Learning Disabilities
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Abstract
To stand back and view learning disabilities from afar is to see a landscape of rugged and diverse terrain. Over the past quarter of a century the field has grown up; that is, the young schoolchildren whose parents banded together in the early 1960s to get services for them are now thirty-something and going to their children's IEP meetings. Conferences on learning disabilities now include sessions on transition, college programs, and employment. Some corners of the landscape have been repainted. "Hyperactivity" and "short attention span" have become "attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder" and "attention deficit disorder." Some rugged canyons are untouched. Many people still do not believe that learning disabilities are real. The classroom teacher who recently scrawled across his student's IEP the words "He is just poorly motivated and could do the work if he only tried" is far from unique. The disciplinarian who suspended the chronically late student with learning disabilities saw only a poor attitude, not a temporal disability. Many regular educators are quite amenable to the concept of learning disabilities, until they are required to do something differently than they would otherwise. Then a learning disability dissolves into a fancy excuse for getting undeserved special consideration. Drastic winds of change swept across the field of learning disabilities in the mid 1970s, reforming the entire scene. With the advent of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA), learning disabilities moved from the clinic to the classroom. The numbers of children identified as learning disabled grew from a few thousand to over 2 million. The average level of expertise of the people serving the children could only plummet disastrously. The fundamental problems facing the field have not changed. First, there are too few teachers adequately trained in effective teaching strategies. Second, most curricular materials are inadequately designed for use with low performing children. Third, there are still gaps in our basic knowledge about learning disabilities. Lastly, one major problem has been added to the learning disability scene—a superb federal law (IDEA) not yet correctly implemented. This law and its implementation are fundamental to all of special education, including learning disabilities, and it, in turn, provides a framework from which the whole field can be viewed.