Doyle Saylor wrote: > > It is necessary to know if a child has a learning disability.
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. It's okay to be contrarian. The left needs more of it (though not of the Hitchens sort). It'd be nice if learning disabilities were simply due to the teacher. The one I'm most familiar with is Asperger syndrome, but I'll talk about that. It's true that society in general must be much more tolerant of such individual differences as people who lecture you about trivia concerning Star Wars (a common Aspie "topic"). But it represents a general problem for teachers. Even though folks with AS can be taught as much as anyone else (especially since they tend to be brainy), I'd venture to guess that it takes more teacher-hours than teaching the same materials to neurotypical kids. Some of those teacher-hours involve special training for the teachers. Also, with NT kids, there are economies of scale: at the same grade level, all of them can be taught the same stuff with relative ease. But kids with AS (and other learning disabilities) require individualized attention. The most effective treatment for AS and autism that I know of is Relationship Development Intervention, which involves quite intense work with the kid. (on RDI, see http://www.rdiconnect.com/.) Do the educational institutions "create" such disabilities? more reasonably, do they contribute to the problem. My impression is that the school system does not make a big contribution here. AS may be partly a genetically-based disability. I think that's weak, however, because it doesn't explain why AS and hard-core (Kanner's) autism have become so prevalent these days compared to previous eras. As I've argued in the past on pen-l, I think the "plague" is partly the result of greater diagnosis (and the falling off of false diagnoses such as AD/HD for many kids). It's also partly a result of the large number of different kinds of environmental pollutants, which "insult" the fetus in the womb. Of course, the schooling system can always make things worse (and often does). But I think that the schools do better if they pay attention to the nature of disabilities rather than simply dismissing them as the teacher's or the school's fault. The fact that the educational system does not make a major contribution to the prevalence of AS is backed up by the fact that it can't be "cured." If you've got it, it's important in defining your life. What people do is to _adapt_ to it, figuring out how to live with it. But this usually means more than developing a _modus operandi_ for life. It also involves narrowing the scope of one's life so that the environmental stimulus arising from common and varied interaction with other people is minimized. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
