic Minorities in his quest for gifted dyslexics. Such an omission may be attributed to Ethnocentrism where black people's contributions have been ignored by history. Throughout this search the only black person acknowledged with ND has been Benjaman Zephaniah, a black dyslexic poet referred to by Morgan and Klein (2001) and Grant (2005). West does not use the term ND but uses 'dyslexia' as the collective noun for all these co-morbidities. It can be argued that in modern times a similar type of identification is employed with dyslexia being used as an umbrella term to cover several inter-related areas. NDs are labelled as dyslexic without a holistic assessment of the whole person. Or they are wrongly 'diagnosed' as dyslexic when often related areas of ND are more prevalent. This means that their real needs are overlooked within the education system and future barriers to employment are being added rather than removed. However although these geniuses and famous people often underachieved in school or did not have a formal education they were so creative or innovative that they were able to overcome disabling barriers.
