Greetings Economists, On Oct 27, 2007, at 9:16 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
Not to be too contrarian, but the notion of a "learning disability" seems a little suspect to me too. In fact a lot of these ideas seem like conceptual reflections back onto the student of problems that the educational institution has -- or creates. I prefer to think of them as teaching disabilities, and reflect them back onto the institution.
Doyle; I think I started out (ten or fifteen years ago) where your statement above stands. My own childhood experience was with a system of education that could not respond adequately to my being a depressed person. I think though I've shifted away some from that disabled teaching stance. What I think we see in capitalism is how the economic structure limits social well being. And for someone on the left might say is teaching disabilities come from the social structure twisting services to serve profit. The problem is that as I myself got further into the disability community, I gradually began to see that cognitive disabilities demand more than previous forms of teaching offered. One can't offer tailored education to masses of people if the tools themselves can't be made economically. A lot of severe disabilities lay on the horizon of technical ability to communicate with. 'Locked in syndrome' is one where the person is so physically paralyzed they can't respond to the outside which from the outside makes them look like 'vegetables'. After some tests with brain waves it finally was discovered a group of vegetables were actually mentally functioning. And by some rather crude at best techniques like blinking an eye some routes of communication could be made. Like are you thirsty sort of stuff. What is to be done then with the rather large number of people that teaching disabilities blocks? That I think takes really radical government focuses on peoples rights to resolve in a humane amount of time. But there are no humane answers now. That is tough, and also why we need to continue to develop a left so that eventually we have support to realistically face mountainous problems. Doyle
