Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
The was a TV Movie made about Ben Carson who was a successful pediatric brain surgeon. Click on the above picture to go to the YouTube movie. I found the movie interesting because it depicted a young but smart boy who was called dummy. Ben’s own words can be found in the Achievement.org website.
“We lived in the inner city, single parent home, dire poverty, my mother only had a third grade education. I was perhaps the worst student you’ve ever seen. I thought I was really stupid. All my classmates and teachers agreed, and my nickname was “Dummy.” But, fortunately I continued to hold on to that dream and, you know, when I was in the fifth grade, my mother put us on this reading program and said we had to read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Library and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn’t read, but we didn’t know that, and she’d put a little check mark on them and act like she was reading them. We had to stay in the house and read these books and our friends were outside and they were playing and they knew we couldn’t come out. It seems like they would be making just that much more noise to torment us. ”
“I hated it for the first several weeks, but then all of a sudden, I started to enjoy it because we had no money, but between the covers of those books, I could go anyplace, I could be anybody, I could do anything. And, I began to learn how to use my imagination more because it doesn’t really require a lot of imagination to watch television, but it does to read. You’ve got to take those letters and make them into words, and those words into sentences, and those sentences into concepts, and the more you do that, the more vivid your imagination becomes. And, I believe that’s probably one of the reasons that you see that creative people tend to be readers, because they’re exercising their mind. ”
The movie presents how knowledgeable Ben got as his vocabulary increased through all the reading he did. Ben knew many words but he didn’t know how to say them correctly because he may not have remembered or ever heard how to pronounce them. His visual imaginary mind would create a story even while a professor might be talking to him.
He is now famous for being a pediatric neuro-surgeon. He has written three book about success and America.
Please watch this ten minute speech at the Fellowship Foundation National Prayer Breakfast where Ben talks about his youth, education, books, our system of government, Carson Scholar Fund, role models, tithe and taxes, and The War of 1812. Dyslexics can learn, can succeed in applied sciences and politics, and are humorous.
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