One of the things I note about my blogging practice is that it lets/forces me to tie up various loose ends that would otherwise remain what they are – random threads of disjointed information. Sometimes I have a hard time coherently bringing them together. Like now. This post is a link-fest, and rather long.
Neal Postman’s recommendation that we include the study of semantics in school curricula to encourage critical thinking sparked my interest in the subject. Postman was referring to Korzybski’s general semantics, a theory about thought and language that examined the the differences between symbol and object, map and territory, and the processes of abstraction we use to construct knowledge. Postman’s interest in the subject was driven by his conviction that we are all potential victims of subtle and not-so-subtle media messages in what has become a technology-dominated society.
I was thinking about this three weeks ago when I left a comment at Liz’s blog, I Speak of Dreams. The comment I left was that the term ‘learning disability’ is a social construction, an idea that she responded to back here.
Blogging offers a great opportunity to have your beliefs and statements reflected back to you for reconsideration. Very briefly, I agree with Liz’s comment and I see why she needed to make it. She pointed out that there is often a neurological component associated with learning disabilities, as well as the social aspect. I want to elaborate a little bit about my comment which I see now has prompted a similar “red flag” from another of her readers. Liz’s comment highlighted my need to do some more reading and think some more on what I meant about disability being a social construction.
My immediate reaction to Liz’s comment was, Well…yes, there are both sociocultural and clinical dimensions to learning disabilities. That’s right. I didn’t mention it, or qualify my comment, because I assumed that it was obvious. And because she felt a need to mention this, I was alerted to the fact that I’d stepped into a bigger discussion I knew little about. I didn’t know about the political dimension of special education, which mirrors current debates about public education in general. Unsurprisingly, I suppose.
I’ve never had a course in reading dysfunction or neurological processes in reading, even in my graduate courses for a reading endorsement. Few teachers have, I’d wager. Every public school teacher has experience working with kids who have learning disabilities, but training in what to do is not widely available. Mostly, what we are offered is a commercially packaged solution that’s adopted at the district level with training provided to specialists and aides. So I’m behind the curve where theory is concerned here.
In reading through the material that Liz posted, I see she has linked to several resources for people who want to explore them. She also criticizes claims that dyslexia is a myth, and offers concrete suggestions for remediating dyslexia. While I agree with Liz that students with processing difficulties require special interventions, she and I do not agree that whole language is “nonsense.” But maybe we can avoid that discussion for now.
When we identify a kid who isn’t making normal progress in school, we try different things and meet with an “intervention team” to discuss the situation. Eventually we test for specific areas of strength and deficit to see if we can get a better sense of what’s happening. Questions that we attempt to resolve have to do with
- memory functions,
- auditory and visual processing,
- language functions, including receptive and expressive vocabulary,
- verbal and non-verbal abstract reasoning or logic,
- attention span and concentration,
- visual-perceptual abilities including various spatial tasks,
- sequencing,
- fine motor dexterity,
- organizational and planning skills.
All of these are mapped against a broad cognitive (IQ) measure, to determine what the expected scores should be. If a student qualifies for services, and an individual education plan is developed, the student meets regularly with a specialist who provides instruction based on the student’s identified needs.
What interests me, and was the point of my comment, is that these same students may not appear in the least “disabled” away from school. The kids that we call “low achievers,” “behind,” and “at risk” may in fact be the same kids doing flips off the high board on a field trip to the pool, while their more “proficient” peers are wallowing in the shallow end afraid to put their faces in the water. I think about this when I work with my students, and I keep in mind that they come to school as whole people, and that it is in reference to curricular scope and sequence that we see them as “disabled.” In other words, the student is not the disability.
This may seem obvious but it isn’t always easy to remember. In the rush of a day when you realize that one of your students is having a particular unanticipated difficulty, you may not always have the ready solution, the properly understanding tone, the most graceful response. Achh! I don’t always get it right, but I try.
How we talk about disability has a powerful influence oh how we think about it. If we work from a deficit starting point, we constantly have to scale down, simplify, and accommodate. If, instead, we look at the situation as affording us an opportunity to restructure lessons with multiple entry points and an array of options for meeting objectives, we can begin to see how differentiating instruction would be beneficial to all students. The “disabled” student might also be viewed as a “creative” learner. Many students who are not LD also enjoy learning in a variety of ways.
I am not denying that these students have a right to high expectations. I am saying, though, that it is unfair to expect all students to learn the same things at the same rate, and in the same way. When we approach disability from a rigid and dogmatic frame of reference, we traumatize and cripple students who may merely need more time or an alternative approach. The discussion about LD that I wasn’t aware of appears to want to force participants into positions that advocate for either a neurological or social analysis of disability. I don’t see them as mutually exclusive. I believe I need to look at each student as an individual with a history and a future, and with needs and capabilities, special or otherwise.
Moreover, the territory is not a world of “either-or-ness” or, for that matter, of “thingness.” Yet our language depicts it as such. The territory never presents itself in all of its detail, whereas our language creates the illusion that our descriptions are complete. Everything in the world is unique but our language forces us into categorical thinking.” – Neal Postman, from “Alfred Korzybski” in Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education (p. 143).
Hayakawa’s, Symbol, Status, and Personality, elaborates the theory of general semantics by Korzybski. Interesting reading, and certainly to the point. “The Tyranny of Words” chapter emphasizes that “The word is not the thing,” and that we need to remember that the meanings of words are inscribed by our responses, and not by other words. Hayakawa points out that, though we teach students the meanings of many things, we neglect to teach about what things do not mean.
The term ‘disability’ is meaningful only when there’s an inflexible norm or a standard, an ‘ability’, to compare with. What it does not mean is as important as what it might mean. Throughout my career I’ve attempted to be a buffer for students against institutional abuses. This has never meant lowering my expectations, but instead has meant having realistic expectations for everyone, which requires flexibility in decision making and a thoughtful consideration of each child’s specific capabilities.
5 Comments
Doug, it’s definitely not about lowering expectations for any kid with a disability “label” (my oldest has several of these labels) but being prepared to offer alternatives and other options to fulfil expectations. In 2000 and 2001 I taught a student with the official diagnosis of dyslexia (although our state system didn’t offer any in-class support for that particular learning disability) and I gave him the option of other entry points, as you suggest. He presented a book report using bullet points in Powerpoint and other technology related options to cover the curriculum. I was worried that he’d get eaten up by the system in high school but I was glad to be proven wrong when I read his name in the Honours list for Year Twelve for his achievement in Hospitality in the local paper just before Christmas. Without the adjusted expectations (not lowered), I’m not sure that he would have found his way to the vocational starting point.
Doug, we must be functioning on parallel planes this morning. I just finished posting on my own blog re: aptitude and motivation, and how what we do in the foreign language classroom sees the intersection of the two. Having a range of students in my classes, some with diagnosed LD, and some others with no formal diagnosis but, given their performance, there is something amiss, I struggle with the issues, too. Especially when I teach at an independent school and, in the absence of the necessary support services, I am often left to my own devices, such as the readings I did early this morning which led to my blog post, it is a real struggle, for the teachers and the kids.
Interesting how many of us are involved with this topic as of late. In my Kansas kindergarten classroom, the added facet would be the need for cultural awareness of similarities and differences in regard to communication (written, verbal and non-verbal) with parents, students, and colleagues as we navigate the waters of Special Education and learning needs. I live in a poorer community that depends heavily on the military post for its economic base. As a result, we work with students and families who have either originated from other parts of the world or who have at least seen other parts of our Big Blue Marble than our country. Communication styles, semantics, English as a second language, eye contact, and cultural references, interpretations and expectations rarely, if ever match the little square boxes on our intervention assessments, which distracts everyone from the students’ needs. Teachers complain how the child is rude, or obviously “slow” because s/he makes eye contact less often than other students. Intervention and I.E.P. team members can’t understand why parents of A.D.H.D. children aren’t in a panic, when those parents’ cultural upbringing did not imprint fear or worry about “busy” children in their home country. So I cringe at those meetings, and bite my tongue as I think “no matter what we say or do, many people in public education put the focus on what we want FROM our students than what we want FOR them.” Doug, thanks for the blog.
Finally it just came to me..what I had to say. After reading and thinking about this post and comments…and the terrific links.
In art education training, Bill Thomas my prof. said. and I am remembering from my notes..”if you ever even glimpse the “real” life of the child, the art of their home, what they craft and make… you are a rare bird. And there will be on that razor’s edge a possiblity to both learn(as teacher) and really instruct. Creating places where these different worlds can collide is not something we discuss anymore.Not at all in the dialogs I here in CA in my trainings.
Last week I asked my parents to construct snail shells for the kids to wear to sing a tune. People at school, teachers scoffed..”they don’t have materials, they don’t do homework, too poor. ”
Well sitting iin my room right now are 9 of the most beautiful constructions I ever saw with more awesome internal support structures, art and design, engineering, you should see the internal structures. Canned Directed Instruction would not have allowed this, it would have at best generated a pattern to follow, but trust in these families to “know how”. I was experimenting with connections like I am discussing. What can “we ” do?. There is something about trust in here too……. From this kids learned, teachers learned, I learned that my families can make some awesome structures but more importantly I bridged something that the dual language, cultural issues the school as institute…let’s say it knocks holes in walls just as that irritating blogger says I am about. I am about kicking holes in these walls. Yes.
Yet in truth I have had to laugh over the years at times teachers saw it (immense capability in a child theat was seen in shallow way)and denied it with no system to “see” or use the information if gleaned…. An example. We had a student who struggled in reading and math. But a very verbal, kind , good kid. If you taught him most of the time he was out of your room in “services” which truthfully seemed to me to be a rather lab like feel for primary education. I held one week an Olympics taking 100 kids and doing all kinds of activities towards years end, as I ever like to “do” things. This was back in time.When I could possibly invent that and see it happen. I had only wanted to do this with my class but other instructor jealousies meant I had them all while they came and went. I decided to have a “free dance” competition.All came to see it, big deal as it turned out. We really saw a dance off in our kids-that told me something. I had to totally control how far out that could go too. But this child was different, not in neighborhood style at all. He tap danced with the most remarkably complex and developed dance I ever saw. My daughters are in dance and one a true jazz tapper I can tell you Kevin was that good…better….I saw applied math, I saw all they ways we could have taught the things he needed to know. A bit late a week before in 6th grade he left the school. I saw the window. This is where I look…this was my training.
Look for the capacity…. is my saying look for ways children in that “other” world, their world, construct meaning and link to it.
This isn’t a sad story, he dances professionally now, in school he struggled, in art he excelled and he has college too. I suppose what I owe Bill Thomas beyond the phenomenal work on theory of learning, mind which I see our teachers needing is that he was literally saying ….look at the doing, the life connection, look out there and have a quiet mind. Design this in all you do. Best book on that “Becoming Human Through Art” Feldman…Observation, observation. He pointed me to Murray Edelman and to metaphor where he did his PHD and to thinking about how we frame what we “know”. Thanks for this post for me once more it endorses the importances of experiences in schools, arts, making, doing, along with teacher training and richer ways of viewing. sarah
Hi Doug — thanks for the kind words.
At some point we probably should have a debate on whole language — but we’d have to do some ground-clearing and weeding first, to make sure that we’re talking about the same thing.
Second, disclosure. I’m self-educated on learning disabilities. My daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in 1997, at the age of 8. My deepest thanks to her second grade teacher (who was also her kindergarten teacher) who called me the second week of school to say that it was like ddd (darling dyslexic daughter) had absorbed none of the reading instruction in 1st grade. Darlene was a very experienced teacher (30+ years) and had also taught my daughter’s older brothers.
If I known then what I know now….oh well, after about 500 hours of remediation, spread over three years, my daughter became an avid, independent reader. Given her slow processing speed, her reading rate is still slower than one would expect, and if a text has a lot of dialog (think Huck Finn) or is factually dense (history textbooks) she reads while listening to the text (thank you Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic).
She is in a demanding college-preparatory program and will go on to college in the fall.
She is not, however, “cured”. Some examples of the way she is still affected: In handwritten work, the letters don’t always appear, or don’t always appear in the correct order (“said” in one sentence; “siad” in the next; and possibly “sad” in the third). She appears to be incapable of proofreading on the fly — she won’t perceive the errors until she’s had a chance to regroup. Interestingly, those sorts of errors are far more rare in typewritten work. The output issues trip her up in the sciences and math. However, in college (unlike high school) she’ll have the opportunity to balance her workload–if she is taking statistics, for example, she will count that as two classes and have the extra time for study and distributed practice to master the material.
She has learned to advocate for herself. Example: explaining her high IQ + slow processing speed to the naive: “It’s like my brain needs to be defragmented. They don’t know how to do that for humans yet, just computers.” She’s learned that she does better with well-organized instructors, an insight which will serve her well in college. She’s learned how to use guides such as Cliff/Sparknotes as concept maps for approaching literature. Enough examples–I could go on for a long time.
With respect to my daughter, it’s not just “a learning difference”. She does have areas of deficit. Ignoring them by papering them over with “learning differences” does her no good. It is important that she knows what her areas of deficit are, so that she can learn how to work around them, or compensate. It is also true that she has formidable strengths.
My job as a parent has been focused on finding the correct remediations, and making sure she gets them and helping her preserve her self-concept as a learner and as a human being.
My daughter doesn’t think of herself as “a dyslexic” but as “a person with dyslexia”. The condition does not limit what she can do–but it does impose some burdens as to how much more work she might have to do to achieve her goals. She has been helped along the way by some truly inspiring teachers, who saw her as a whole person. I have in mind particularly Kat Gullo and Walter Mayes, her 6th grade language arts teacher and the librarian, respectively, at her middle school. Both coaxed her into learning to love reading.
You wrote,
“I’ve never had a course in reading dysfunction or neurological processes in reading, even in my graduate courses for a reading endorsement. Few teachers have, I’d wager. Every public school teacher has experience working with kids who have learning disabilities, but training in what to do is not widely available. Mostly, what we are offered is a commercially packaged solution that’s adopted at the district level with training provided to specialists and aides. So I’m behind the curve where theory is concerned here.”
Doug, don’t you think that is astonishing? You are trained as a professional — but your professional training totally ignores the needs of a significant subset of the population you are to teach. Doesn’t that raise questions about the quality of your preparation? It’s as if a physician specializing in internal medicine learned nothing about neurology.
Nobody has a solid figure on what percentage of kids have difficulties with phonemic awareness — 2%? 5%? 10%? 15%? 20%? Even the International Dyslexia Association doesn’t have a hard figure.
You are not alone, though. In the course of writing my blog, I’ve come across teacher after teacher who reports being totally ignorant about the neurology of reading and language-based learning disabilities. I’ve even heard of SpEd teachers who have never heard of Orton-Gillingham, and have never read anything about dyslexia.
Yesterday, Lisa Hannum wrote (a guest post at the Special Education Law Blog)
http://specialedlaw.blogs.com/home/2007/01/a_structured_la_1.html
“The genealogy of all structured language programs can be traced back to Samual Orton and Anna Gillingham, O-G for short. Although Wilson is probably the best known of these commercially available programs, Concept Phonics, SLANT, and Project Read, are among the many that use the fundamental strategies of O-G instruction. There are many in the field who are not wed to a single program but rely on a thorough understanding of the research that supports these strategies to teach children who are failing to learn to read through traditional classroom strategies.
The sad news is that O-G instruction, or instruction in structured language, is rarely taught at the college and university level. Few teachers, including those with advanced degrees as Reading Specialists, have hands-on experience with O-G, or fully understand why Guided Reading doesn’t work for at least 20% of the students in their classrooms. Proactive, motivated teachers have to seek this type of training on their own, usually at their own expense, unless they are fortunate enough to be in a district that recognizes the value of training staff in a structured language program. “
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Learning Disability: Limiting Label or Helpful To The Student?…
Doug Noon has a discussion at Borderlands, In Names We Trust, on the advantages and disadvantages of labelling, specifically labelling kids as learning disabled. The comments are fascinating (I don’t mean mine; I mean the other teachers’). I agree st…
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