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Re: special help for special people



Judy,
There has been a long discussion on PHYS-L about how to handle
students in the various catagories of the "learning disabled". The
following response made me think of you so I thought I'd pass it along for
your enjoyment.

Cheers, Jim

P.S. Are you going to stay in town while David is in Denver? Let us know it
you'd like a little company. -J.

Greetings everyone! I'm glad this topic has come up. I think I'll
try to persue this topic from a different perspective. All throughout school
and college, I was identified as being severly LD (Learning Disabled). Part
of the reason I was labeled this was becuase I was born deaf and my condition
was not discovered till I was about 4yrs old...I said my first word when I was
5yrs. After several operations, most of my hearing was restored. Aside from
my hearing problem, I was still diagnosed as LD. I spent most of my grade
school years in special (slow) classes and met with a speech/hearing therapist
after school. In junior high, I just met with a tutor daily in school. In
high school, I did not want anymore special attention. I could have easily
used the "services" that were provided, but _I_ wanted to see what _I_ could
do formyself. I enrolled in nearly all of the upper level classes and with
much struggling and staying after school for some help from the teachers, I
went from a ranking of 196/212 my freshmen year to 8/212 my senior year.
After going through college, majoring in education, biology,
chemistry, physics, and geology, I was on the Dean's List half of my college
carreer (5.5yrs). I tried using some of the services that were available for
the LD college students, but I found them to be more of a hinderance than
anything else.
Now, since I'm teaching myself, it angers me seeing all of the
"special" help the students have. I do believe there are some students who do
need _some_ extra help, but I think things have gone overboard! I believe we
are trying to "help" them so much that we are actually doing more damage than
good. One of my theories is that students almost never achieve what we expect
out of them. Students tend to always fall short of the goals, so in response
for those who are constantly falling short, we lower our expectations to try
to encompass everyone and allow those who tend to fail frequently the
opportunity to succeed. Since the expectations have been lowered, eventually
the students start falling short of the new expectations, so we lower them
again. I'm afraid if we keep doing this, the students might as well be in a
mental coma.
I do admit, the one thing that helped me succeed was _NOT_ my teachers
(not entirely), but my family. Both parents worked two jobs, but still made
time to help all of us kids with our school work and constantly
checking, drilling, and helping us with our school work. At my house, school
came first (well, family and chores actually did, but school was very close)
and a strong emphasis was placed on doing the best work possible. I admit,
there were times of extreme frustration and at times tears, but it all paid
off. I think this is where many kids fall short. They have very little
support from home and no high expectations to live up too. If it doesn't feel
right or requires "too much work" then they are being overworked and they have
justification not to do it or do their work with partial effort.
My advice, be stubborn. Don't lower your expectations. Speaking as
someone who has been through the "system", lower standards will not help in
the long run.

Dwight Souder