HomeLearning DifficultiesFamily SupportSurvival Strategies

Kids Quiz Charles Schwab About the Personal Side of Learning Disabilities


By GreatSchools Staff

A captivated audience of 5th- and 6th-graders asked Charles Schwab for advice-but not about the stock market. "Was it very hard to tell your friends you had dyslexia?" a child asked earnestly. It was one of many questions Mr. Schwab fielded during his October 2003 visit to the Neighborhood School in lower Manhattan about his experiences growing up with a learning disability.

Q: Do you still have dyslexia?

Mr. Schwab: The answer is yes. You never really get rid of it. You just have to deal with it, and it's not all that bad, frankly. I mean, I can read well…but I read slowly and I know that; I just have to take a little bit more time. If I'm really anxious to read something I just cut out the time and put my effort into it and do it.

I loved books like Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, Tale of Two Cities, things like that. They were called "the classics" back then. I don't know what they are now, but those are my favorite books. They still are my favorite books. I don't read a lot of books now for pleasure; I just read sort of business stuff because I'm a slow reader.

Q: How old were you - what grade were you in - when you found out that you needed help?

Mr. Schwab: Well let me tell you what happened with me. This goes back a long time, and I was in school like this, when I was your age, a long time ago, and - science didn't understand this issue then. And it's only come about in the last 10 or 15 years that they really began to understand what dyslexia is and its impacts. It impacts about one in seven of us, almost 15% of the population.

But they didn't know that 40 years ago when I was going to school. And so I went through all those years without really knowing, always sort of [wondering], How come I'm just a little bit slower than everybody else in the classroom, it seems? And what happened, of course, for me happened when my youngest son - I have five kids - was identified as having a learning problem, [called] dyslexia.

And so I was then in my late 30's, before I found out that he had it and that he had all the same issues that I had when I was a kid. So I said, "I now understand what Michael is contending with because I had the same issues when I was his age." And so I didn't really find out about this until really maybe 20 years ago, 15 years ago I guess it'd be now.



Mr. Schwab: Well, you know, I think one other kid does have it but was never identified as such because my youngest is 27, so it goes back to the period of let's say 20 years ago when the schools didn't really know, why these kids were having problems with, let's say, reading. But I have ten grandchildren and I know I've got at least two kids there that have a learning issue.

Q: How did you become so successful?

Mr. Schwab: Well, thank you. You know what I did - and I think it's really true for kids who have these issues is, as soon as you can, find out what you really like in life and focus on it as hard as you can. Try to read, even though you're going to read slowly, read everything you can about it. Look at pictorials, look at TV, look at whatever you can in terms of information-Internet access - on the subjects that you really like, and really specialize in that. That's what I did with investments. I really liked it when I was 13 and I got to like it more and more as I went along in life, but I'm not good in other things. I'm really good in this thing, but not good in a lot of things. So that's okay. It's okay to specialize.

Comments from readers

"I need help with my son. He is having a very hard time deaaling with this condition. He doesn't want to read at all. He is 15 years old but he has the gift of drawing. I would like to know what can I do as a parent to make him enjoy reading? He has a very diffcult time in school which makes him not want to go. I can't afford a private school and attends a Detroit Public School with no resources. Do anyone know where can I get additional help."