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"Learning
Disability": A Rose by Another Name
by Jan Hunt |
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| Imagine for a moment
that you are visiting a plant nursery. You hear a commotion outside,
so you investigate. You find a young assistant struggling with a rose
bush - he is trying to force open the petals of a rose, and muttering
in frustration. You ask him what he is doing, and he explains,
"My boss wants all these roses to bloom this week, so last week I
taped all the early ones, and now I'm opening the late ones." You
protest that every rose has it's own schedule of blooming; it is
absurd to try to slow down or speed this up; it doesn't matter when
roses bloom; a rose will always bloom at its own best time. You look
at the rose again, and see that it is wilting. But when you point this
out, he replies, "Oh, too bad, it has genetic dysbloomia. I'll
have to call an expert." "No, no!" you say, "you
caused the wilting! All you needed to do was meet the flowers' needs
for water and sunshine, and leave the rest to nature!" You can't
believe this is happening. Why is his boss so unrealistic and
uninformed about roses? |
| Such a scene would never take
place in a nursery, of course, but it happens daily in our schools.
Teachers, pressured by their bosses, follow official timetables, which
demand that all children learn at the same rate, and in the same way.
Yet children are no different than roses in their development: they
are born with the capacity and desire to learn, they learn at
different rates, and they learn in different ways. If we can meet
their needs, provide a safe, nurturing environment, and keep from
interfering with our doubts, anxieties, and arbitrary timetables, then
- like roses - they will all bloom at their own best time. |
If we
can meet their needs, they will all bloom at their own best time. |
| My heart goes out to
those children who have been labeled "ADHD"
("attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder"), the latest
"learning disability" label. Many educators and researchers
believe that these children and their families have been cruelly
deceived by the use of these labels. Dr. Thomas Armstrong, a former
learning disabilities specialist, changed professions when he
"began to see how this notion of learning disabilities was
handicapping all of our children by placing the blame for a child's
learning failure on mysterious neurological deficiencies in the brain
instead of on much needed reforms in our system of education."
Dr. Armstrong turned instead to the concept of learning differences,
and wrote In Their Own Way, a fascinating and practical guide to seven
"personal learning styles" first proposed by Harvard
psychologist Howard Gardner. Dr. Armstrong urges us to abandon
convenient but harmful labels such as "dyslexia" and focus
on the real problem of "dysteachia". He warns that "our
schools are selling millions of kids short by writing them off as
underachievers, when in reality they are disabled only by poor
teaching methods."
As Armstrong explains, "Children get saddled with diagnostic
terms such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and the like, making
it sound as if they suffer from very rare and exotic diseases. Yet the
word dyslexia is just Latin bafflegab for 'trouble with words'...
hundreds of tests and programs purport to identify and remediate these
"neurological dysfunctions. Yet medical doctors have yet to
clearly establish any measurable brain damage in the vast majority of
children with these so-called symptoms. It seems clear to me after
fifteen years of research and practice in the field of education that
our schools are largely to blame for the failure and boredom which
millions of children face..."
Are learning disorder labels the "emperor's new clothes"
of the schools? Philosophers have an interesting tool called Occam's
Razor, a handy device for cutting through preposterous theories:
"the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one
that should be selected." What are the facts? It is a fact that
many school children, mostly boys, have learning difficulties. But it
is also a fact that there is a group of hundreds of thousands of
children in the world, both boys and girls, among whom this
"genetic" defect is absent: homeschoolers. In this group,
learning difficulties are virtually unknown, except for those children
recently in school. |
| Are
learning disorder labels the "emperor's new clothes" of the
schools? |
If "learning disorders"
are present only among children in school settings, and are absent
elsewhere, the problem must lie in the learning environment of the
schools, not in some mysterious, non-quantifiable "neurological
disorder" within the children, or they would be present in
homeschooling children too. After all, it is no secret that the
schools are failing to do their job: in many areas, literacy rates
have actually declined and have never reached the level they were
before the existence of public schools. When John Gatto, New York
State Teacher of the Year, calls compulsory schooling a
"twelve-year jail sentence", we know that something is
terribly wrong, and that the fault is not with the children. |
| Are the labels
"hyperactive", "school phobic" and "learning
disabled" smoke screens for the school's failure to understand
and conform to the actual process of learning? No less an expert than
Mary Poplin, a past editor of Learning Disabilities Quarterly,
recently acknowledged that "Despite all the quantitative
research... there is no evidence that learning disabilities can be
objectively identified... attempts at establishing objective criteria
for verifying human problems is a convenient illusion behind which we
can hide our incompetence in instruction." Educator John Holt
reported in Teach Your Own that the president of a leading
learning-disability association admitted there was "little
evidence to support the disability labels". Holt warns parents of
school children to "be extremely skeptical of anything the
schools and their specialists may say about their children and their
conditions and needs. Above all, they should understand that it is
almost certainly the school itself and all its tensions and anxieties
that are causing these difficulties and that the best treatment for
them will probably be to take the child out of school
altogether."
Families who have done just that are relieved to find that their
children regain the love of learning which they had in their early
years. Unlike school teachers, who see a cross-section of different
children each year, homeschooling parents watch learning take place
within the same child over many years, and thus learn to respect each
child's unique learning style, to trust the child's personal
timetable, and to recognize that mistakes are a normal and temporary
part of the learning process for everyone. (There is no rush, after
all; many homeschoolers who did not read until age ten or twelve
nonetheless have done very well in college.) This relaxed attitude on
the part of homeschooling parents keeps the child's self-worth intact,
makes labels irrelevant, and allows learning to take place as readily
as in toddlerhood: homeschoolers regularly out-perform their schooled
peers on measures of academic achievement, socialization, confidence,
and self-esteem. In fact, Gatto reports that "children schooled
at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally
trained peers in their ability to think."
For many years, Holt challenged schools to "explain the
difference between a learning difficulty (which we all experience at
times) and a learning disability. He asked teachers how they
discriminate between causes which lie within the nervous system of the
learner and those factors outside of the learner- the learning
environment, the teacher's explanations, the teacher, or the material.
Not surprisingly, he reported that he "never received any
coherent answers to these questions... [yet] this distinction is so
crucial that I don't see how we can talk usefully about the learning
problems of children unless we make it." Why, then, are teachers
so sure of the existence of widespread neurological disabilities?
Perhaps they confuse cause and effect: as Holt observes,
"Teachers say 'reading must be difficult, or so many children
wouldn't have trouble with it.'" Holt argues that "it is
because we assume that it is so difficult that so many children have
trouble with it...all we accomplish by our worrying, 'simplifying',
and teaching, is to make reading a hundred times harder for children
than it need be... we think badly, or even perceive badly, or not at
all, when we are anxious and afraid...when we make children afraid, we
stop learning dead in its tracks."
Indeed, many research studies show that the expectations teachers
have about a child's learning abilities strongly influence the child's
academic performance. Other studies show a high correlation between
children's anxieties and perceptual handicaps- and further show that
lowering those anxieties (and treating food allergies, if present)
greatly lower the incidence of such difficulties. But we don't need
researchers and experts to tell us what is wrong. We need only listen
to the children themselves, who have tried for years to communicate
their pain, frustration, confusion, and anger. When children are
driven to addictive drugs, self-mutilation, and suicide, obviously
they are trying to communicate something of critical importance. |
| Are learning difficulties in
reality the understandable response of normal children forced to
conform to the abnormal conditions of conventional classrooms? Most
tellingly, have the schools failed to see the crucial difference
between mere descriptions of common, temporary learning errors
worsened by stress, and scientific proof? While the supposed
neurological anomalies have never been identified, it isn't difficult
to locate abnormal conditions in the learning environment of the
schools: fierce competition, physical inactivity (especially difficult
for boys); fragmented topics which bear little relationship to the
child's own interests and experiences; constant checking- and
doubting- of progress; insufficient family time; few opportunities to
meet people of other ages; lack of quiet time for privacy and
contemplation; constant abrupt changes of topics (preventing in-depth
learning); few opportunities for a teacher's undivided attention;
discouragement of sharing work and ideas with classmates (a golden
opportunity missed); teasing from other frustrated children; the
discouragement of self-fulfilling labels, and, above all, the
indignity of being a powerless "non-person", whose
legitimate needs and attempts to communicate those needs are smothered
by institutional defensiveness. All of these difficulties can be
avoided in homeschooling- assuming that the government allows
sufficient autonomy. |
"Labeling
is disabling" because children believe what we tell them. |
| "Labeling is
disabling" because children believe what we tell them. If we must
label something, let it be the learning environment, not the learner:
instead of "hyperactive child", let's concern ourselves with
"activity-restrictive" schools; instead of an
"attention-deficient" student, we ought to worry about
"inspiration-deficient" classrooms; instead of
"school-phobic child", we should use honest words such as
"anxious" and "frightened", and be very careful
when we look for the source of that anxiety. Using Occam's Razor,
let's look for the simplest theory that fits the facts, not the most
obscure and complicated one. A stressful, punitive, and threatening
environment more than sufficiently explains learning problems. There
is no need to confuse ourselves with school techspeak, unproven
theories, and scape-goating which serve to protect a social
institution that has failed our children.
What could be done instead? Mcgill University Professor Norman
Henchey recommends that we "rethink the whole notion of
compulsory schooling"1. Henchey
advocates the return to homeschooling and "other routes to
adulthood...apprenticeship programs, formal and informal learning
services, public service. A whole variety of things might be presented
to young people." Perhaps then we can honor each child's personal
learning style, and, as Armstrong urges, "give children the
encouragement they need in order to feel like competent, successful
human beings."2 Children are
born to learn. They deserve a safe, nurturing learning environment
where they can do so, in an atmosphere of patience, respect,
gentleness, and trust, not threats, force, and cynicism. As Einstein
warned us years ago, "It is a very grave mistake to think that
the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of
coercion."
Every child is a gifted child.
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| 1
1987 Interview, "Growing Without Schooling", issue 59 (1987),
pages 29-30.
2
Armstrong, Thomas. In Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging your
Child's Personal Learning Style. Los Angeles, CA: J.P. Tarcher, 1987.
Portuguese
translation |
| Jan
Hunt Library |
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