Also not from the US, but I think read about him many many years ago in Reader's Digest. It was a long form that had a lot more information. I recognized the story because of this anecdote:
"I passed my blue book out the window to him and he answered the questions for me."
But the Reader's Digest version mentioned that he was dyslexic (which I don't think the BBC article mentions) and that he taught almost exclusively using audio/visual presentations, activity based learning and guest speakers.
It does sound like he was dyslexic ("for me it was like opening a Chinese newspaper "). But the speed at which he eventually acquired reading and writing doesn't seem consistent with dyslexia; I figure there was some other problem interfering with hiis literacy.
Computationally we don't understand what dyslexia is. Neuroplasticity is happening all the time. Perhaps at one point something changes and he has the ability to aquire the writing form of a language agian.
Similiar to in mathematics where it's a very different process reasoning with symbols v.s. trying to visualize the mathematical construct through communication. Maybe it's difficult to aquire the writing form of graph theory when you are 19. But when you try to do that again at 25 suddenly you can read all of Paul Erdos' papers less daunthingly.
> Perhaps at one point something changes and he has the ability to aquire the writing form of a language agian.
That sounds like what I was wondering. Perhaps something "snaps" into or out of place "catastrophically" (in the sense of almost discontinuously, in the context of the usual timescale of psychological changes). For example, it sounds like his loss of fear occurred pretty suddenly.
I feel a bit awkward speculating about the mind of someone who I know of from just a single essay. That said, he's published a scathingly-honest record of his fascinating history with writing, and presumably he wants it read and discussed. And it's about him, so we discuss him, I guess.
Don't feel awkward about it. We're all minds speculating about minds. My blue will never be same as your blue, and so are my pains, pleasures, etc - no matter how closely some of my qualia may resemble yours.
We're all in our own little specula (watchtower) seeing the world from our vantage points. Thus we can do nothing but speculari, or speculate so to speak.
This is why psychedlic experiences are so meaningful. They help us to experience the meta-ness of the experience per se.
"I passed my blue book out the window to him and he answered the questions for me."
But the Reader's Digest version mentioned that he was dyslexic (which I don't think the BBC article mentions) and that he taught almost exclusively using audio/visual presentations, activity based learning and guest speakers.