Important notice from the GRAMMAR POLICE. Plz read. This means you.
rohina:
Quote from: rufio on 2009 June 15, 23:35:26
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.
Dude, this is a result of your personality disability, not a learning disability.
Quote from: rufio on 2009 June 15, 23:35:26
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.
Well, one person's creativity and flexibility is another person's having educational standards. I deal with learning disabled students all the time, and a lot of the ones with alphabet disorders have this idea that I should redesign my courses to suit them. Occasionally, I get the talk from them about how my assignments, which are designed according to specific pedagogical principles to be open-ended and require critical and analytical thinking, are counter to their disability, because the way they learn requires detailed and specific instructions. Now, to me, the ability to work out how you are going to approach the task is absolutely the student's responsibility. I will HELP, but I am not going to set all that out for you, because I am teaching you how to do it yourself.
I have met with disability support people, and they always say, "oh, yes, the student has to work this out, and we will help them develop a plan of attack" but the students themselves often bitch and whine about it, and talk about how "my other professor" spoon feeds instructions: "wipe nose, get out pencil, find a piece of paper". So I am skeptical about how much of this is related to disability and how much to intellectual laziness.
I once had a learning disabled student who was in my class, and was a whiny bitch. She came back 2 years later to do another class after having been in the workplace, and her attitude was totally different. She would come to me with plans of what she was going to do, and ask me for my input, instead of complaining, she actually had strategies for getting the work done. When I commented on how much better she was doing, she said something to effect of, it is amazing what you find out you can do when you are getting your ass kicked in the real world.
My point here is, there's a difference between working to overcome your issues and expecting everyone else to stoop to your level.
rufio:
Quote from: rohina on 2009 June 15, 23:57:55
Dude, this is a result of your personality disability, not a learning disability.
Which is why I prefaced that by saying that I don't have a learning disability, though I don't think I was the only person with a "personality disability" in that instance.
Quote
I have met with disability support people, and they always say, "oh, yes, the student has to work this out, and we will help them develop a plan of attack" but the students themselves often bitch and whine about it, and talk about how "my other professor" spoon feeds instructions: "wipe nose, get out pencil, find a piece of paper". So I am skeptical about how much of this is related to disability and how much to intellectual laziness.
So, some of your students are lazy. They are obviously not damaged beyond the ability to learn anything, and nobody is forcing you to completely redesign your courses to accommodate them, or trying to convince you (or your students) that the learning disabilities do not exist and the sole responsibility of the teacher to deal with. I don't see whatever vast speshul learning disability bureaucratic conspiracy you think you're up against here.
socurious:
Learning Disabled does not equal stupid. The opposite is actually often true. True LD people have average to exceptional IQs. That being said, I do agree with Rohina's statement:
"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."
There are a number of examples of exceptionally talented, accomplished people who are LD. They are those who think outside the norm, figure out what and how they need to learn, and end up owning the world. The edumacators who make excuses and tell the students that it's okay that they don't know something are doing a terrible disservice to everyone. The "LD" students are no longer held accountable, so they no longer try to figure out things on their own. When they go out into the "real world," they are going to find out first hand that the accommodations aren't so accommodating.
rufio:
Quote from: maurie on 2009 June 16, 00:47:38
The edumacators who make excuses and tell the students that it's okay that they don't know something are doing a terrible disservice to everyone. The "LD" students are no longer held accountable, so they no longer try to figure out things on their own.
See, I keep hearing about all of these horrible horrible OMG terrible conspiracies to protect learning-disabled kids in a bubble and not requiring them to actually think, but have never actually encountered them anywhere except in blanket statements on message boards. It's like how Communism/Socialized Medicine/Dirty Mexicans/Neoconservative Jews are somehow taking over America, except that rohina isn't American, so the madness has clearly invaded Australia as well.
rohina:
Quote from: rufio on 2009 June 16, 00:08:26
So, some of your students are lazy. They are obviously not damaged beyond the ability to learn anything, and nobody is forcing you to completely redesign your courses to accommodate them, or trying to convince you (or your students) that the learning disabilities do not exist and the sole responsibility of the teacher to deal with. I don't see whatever vast speshul learning disability bureaucratic conspiracy you think you're up against here.
I never said I was. The only conspiracy in this thread is the one in your head which automagically reads everything I write as "ROHINA IS THE ANTICHRIST" in your feeble little brain. Go away, the adults were having a conversation.
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