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Learning Disabilities and
Difficulties:
The Emotional Scars |
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In modern Western
society mastery of basic academic skills — reading, writing and arithmetic
— is a necessary prerequisite for success in both school and employment
settings and society at large. A large percentage of children suffer from
learning disabilities or learning difficulties and therefore don’t master
― or only partially master ― these required academic skills. |
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The seriousness of such
difficulties is hard to exaggerate. Unless the child's problem is dealt
with in an adequate manner, what awaits him outside the school gates is
probably nothing but a hopeless future. According to Gerber et al., many
adults with learning disabilities are underemployed, often stuck in
dead-end jobs that do not tap into their true vocational potential. Many
others are not finding employment at all, add Zigmond and Thornton in
their article, “The future of learning disabilities.” They are
unsuccessful in their pursuit of further training, and few are accessing
the adult services that have been developed to serve them. Many LD young
adults have major academic and vocational needs that make it hard for them
to live independent lives.
The figures on the salary
check, however, might not be the only concern. People who cannot read can
also not read instructions on a bottle of prescription medicine, look up
numbers in a telephone directory, or read the menu in a restaurant. Being
unable to read traffic signs and street names, or maps on long journeys,
they cannot travel freely. They cannot read the letters that their
children bring home from their teachers or help them with homework. They
cannot write to friends or read for pleasure. In fact, they are severely
isolated in a reading world.
Choice, in all its
facets, is diminished in the life of the reading-disabled person. If he
votes, he is forced to cast a vote of questionable worth. Being unable to
read important information in print, he can't make an informed decision.
He would probably vote for a face, a smile, or a style, not for a mind or
character or body of beliefs. Even the printed TV schedule, which provides
people with the luxury of preselection, does not belong to the arsenal of
options in the life of a nonabled reader. One consequence is that the
viewer watches only what appears at moments when he happens to have time
to turn on the switch. A lot more common is that the TV set remains in
operation night and day. Whatever program is offered at the hour when he
walks into the room will be the nutriment that he accepts and swallows.
Learning or reading
disabilities can have destructive emotional effects. Persistent learning
failure leads to anguish, embarrassment and frustration. “There is
something terrifying about sitting at the back of the class and having
somebody ask you questions which you know you will never be able to
answer,” an adult dyslexic told British actress Susan Hampshire, who is
also dyslexic.
In describing his
feelings about growing up with a learning disability, Nelson Rockefeller,
who served as vice president of the United States and governor of the
state of New York, recalled, “I was dyslexic, and I still have a hard time
reading today. I remember vividly the pain and mortification I felt as a
boy of eight when I was assigned to read a short passage of scripture at a
community vesper service and did a thoroughly miserable job of it. I know
what a dyslexic child goes through... the frustration of not being able to
do what other children do easily, the humiliation of being thought not too
bright when such is not the case at all.”
For some the humiliation
becomes too much. In one study, Peck found that over 50 percent of all
suicides under age fifteen in Los Angeles County had been previously
diagnosed as having learning disabilities. The actual percentage of
youngsters labeled “learning disabled” in most school districts in
the United States is below 5 percent; therefore, it seems clear that
youngsters with learning disabilities constitute a disproportionately
large percentage of adolescent suicides compared with the general
adolescent population.
In another study,
conducted in Ontario, Canada, the researchers analyzed all the available
suicide notes (n = 27) from 267 consecutive adolescent suicides for
spelling and handwriting errors. The results showed that 89 percent of the
twenty-seven adolescents who committed suicide had significant deficits in
spelling and handwriting that were similar to those of adolescents with
LD.
Behavior problems
resulting from their negative experiences are not uncommon in LD
youngsters. The strain and the frustration of underachieving can cause
them to be reluctant to go to school, to throw temper tantrums before
school or in some cases to play truant. Cheating, stealing and
experimenting with drugs can also result when children regard themselves
as failures.
Former First Lady Barbara
Bush, who has a learning-disabled son, noted that “learning disabilities
can destroy lives. To get a really disturbing sense of this — we need only
to look at the estimates of the learning disabled among juvenile
delinquents.” Results from a study in the U.S.A. by the National Center
for State Courts demonstrated that youths with LD were 200 percent more
likely to be arrested than nondisabled peers for comparable offences.
According to the U.S. Department of Education 60 percent of America's
prison inmates are illiterate and 85 percent of all juvenile offenders
have reading problems.
Since it brings such
devastation in the lives of so many children, no stone may be left
unturned to eradicate learning disabilities or learning difficulties. As
Richardson states so succinctly, “Literacy gives us the keys to knowledge
and wisdom — the keys to the Kingdom. Isn't it time now for us all to put
our heads together, to work together to see to it that those keys are
given to every child?” |
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Sources:
- Reiff, H. B, & Gerber, P. J., “Adults with
learning disabilities,” in N. N. Singh & I. L. Beale (eds.), Learning
Disabilities: Nature, Theory, and Treatment (New York: Springer-Verlag,
1992).
- Zigmond, N., & Thornton, H. S., “The future of
learning disabilities,” in K. A. Kavale (ed.), Learning Disabilities:
State of the Art and Practice (Boston: College-Hill Press, 1988).
- Kozol, J., Illiterate America (Garden City,
NY: Anchor Press, 1985).
- Hampshire, S., Every Letter Counts: Winning in
Life Despite Dyslexia (London: Corgi Books, 1991).
- Rockefeller, N., TV Guide, 16 October 1976,
12-14, cited in J. Lerner, Learning Disabilities: Theories,
Diagnosis, and Teaching Strategies (4th ed.), (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1988).
- Peck, M., “Crisis intervention treatment with
chronically and acutely suicidal adolescents,” in M. Peck, N. L.
Farberow, & R. Litman (eds.), Youth suicide (New York: Springer,
1985).
- Hazel, E., McBride, A., & Siegel, L. S., “Learning
disabilities and adolescent suicide,” Journal of Learning
Disabilities, November 1997, vol. 30.
- Broder, P. K., et al., “Further observations on
the link between learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency.”
Journal of Educational Psychology, 1981, vol. 73.
-
http://www.hcity.com, website maintained by G. Sagmiller, author of
Dyslexia My Life.
- Richardson, S., “Specific developmental dyslexia.
Retrospective and prospective views,” Annals of Dyslexia, 1989,
vol. 39.
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