Important notice from the GRAMMAR POLICE. Plz read. This means you.
timelycorruption:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 June 15, 10:50:06
Quote from: timelycorruption on 2009 June 13, 23:30:43
I wouldn't say that a learning disability is the opposite of intelligence. What about savants?
People with learning disabilities are not intelligent. Savantism is not equivalent to intelligence at all. Intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt to arbitrary conditions. Being a savant just makes you a fleshy robotic machine, no different than a computer. A computer can perform complex mathematics faster than any meatbag. A computer can regurgitate enormous amounts of information with flawless accuracy. A computer cannot beat a 6 year old child in Civilization. Computers are stupid.
That makes more sense. I think I was mixing savantism up with something else in my head.
rufio:
Well, "learning disability" doesn't necessarily mean the inability to learn, just the inability to learn in the specific environments that people are generally expected to learn in. This is why there are often attempts to educate learning-disabled kids in other environments. What that actually says about their universal, environmentally-independent level of intelligence probably depends on a lot of other factors. I don't think we even have a way to measure environmentally-independent intelligence, and they are unlikely to get very far in the standard school system in any case, so I'm not sure it really makes much difference.
rohina:
Inability to learn in specific environments is still inability to use intelligence. If you can only learn in a padded room with flashing lights, then you are pretty screwed unless the entire world is rearranged to take account for your speshulness. I know there's a movement in edumacation to do exactly that. However, this kind of idea of "accomodations" is seriously fucking up a bunch of learning disabled students, because it is designed to delude them into thinking their disability doesn't exist.
Look at it this way: if you only have one arm and one eye and you say you want to be a neurosurgeon, is it reasonable for people to say to you "absolutely, you can totally do that" or would they be better off suggesting that you do something where hand-eye co-ordination is less vital?
dramamine:
Quote from: rohina on 2009 June 15, 22:48:03
Inability to learn in specific environments is still inability to use intelligence. If you can only learn in a padded room with flashing lights, then you are pretty screwed unless the entire world is rearranged to take account for your speshulness. I know there's a movement in edumacation to do exactly that. However, this kind of idea of "accomodations" is seriously fucking up a bunch of learning disabled students, because it is designed to delude them into thinking their disability doesn't exist.
Look at it this way: if you only have one arm and one eye and you say you want to be a neurosurgeon, is it reasonable for people to say to you "absolutely, you can totally do that" or would they be better off suggesting that you do something where hand-eye co-ordination is less vital?
I was typing up something quite similar, but you worded it a lot better than I.
rufio:
Quote from: rohina on 2009 June 15, 22:48:03
Inability to learn in specific environments is still inability to use intelligence. If you can only learn in a padded room with flashing lights, then you are pretty screwed unless the entire world is rearranged to take account for your speshulness. I know there's a movement in edumacation to do exactly that. However, this kind of idea of "accomodations" is seriously fucking up a bunch of learning disabled students, because it is designed to delude them into thinking their disability doesn't exist.
The problem is that "learning disability" is very general - it can refer to people with dyslexia, or people with mild to severe autism, or people with mental retardation, or probably any number of other things. All they have in common is that they have more trouble that usual learning in the environment they're expected to learn in. Some of them can be fixed with minor changes to environment, some of them can be fixed by taking certain drugs, some people do fine if they have someone else take notes for them, and some of them probably can't be fixed at all. I've never been diagnosed with a learning disability, but I have had problems with certain teachers to the extent where it was impossible to actually get any benefit out of the class because the teacher decided to take some kind of vendetta out on me. This was easily fixed by my transferring to a different class. Most people I've met with "learning disabilities" had remarkably similar problems with learning - some superficial aspect of the class they were in made it impossible for them to learn, and they simply transferred to a slightly different classroom or a slightly different teacher or employed different strategies for taking notes/doing homework/etc. or took some mild-strength drug to help them focus and the problem was more or less solved. I don't think the vast majority of these cases are about accommodating people with serious mental deficiencies, but about having teachers show some creativity and flexibility to actually help their students learn.
Actually, when I was 18 and relatively clueless about this sort of thing, I was under the impression that learning disabilities didn't exist. I was told off by various people with learning disabilities who had done some of the things I listed above. Clearly, these measures don't put anyone under the impression that their problems don't exist. I'm sure a lot of non-learning-disabled people will have trouble learning in situations that others would not, as well - it's just that since they never had to try learning in those environments, this disability was never recorded.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page