Speaker redefines learning disabilities with a measure of empowerment:
By: BRIANA HEANEY NEWS EDITOR:
Jonathan Mooney visited the Meramec Theatre Friday, April 26. He visited to tell his life story, recount and explain psychological research, reject long-established notions about mental ‘differences’ between people, and to tell the story of ‘Jack-in-the-box.’
Jack-in-the-box was a child who shared the same adversity as Mooney, that of having Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). To address the symptoms of Jack’s ADHD, his teacher literally placed him in a box.
“Jack’s problem wasn’t his ADHD. Jack’s problem was the box,” said Mooney.
Jack, real or a archetype, personifies Mooney’s premise on both the nature and the nurture aspect of having mental differences in his nationwide tour, “Normal Sucks.” “For most of human history, we have called difference the problem, we have put the problem in the person,” said Mooney. “Moving towards empowerment can only happen when we challenge and reframe who or what we call the problem.”
Mooney challenges the medical model of equivocating difference with deficiency.
“Sounds like a pretty negative thing. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder sounds like a deficit and a problem, but the reality is, it’s a difference in my life, in the truest sense of that term. A difference that has good things about it and a difference that has challenges about it.”
One of Mooney’s personal challenges is spelling, and he says that he is on a fifth grade spelling level. On the other hand, he excels at creating narratives. He asserts that it is a one–fits-all mentality for being successful or a good student. According to Mooney, often times in school, that one type of intelligence supersedes other types.
“We have a system that calls one brain smart at the expense of all the other brains,” said Mooney.
Instead, Mooney is an advocate for celebrating human differences, and empowering unique qualities. He elaborated on times in his own life that his ability to tell stories was diminished by his battle with dyslexia, which encumbered his reading and writing. Now, he is an award-winning author.
“I’m so against the hierarchy between writing and speaking, and the one between listening and reading,” said Mooney, “The reality is that I never overcame dyslexia, if anything, I overcame dys-teachia.”
Moony highlighted some of the advantages that typically come along with having differences, from Autism Spectrum Disorder to Attention Deficit Disorder. “Those are very real challenges, but y’all know what goes hand in hand with those very real challenges? A bunch of very real strengths and talents,” said Mooney. “You know I came across a research study recently that people with ADD are more entrepreneurial and better problem solvers than the general population.”
It was in a program that positively employed those with differences that Mooney would overhear some instruction from a college, instruction that would ultimately provide him the title for his tour and his newest book, Normal Sucks.
“The only normal people are people you don’t know very well,” said Mooney.
“As you get to know them you learn the differences that constitute their humanity.”
