Dr. Najjar is a celebrated neurologist from Syria. He was not a good student and his parents and teachers considered him lazy. When he was ten he failed his tests and the principal suggested that he learn a trade. Education was very important to his father and so he sent his son to a different school.
A teacher in the new school took an interest in him and praised him and he did extremely well in her class. He eventually graduated top of his class in medical school and moved to the United States where he is presently an associate professor of neurology at the NYU Medical Center. Here is an example of his winning diagnosis: medical-mystery solved
So much is left unsaid in this short account. I wonder why a bright child would have done so abysmally in school when he was so smart and education was so important to his family. How many other children have the capability of doing well in school but don't, while giving their teachers and principal the impression that they are not intelligent enough? Is this rare or common?
He is not the first to have been categorized as useless by teachers and the like nor sadly the last. Albert Einstein dropped or got kicked out of school rather, not to mention others too. One comman denominator seems to run through all these people. They all had one person who truly believed in them, even when no-one else did. Special children need special teachers and that is rare in the school system that can only deal with ' in the box kids'.
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