[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 5, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E159-E160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




``ENNIS COSBY KNEW WORTH OF A HELPING HAND''--A COLUMN BY ROBERT SCHEER

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                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 5, 1997

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, research studies indicate that learning 
disabilities affect about 15 percent of the American population. One of 
the most common learning differences is dyslexia, which makes it 
difficult for persons to read and understand the written word. Our 
Nation recently suffered the tragic loss of Ennis Cosby, a young man 
with dyslexia who was committed to using his influence and education to 
start a school for children with dyslexia. Robert Scheer, renowned 
author and contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times, has written a 
sensitive essay about how dyslexia affects even the most successful 
persons in our society. I commend this column to my colleagues.

                Ennis Cosby Knew Worth of a Helping Hand

                           (By Robert Scheer)

       Properly credentialed and steady at my post in the press 
     section at the president's inauguration, within shouting 
     distance of the man himself, a witness to history surrounded 
     by the most successful of my peers, I am, as so often before 
     on such occasions, filled with fear. This time it makes me 
     think of Ennis William Cosby.
       Fear, not of the violence that took his life but rather the 
     more mundane persistent and personal terror shared by all 
     dyslexics over having to perform in conventional ways when 
     your brain does not track quite that way. In my case today, 
     it's the pressure to file properly spelled, cogently 
     organized, grammatically correct copy, on deadline.

[[Page E160]]

     Small potatoes to some, a horror to others. I'm not 
     complaining, mind you. I made my claim to be heard, and the 
     fact that you are able to read this means that with the aid 
     of great teachers, computerized spelling checks and my wife, 
     sons Christopher and Peter and friend Cara, all of whom are 
     on line to protect me from the more egregious errors of 
     syntax, I will be heard. But the fear never fully disappears.
       It is a fear that young Cosby would have well understood, 
     having devoted his life to working with kids with learning 
     disabilities. It is a terror of failure, known keenly by 
     those who, despite their ability and best efforts, flunked 
     seventh grade. What we have in common, along with millions of 
     others including my marvelous son Josh--who thrilled me by 
     admonishing a smug Santa Monica school district special ed 
     administrator to call it a ``learning difference,'' not 
     ``disability'' or ``handicap''--is a conundrum of 
     difficulties loosely labeled dyslexia. What we have in common 
     is the fact that we learn differently than most folks because 
     letters or numbers get scrambled, or we have small motor 
     problems or we become confused under time pressure or are 
     flustered in our efforts to conceptualize in ways that lend 
     themselves to standardized tests. What we also have in common 
     is the potential to excel.
       In my time, in the public schools of the Bronx, no one knew 
     of such complexity in the learning process. I was simply 
     pronounced dumb and slow because I couldn't learn cursive 
     writing or spell worth a damn and so was tracked to oblivion 
     until a friendly science teacher discovered that I was good 
     at physics and some other subjects if given half a chance. 
     Since then, a great deal of progress has been made in 
     recognizing and treating dyslexia, but even one from so 
     privileged a background as Cosby went undiagnosed until 
     college years. As he poignantly wrote, ``The happiest day 
     of my life occurred when I found out I was dyslexic . . . 
     the worst feeling to me is confusion.''
       I have been thinking of young Cosby almost constantly since 
     the news of his being gunned down off the San Diego Freeway 
     not far from my home. The smiling optimism of his file photo 
     burns into my brain and anger fills me that this young man's 
     optimism spilled out wasted on the indifferent concrete of 
     that freeway offramp. It's the same freeway my son Josh takes 
     to a school called Landmark, where he has opportunities that 
     could save the lives of so many others now tracked to state 
     prisons and other societal markers of educational failure.
       It was Ennis Cosby's dream to create a school for kids with 
     dyslexia. ``He wanted to make sure that kids who might not 
     have the opportunity to have the help that he had would get 
     it,'' his professor recalled. ``So he did all he could to 
     help poor kids.'' As I write help, it comes out hepl, and the 
     reason I remain a bleeding heart liberal is that I think we 
     all benefit when the cry for ``hepl'' is understood.
       These are the thoughts that went through my frayed mind 
     listening to the inauguration speech of William Jefferson 
     Clinton, a guy who also came up the hard way but who was 
     blessed with the saving grace of testing well. Clinton knows 
     he benefited from the level playing field, and he will not 
     compromise government's obligation to keep it level. But 
     where he has failed is in reaching out to those who need a 
     helping hand, as Jesse Jackson might put it, to be pulled 
     from the quicksand of failure to the high ground of 
     opportunity.
       Those of us with dyslexia, and that ranges from Albert 
     Einstein to Cher, have known that a helping hand spells the 
     difference between pain and performance. Bob Dole, who pushed 
     through the Americans With Disabilities Act, which has helped 
     dyslexics enormously, knows that. If I had any moment of 
     regret at the inauguration, it came with the sense that 
     Clinton does not know what it means to flunk the seventh 
     grade.
       Ennis Cosby did. But despite that, he got a master's, was 
     going for a doctorate and planning to start a school for 
     dyslexic kids, making him--to use his father's words--my 
     hero, too.

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