The Pros And Cons Of Learning Disabilities

The pros and cons of the inclusion of special education students in the public school system.

Cheryl Jorgensen, the work of a scientist-philosopher named Thomas Kuhn in 1962 is referenced regarding disability and competence where Kuhn stated that, “intelligence … can be reliably measured… mental retardation is defined as low levels of intelligence… [these students] … can’t learn much general education content… we aren’t sure that students know, understand, can learn, or have something to say, we presume that they don’t, can’t, and probably never will” (2005, p. 5). Dr. Jorgensen refutes this theory and goes on to support it by citing other works on research suggesting that students with disabilities have shown greater progress when they are challenged with high expectations and good, supportive, nurturing instruction. “Children learn best when they feel valued, when people hold high expectations for them, and when they are taught and supported well” (2005, p.

I never put too much thought into the reaction I give if someone tells me their child has a disability therefore, never noticed if they showed distaste to any apology or sympathy I offered. I’m sure that I am not the only one who has not meant any harm by these things, but the article helps see the situation from the opposing parent’s point of view which offers enlightenment on how to handle future encounters to ensure everyone is comfortable and the language isn’t ignominious. I intend to utilize the wisdom I’ve learned from Ms. Snow’s article in my own classroom one day. Along with her words I now feel inclined to do further research on how to better create lessons, organize my classroom, and provide the proper tools as well as become a support system for any student with any kind of disability both learning and

12% of the student population, but 58% of those placed in seclusion or involuntary confinement, and 75% of those physically restrained at school to immobilize them or reduce their ability to move freely” (CRDC, 2014). That is horrible to take your disabled child to school now they are in a safe environment, but instead of teaching them right from wrong they are just restraining and not helping the grow.

Writing is one of important activities on language learning. It is needed to transfer the information which they have seen or heard to be documented. In addition, writing is a complex activity on language learning since it needs the other abilities to write letters, numbers, symbols, words, phrases, and even sentences such as ability to read well, ability to understand the sequence of letter in a word, ability in using symbols, correct punctuation, and capital letters, ability to combine words into a correct sentence, and also ability to use correct grammar in a sentence. Yet, dyslexics have them in low quality. Since dyslexics have problem in writing, there are several mistakes which are commonly made by dyslexics. Dyslexics usually have illegible handwriting

Individuals with developmental disabilities face many problem in our society due to our low expectations that we have for them. Yes they do have problems, but just like everyone else they have their strengths and weaknesses. There may be things that I’m not good at, but I still have the ability to find a good paying job that involves my strengths. By looking at the two essays, For Hire: Dedicated Young Man With Down Syndrome and An Inside View of Autism I was able to see how much our society discriminates against their unique features. We should focus on each person’s strengths rather then generalizing about all individuals with developmental disabilities.

Learning how to read and write was a challenging task for me as a kid. I believe I couldn’t read until the second grade and that was embarrassing. Being a slow learner made me insecure, which hindered me from building the confidence I needed to succeed and get pass identifying with having a disability. Instead, I was enrolled into a special ed class that I had to leave my regular class to attend. During my special ed class all I could think about was how I couldn’t wait to get back to my regular class so I didn’t have to tell any of my classmate where I was. Therefore, my focus unfortunately wasn’t on learning, like it should have been!

The concept of the learning disability is relatively new, having been constructed identified within the past fifty to sixty years (Sleeter, 2010). Surprisingly, the construct of the learning disability hinges upon creation of an ideological standard of normal; the implicit assumption that we as educators know what constitutes right or normal attitudes or behavior, and that anything which falls outside of normal is a potential disability (Sleeter, 2010). These are unproven assumptions, rather than empirical, data-driven fact, and form the backbone for current definition, assessment, and interventional methods (Sleeter, 2010).

Furthermore, school is a place where you make friends and integrate with one another. However, individuals with disabilities are often susceptible to face vast number of stereotypes, labels or discomfort at school. That is because of the lack of consciousness and biases that is created by imposing a distinction between non-disabled versus disabled from an early age. Valerie Piro tells us that some her classmates told her that she has a “perfect personal essay topic” (Piro 3). Her friends imply that she has the “perfect essay topic” because of her disability. Yet, it is rather confusing that they are being ironic, jealous or making fun of her situation. As Piro emphasizes, human beings need to “encourage one another to demand that society accept”

Moreover, the participants ranged between the ages of nine and seventeen years old. The study entailed six male students and seven females students with a Learning Disability while, nine male students and sixteen female students without a Learning Disability. The participants with a Learning Disability consisted of six students from fourth grade, three students from fifth grade, and three students from sixth grade from two different middle schools and one student from eleventh grade. Additionally, the participants without Learning Disabilities consisted of six students from six grade, four students from fourth grade, and eleven students from fifth grade and one student from tenth grade. The majority of the participants were Caucasian but one was Multiracial and Asian. Moreover, the participant’s socioeconomic status for students with and without disabilities was predominately middle class. The participants were exposed to an eighteen-week program, the teachers that provided the instruction had all been trained by Scholastic. All participants received 90 minutes of instruction for 5 days a

Still to this day, there is a negative stigma and sense of rejection projected towards individuals with intellectual disabilities. If an individual is seen as unresponsive to help, in the past they were considered to be a burden upon society (Reynolds, & Dombeck, 2016). Until recently, the typical form of “treatment” that most individuals received consisted of seclusion from mainstream society, thus labeling them as a “patient” which leads to a sense of disempowerment (2016). Furthermore, this label resulted in implications that individuals with an intellectual disability were limited, helpless, and sick- thus imposing thoughts of pity (2016). Until medical causes became known, mental retardation, the original name for intellectual disability,

Students with disabilities require programs and special attention that is generally overshadowed by labels. Students with special needs face an ever-growing range of challenges that few educators can address. Disability has many labels… dysfunction, retardism, disorders. They all come down to one thing which is that humans label differences and that is where we have gone wrong. Research has found that “75% of students with learning disabilities will have underdeveloped social skills” as compared to students of normal or average intelligence. (Darrow

These changes in definitions and wording related to Intellectual Disabilities tells us that our culture today has advanced greatly in terms of dealing with the Intellectual Disabilities. This is because it has become concerned with human dignity and caring towards individuals with Intellectual Disabilities. Our culture today seems to be more understanding about Intellectual Disabilities then it did in the past. This is because society is trying to be more inclusive with the intellectually disabled. Definition and wording changes shows that society and culture has changed its attitudes towards intellectually disabled individuals (Richards, Brady & Taylor, 2015). Today’s culture seems to be more sensitive about the terminology and labels used

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are the largest groups of students with exceptionalities in the classroom today (“Fast Facts,’ 2013). LD students have held this ranking since the 1980’s. The numbers for the next leading group of exceptional students in the classroom (speech/language impaired students) are almost half that of LD students (“Fast Facts,’ 2013). Students with learning disabilities may not seem that different from their neurotypical peers. They may have trouble learning in some academic areas, even when provided highly effective instruction, but do fine in others (Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, Lipsey, and Roberts, 2002). The unevenness in their academic development is a main characteristic for LD students (Torgesen, 2002). Other typical characteristics that might be found include low achievement rates, easily distracted, lack of social skills, lack of motivation, and difficulty with information-processing (Rosenberg, 2011, p. 142). Of students

Personally, my close friend, Joey, has a learning disability that was brought about during his birth. During birth, the doctor crushed his skull, leaving him with dyscalculia and dyslexia, along with various learning disabilities. Due to this disability, he cannot retain information and does not understand concepts that he should for his age. For example, one day he went into the store with five singles and what he was purchasing