Confucius Teo, a former "rolling stone" who finally found his groove in the electrical trade, discovered his dyslexic challenge by chance much later in life.

I’m in electrical work, and I’m doing my LEW (Licensed Electrical Worker) Grade 8 now. The next level, Grade 9, is to be a Professional Engineer. I’m currently going for my Technician level with the SP Services Preparatory Course, to work towards becoming a EMA Licensed Electrical Worker.

Studying and working

I’m currently both studying and working, which I am used to. My course is part-time and actually always ongoing, because skilled workers always need to improve from level to level, and from graded license to license. I’m used to studying and working at the same time. As long as I can manage it, it will be okay, but it is stressful sometimes.

At Competent Electrician, I train new arrivals from India and Bangladesh on Singapore’s safety rules. I also started to guide new interns from ITE, some of whom have disabilities. The interns reminded me of myself when I was younger.

In the skilled workers trade, many of the mentors may feel defensive and would not want to teach the younger ones. However, a different approach can be adopted—the mentors could teach the trainees, who could then lighten their job and allow the mentors to move up to management level. The Internet has changed what people know and think. We can learn things very quickly. There are no secrets anymore.

Hobbies and passions

My hobbies include motorbike racing and thrilling activities. That’s why I went into automotive. When I was in Secondary 2 or 3, I fell in love with automotives and read books about it, learning about many of its aspects. In fact, my mind started to think about what would happen if I forced air and fuel into the engine—would it make it more powerful?

I started to have many such innovative thoughts. Why not use some mechanism to run a supercharger? Then I studied it further, and got a shock when I realised all my imaginations had been invented by other people and had come true!

There may be many gifts that are given to you—you might find them, but other people might not act on them.

Younger days

I had difficult schooling years. I recall my English teacher getting so angry with my reading and asking me, “What happened to you? You can’t even read.” I would break down as the teacher screamed at me.

In the 80s, there wasn’t much awareness about learning differences. It’s a struggle, but no one recognises it, and they stomp on you. However, I did well in mathematics and science in primary school as they were more numbers-based.

When I was younger, I didn’t have many positive adult figures.

“I have a very warrior-like mindset. I don’t admit defeat easily because my determination is very strong.”

Once I set my mind to do something, whether it is wrong or right, I’ll go all-out, and this kept me positive. Even when I was in school, even if I didn’t study, I would try to fight and create trouble just to prove that I was the best and naughtiest student in the class. I thought that if I can’t be number one in academics, I would just be number one in other aspects. I was terrible in Primary 3 and Primary 4, and I took that as a compliment and became worse and worse.

Because when you’re young, you need acknowledgement and you need adults to look at you and value you. But everywhere I looked, people would throw stones at me. So I threw stones back, and we would throw stones at each other in a never-ending war.

This is part of the reason why youngsters go astray. They can’t get the attention they need, they aren’t valued, and so they start to do other things that can come out in the news, like getting caned in front of others, to get acknowledgement.

I remember living in fear when I was younger, as I would get beaten up by my father. It was just threats, threats, threats, or hammer, hammer, hammer. I also didn’t have many relatives who were encouraging. Their parents came from the pre-war generation and had the same parenting approach which was wrong.

My mother was a very good mother hen who would protect her children. She was my support when I was younger. She has this unconditional love. I sometimes think about her, and I’ll feel sad that I never had enough time with her, because she left me when I was a teenager.

My mentors

Only when I was in my 20s to 30s did I meet my shifu, a taxi driver. He taught me a lot in life and inspired me. He was my company’s customer and we slowly became friends, and I became his student. He taught me karate, the way of living, the discipline in martial arts, and how Japanese culture is. I started to appreciate Japanese culture and the people’s different ways of life. He taught me a lot about how to learn, how to think, and how to manage my difficulties.

There’s also my boss from before I joined the electrical line. He’s also very nice. Sometimes when I ask questions, he’ll tell me I’m supposed to know what to do, and go find things out by myself. After that, I realised that if I face a problem, I need to ask myself how to resolve it, because I can’t keep asking my boss how to solve problems.

A rolling stone

I was a rolling stone, and I went into so many trades. In my 20s, I could work three jobs, almost twenty hours in a stretch. From mechanics, to delivery, to selling properties. I couldn’t find a spot that was suitable for me, but I’m good with my hands and skills.

I pick things up very fast when I observe people doing things.

I didn’t go through any training in the line of electrical work. I went in to become an electrician and learnt from zero. I had to go to YouTube to learn how to become an electrician, like searching for what a two-way switch is, what an intermediate switch is, and what a three-way is. I decided to join a school, like Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where I can ask questions. I completed my education there 3 years ago.

And from then, I became a rolling stone, trying out other trades until I became an electrician. I’ve been doing electrical work for almost eight years. Personally, I enjoy it because it’s cleaner, it’s more individual and I don’t need to work with foremen. Once your safety levels are high enough, they leave you alone and let you do your own work.

The worst disabilities

The worst disabilities are laziness and lack of confidence. The rest are nothing.

I look at disabled people, and many of them actually work harder and more efficiently than others. One of our interns, who has both dyslexia and ADHD, is particularly impressive. I am impressed by his energy, how he wouldn’t accept defeat and the way he approached customers and jobs. No matter how tough it is, he’ll say yes. He has a very positive mindset.

Discovering dyslexia in adulthood

I only found out about my dyslexia in 2021. When I was guiding the ITE interns with disabilities, one of them mentioned that he had dyslexia. I then studied and googled the condition online, with the aim of preventing problems and helping them with their difficulties. That was when I realised my condition.

I was shocked to learn of my dyslexia, until I linked back to my experiences in my younger days. After knowing about my dyslexia, my wife gave me assurance and told me I’m still cute!

Changes in education that would have helped

In our system, the form teacher would have problems in overseeing 40 students because it’s not easy. Secondly, the system doesn’t allow teachers to follow through with the students. Every year, the form teacher changes, but sometimes you need time to discover someone’s issues.

For example, if you’re passing down computer repair from stage to stage, someone wouldn’t understand the full repair situation. Teachers are actually production operators in education. In one year, they just repair certain areas, and they don’t understand how the whole system is built. If you keep passing students on, then it’s like a production line.

Having a good teacher is very important. Some teachers just work to pass time for the salary, some teachers have passion. It depends on the different characters and attitudes towards teaching. Teachers are of course humans with biases and emotions. Try hard to look into different perspectives.

Advice to parents

“Your children are X-men and mutants. They need special care and parents who can accept them and really love them with all their hearts.”

I know it’s very painful when you see serious issues.

Parenthood is a responsibility, but people must also understand that there are levels of responsibility. If your child is a drug addict, or has committed major crimes, then we can’t side with them. If they’re doing things that are causing society damage, then they need to be punished. I want to tell the parents not to spoon-feed their children and overpamper them. If you overpamper them, they will use this as a reason and excuse to always ask for benefits. Humans are very good at this.

Advice to my younger self

When I was younger, I did foolish things like getting into fights with other people, breaking other people’s windows, and damaging people’s cars.

“If I were to advise my younger self, I would say, don’t fight, have peace.”

Don’t start wars with people, as fights are the worst and will get you into trouble, even if you get attention.

Look at my fingers. In the past, my mother told me I have 10 fingers, and she said that if I meet people who have difficulties, or difficult people, I should look at different perspectives, and look at my fingers. All of our fingers are designed differently and have a purpose in life. Every finger has its purposes, so why should we discriminate and say that something is useless? You might think your toes are the most useless, but some of them are for you to balance. You must accept that this is just the forces of nature.

Dreams and hopes for the future

I’m working on an Internet of Things (IoT) project. I am going to create a new distribution box system that can do measurements on continuity and polarity. This will shorten our electrical workers’ timing.

That means if there’s anything going wrong, like power failure, the smart system will isolate and pre-empt people, notifying them that the aircon compressor is going to break down because there’s a spike in the current higher than previous readings, and to alert the aircon technician for servicing in advance.

We currently have smartphones and smart-everything, so why don’t we have a smart database to tell us which appliance is going to need repairs in advance? After IOT came up, there would be security issues, but they will be tightening and sharpening it.

When you come up with new things, there will definitely be many obstacles, like in Grab and Google. New dreams will present you with challenges and mountains to climb. But what is important is how you climb the mountain and overcome it.

Confucius Teo