Apodixis Press

What are Learning Disabilities?

by Jill Smith, M.A. and Howard Diller, M.D.

Many parents think there is something wrong with their child. The child is tested at school. The personnel at school find nothing. Maybe those professionals are wrong, and the parents are right!

We are using a broader definition of learning disabilities than the one used in most public schools. This expanded notion of what learning disabilities are is important.

Our definition of learning disabilities is: significant differences in how one processes or manages information.

These are information processing patterns that differ from the way the average person handles the information swirling around us all. These information processing differences (or problems) are the reason that children who are learning disabled may eventually fail. We believe people with these significant differences in the way they manage the everyday information available in the world around them are vulnerable to damaged self concept or damaged self image. They are vulnerable to holding themselves in poor regard. This often happens before serious failure occurs or without any outright failure ever occurring.

Public school attention to learning disabled children began in the mid sixties. In two states parents lobbied their legislators and demanded laws be passed to provide special instruction for these bright children who were failing. Most of the rest of the country followed suit quickly. "Bright and failing" wasn't much of a definition, so they added to this statement some specifics they knew about what these children were not. The failing children were not blind. The failing children were not deaf. The failing children were not emotionally disturbed. We had known for a very long time that bright children with these certain difficulties might fail, but the children addressed in this legislation did not have any of these long recognized difficulties that might cause bright children to fail. A long list of things these children were not (the things we already knew could cause bright children to fail) was created. They amplified the poor definition of "bright children who were failing," and that poor definition with its list of what the children were NOT stayed with us.

In the nineteen seventies, we improved our understanding of learning disabled children. We began to focus on where the academic problems were showing up for the struggling child. If severe trouble was seen in reading, the child was designated as dyslexic; if the problem was in math, the child was labeled as having dyscalculia; and so forth. We added a great many dys-- words to our vocabulary in that decade.

This was actually an improvement over the efforts of the nineteen sixties when we were able to define learning disabilities only by saying these were bright children who were failing. The authors think this improvement was real but slight. In the sixties it was as if we were saying, "We have a problem." In the seventies, it was as if we were saying, "It's in France." All we knew when someone said dyscalculia was that the child's problems were most obvious in math. This brought no information to light about the cause of the problems. Without knowing the cause, this information (about where the problems were apparent) gave little help because it provided no information about what the problems were or how to fix those problems.

In the eighties we improved a great deal. In the eighties we began to determine the cognitive patterns or the information processing problems learning disabled children have. Does this child have difficulty with auditory memory? Does that child have position-in-space problems (the problems that cause both reversals of b's and d's and trouble in fractions and algebra later on)? Is this a child with long-term visual memory problems?

In the eighties we were finally able to understand the learning patterns that caused the child to be stressed and to fail to learn efficiently. We also began to understand more about our own teaching. Were we teaching to auditory strength in this class or on this day? Did it change in the next class or on the next day? Once we knew the cognitive patterns of the particular child, we could even predict, sometimes, where these same patterns would cause new troubles in the future.

Now we were in a position to determine what to do to intervene. We were focusing on what was wrong rather than where it was going wrong. We began to be able to predict what would be stressful for a child because that subject or concept was always delivered in a way that would be difficult for this particular learner.

The child with auditory memory problems who has a dreadful time with phonics in kindergarten and first grade will probably also have trouble in high school with foreign language. Remembering what you hear is critical as you try to master the sounds associated with letters (phonics). Remembering the language you hear is critical to mastery of a modern foreign language. We, now, really could change things for a child with information processing deficits with this new information. Once we know a child's pattern and can adapt our presentation, we create the conditions for success.

The only problem with all this new found wisdom was that most of the state laws related to learning disabilities were passed in the mid sixties and early seventies, during the era of the "bright and failing" definition. They reflect the knowledge of that period. Most of these laws have not been updated to reflect the significant improvement in our knowledge and understanding. Children must still be shown to be bright and failing to qualify for help.

No attention is paid to the cognitive patterns. For a school to be in compliance with these laws, we just need to know whether the student is bright and failing something. If the child is bright and failing, the child "qualifies." Then the child is "in" the program for that subject in which the child was proven to be failing, and the child receives special help. In many school districts, we then begin to do all the same things for that child that have not worked in the regular classroom, we just do them louder, slower, and one to one or in a small group. We look no where else beyond that subject the child is failing. We don't look for new techniques that might work better.

The children we "qualify" do not have the benefit of an evaluation that would bring to light their cognitive patterns. They have one to determine simply if they are bright and failing. They are "in" the learning disability program, but very little more is added to anyone's collection of information about the way they manage information. Future instruction is more of the same or a scattergun approach of new techniques, with the teacher hoping somehow something will work.

With this definition of bright and failing, the authors think we miss that army of children, children who are struggling because of their unusual information processing patterns, children who have not failed enough to be identified or even noticed. They don't fail, perhaps, because they are very, very bright (as well as having those unusual information processing patterns) or, perhaps, because they work very, very hard. Perhaps they are both very bright and working very hard. Many will eventually fail and no one will understand why. Many will drop out. Many will become delinquent. These unidentified learning disabled students will not have had their cognitive patterns identified. Probably those who were identified as learning disabled will not have had their cognitive patterns brought to light, either. Compare this "bright but failing" definition to our definition of a learning disabled person being one with significant differences in the characteristic way one manages information.

The sad thing is that parents are led to believe the child is fine if the child doesn't fail enough to qualify. School personnel seldom admit a student has any problem at all if the child does not "qualify." Often the parent is told the child is "borderline" with no insight offered to the parents into what information processing problems put the child into that "borderline" state (and might eventually cause enough failure for the child to finally "qualify"). This is much like a physician who won't diagnose bronchitis because it is not yet pneumonia. That physician would be thought to be unethical. School personnel get away with that very same diagnostic posture, though.

In this approach, the child is clearly not prospering though not failing enough for schools to bother. The authors have great concern about what happens to parents. There is a prevalent view that the child's failure to learn must be the parents' fault (not the school's fault). There is a television public service announcement in which a well-known actress says, "Show me a parent who really cares, and I'll show you a child who will learn."

The authors take exception to that. We know hundreds of children who do not learn and who have caring, involved parents. The failure of these children to learn is because these children are taught improperly for the way they learn. Their folks are doing homework, they are assuring study times and places to study exist, they are in good communication with the school.

The authors both were educated in public schools in an era when few parents looked at or even asked about homework. They seldom went to their children's schools. When the school is doing its job, the parents don't need to be involved. If the school's efforts are ineffective, the parents must intervene to save the day, but this is not the parents' job. It is not the parents' job to reteach what schools are teaching ineffectively.

Don't misunderstand, we believe parent involvement is wonderful, but the job of education belongs to the school. If educational failure occurs, it's the school's failure. The authors, all too often, find parents who have been given what seems to us wrong (irresponsible) information by the professionals at their child's school (i.e., "your child is just fine," because testing proves the child is bright and not failing enough for the school to try something new, and the school is then uninterested in any further inquiry into the child's information processing patterns which are truly causing stress). Then, these misled parents are held responsible as the situation worsens; the school is not held responsible.

Parents have a hard time educating themselves when this happens. Some go outside the system (to their pediatrician, to the library, to parent support groups, etc.). It may be too late to restore the child to good mental health and to a level of skill mastery that is congruent with intellect. Some parents never discover how they and their child have been short changed.

It is obvious that the children themselves have been denied appropriate information about their ability as well as their educational success or lack of it. These children and their parents have no idea why school is harder. They have no idea why basic skills are poorly mastered. When these children fail, it seems to be a big mystery.

Unlike that well-known actress who insists that all children learn if they have a parent who cares, we see countless children who try hard (at least in the beginning) and care, who have parents who try hard and care, and who do not seem to thrive. This is a very unfair accusation to lay at the feet of parents.

Schools should not have the right to misinform parents this way. To act as if it is the parents' fault that the child doesn't prosper is a dreadful final abdication on the part of the school.

This is far less frequently so in private schools, but most private school educators have been trained in colleges that support the "bright and failing" definition of learning disabilities and their understanding is limited by the limitations of their training.