Was Sam Cooke dyslexic or just a bit thick?

Sam Cooke - excelled in High School at Latin, Music, Irish, Home Economics, Basketball and sweet love-making. He was always the first to admit that some other subjects just did not suit him; He made some extremely poor choices for his final year exam subjects.

OK - I stole this graphic from Popbitch, cos I'm too lazy to do my own PhotoShopping, but still think it's pretty funny.

The famous soul crooner who gave us 'Wonderful World', 'Cupid', 'Bring it on Home to Me', 'You Send Me' and the ground-breaking civil rights anthem 'A Change is Gonna Come' didn't do too well in his finals, failing History, Biology, Science and French.

Cooke could be slightly forgiven as he had often mislaid his Science book, and had inadvertantly missed some of the French classes that he was supposed to take, as he was spending months at a time on the road with the 'Soul Stirrers' gospel troupe, and devoting long hours to songwriting.

He must take some blame for failing to realise that Biology is technically a Science and he was wasting his time duplicating classwork in this area.

Whilst he knew that '1 and 1 is 2', his advanced mathematical skills were generally below average. He confessed openly to not knowing much about trigonometry or algebra and didn't seem to have a notion as to the purpose of a slide rule.

Despite being offered a place in the esteemed Certified Accountancy course in Griffith College Dublin, Cooke, on graduating high school, decided instead to pursue his dream of becoming the most revered male soul/pop singer of all time.

As a result, the impossibly handsome Cooke, even though getting more female attention than Elvis and Frank Sinatra combined, suffered from very low levels of self esteem, castigating himself for not being an 'A-student', and ashamed of the fact that he was born in a 'big-old tent' beside a river...

Sam was also known to be a very poor student of Geography. He didn't know much about that either.
Perhaps this explained why he took a wrong turn and ended up shot to death in a sleazy motel in one of the worst parts of L.A., at the hands of a hooker's madame.