There are three genes that have been associated with dyslexia. Dyslexia is generally regarded as a neurological disorder. One of those genes affects phonemic awareness and kids with this gene have difficulty associating sounds with letters because they evidently don’t think of sounds the way non-dyslexics do. Another of the genes affects the ability of some dyslexics to understand sequential tasks. And a third gene impacts spatial perception.

For the students that are bored because they can’t read the worksheet (because they never learned to read because they’re dyslexic), the issue in environmental only to the extent that we failed to recognize the nature of their disability and implement some reasonable solution for it (like an Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction). I think that’s well over half of the kids that actually end up being placed as learning disabled.

When you see “students sitting at a desk, worksheet in front of them, bored out of their mind” day after day, I’d say they have a teacher who’s better suited to a career as a professional greeter at Wal-Mart. Of course, we don’t get rid of such teachers – partly because we can’t replace them. But that’s a different subject.

I don’t know why you think that looking at our teaching practices as opposed to “labeling students” is a binary choice. I’d suggest that we need to do both. We need to look closely at our teaching practices AND we need to get better at identifying real disabilities.

Are learning disabilities environmental? If we’re discussing the most common form of learning disability, dyslexia, I think the verdict is in and the answer on that is “no,” it’s hereditary. I think environment plays a much greater role in mental impairment, in the form of fetal alcohol syndrome, prenatal nutrition in impoverished communities, environmental toxins, etc.

Any principal who runs a school these days where kids can spend three or four years bored, with a worksheet in front of them, deserves some profound punishment that includes loss of licensure.

You’re right when you say that most special education students are looking for a challenge.

I would like to see us get past the idea that poor performance implies a learning disability. I’d like to see us develop more meaningful ways to identify real disabilities. I hope we’re not far from that…

I like the basic idea of avoiding disability, too. If you are talking about what people can DO, we’re on the same page.

But you turned my noun into an adjective. I’m not talking about disability. I’m talking about disabilities. I’m discussing a civil rights law (and a legal status) for a person how has a neurological disorder that a doctor can now identify.

My question is not, “Can we prevent Billy from falling two years behind his peers in reading?” We can. My question is, “Does Billy having a neurological disorder justify taking some special steps to protect his rights, steps that include documenting his status as having a disorder?”

The legal and ethical issue has become how we measure whether he has a disorder that merits civil rights protection…

I agree that what we’re discussing applies equally to both dyslexics and to students with other problems/disorders that affect learning.

You said that “We seem to be training people with impairment(s) to get into the mainstream.” Within the school setting I think it is clear that students with disabilities have a right to be with their peers, in that “mainstream.” There are a number of terms that get used in special education that are basically code words for philosophical approaches – mainstreaming and inclusion being the two most obvious. The courts have consistently ruled that children with disabilities have to be educated with their peers whenever that’s at all possible. The idea goes all the way back to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1950; a separate education is not an equal education…

It’s also pretty clear from the research that children with disabilities benefit academically from being with their peers – even if they can’t keep up. And children without disabilities benefit socially from having disabled children with disabilities in the room.

While I’d like to think that I contribute to the growth toward self-actualization in my students, self-actualization is usually and adult attainment (as I understand the concept), and one which most people never achieve. My biggest concern for my students with disabilities is that they leave school with both the social and the academic skills to live a fulfilling life as part of their society. I’d like their exceptional nature to be accepted and appreciated by their peers, too.

But ultimately my point in this piece is that the new law on learning disabilities seems to a) have an inadequate, fuzzy definition of learning disabilities and b) seems to be designed to reduce the number of students that qualify for services, regardless of whether they actually have a disability, whatever a disability is anymore…