Jason Arday: ‘I was illiterate until I was 18, now I’m Cambridge’s youngest black professor’
A 37-year-old sociologist, Jason Arday, who couldn’t speak until the age of 11, has become the youngest-ever Black professor at Cambridge University.
Jason, who also couldn’t read or write until the age of 18, was reportedly written off by specialists when he was just 3 years old after being diagnosed with autism spectrum disease and a global developmental delay.
He was able to overcome his speech defect thanks to the help of his Ghanaian mother, Gifty, a mental health nurse, his close friends, Sandro Sandri and Chantelle Lewis and Enya’s song.
Reflecting on his journey, the Cambridge Professor said:
“A lot of the cues I learned in terms of speaking and understanding came through music.
“There was a lot of music played in my house to explain the use of sounds. My mum’s obsessed with Gaelic and Celtic culture. So there would often be Enya playing in the house. She would say: ‘This is what a river sounds like’. Or: ‘If I were to speak to explain what a river sounds like, these are the words I might use.’
“Now, she’s probably thinking: ‘I’ve tried everything, and none of this is working.
“But what she would have no idea of is that all of those things, those thousands of hours she spent with me, sacrificing and forsaking her own career, were all worth it.
It was all registering. And I guess that that moment of triumph comes at 11 and I pull my hearing aid out and the first word I actually said was: ‘Hello’. And I used it in the right context! My mum was like: ‘What did you say??’ And I said it again.”
Until that breakthrough moment, Jason Arday, one of four children, was communicating with only sign language and spent most of his childhood with speech and language therapist.
He said;
“When my mum received the diagnosis, she told me, it was almost like a hammer to her heart. At the time she was trying to figure out how to be in Britain as a Ghanaian.
“Global developmental delay is a processing delay. So my brain processes information very slowly. But then the autistic side is like a magic trick.
“It allows me to obsess on something. So my mum gave me things to fixate on. She got me to play snooker when I was 11.
“Just to get the stability from repetition. She didn’t care whether I was any good or not, even though I did end up on the junior tour! I wasn’t good enough to go any further.”
Jason Arday proceeded to earn GCSE’s in PE and textiles; a BTEC; a first-class degree in PE and education studies; and two masters degree.
He also bagged a PhD at Liverpool John Moores University, all of which were funded by his part-time job at Sainsbury’s and Boots.
Despite all odds, Jason became a professor of sociology and education following his work at the universities of Durham and Glasgow.
