Just because you find the math or foreign language requirement the most frequently cited reason for self-referral difficult does not suggest the presence of a teaming disability specific to these areas. Yet, the predominant advocacy theme of entitlement appears to support this view. When combined with a lack of understanding and a sometimes vague or less than rigorous evaluation, the scale is tipped heavily in favor of a classification as LD with the resulting accommodations.
Can such a scenario be justified? Can there be any confidence in the validity of the LD classification? Support services and accommodations cover a wide spectrum from the simple and most common such as extended time on tests to the complex, such as taped textbooks, note takers in class, different assignments, tests in different rooms, or waivers of requirements, to cite some examples. What about the student who also finds the academic requirements difficult but demonstrates a willingness to tough it out?
Would he or she not be aided by the same accommodations? The present situation surrounding college-level LD provides a prime example of advocacy gone amok. So overwhelming is the notion of entitlement that it is sacrilegious to raise even legitimate questions about the number of students being certified. The story in The New York Times about Boston University's decision to require anyone seeking assistance for LD to submit a diagnostic evaluation less than three years old was met with cries of "shock" and "outrage" and was called a "declaration of war on these kids.
What it would do is restore integrity to an egregious system as well as relieve an undue financial burden just because some students find the university difficult probably true since universities began and advocacy permitted them to proclaim themselves LD with a high probability that it would be endorsed. It appears that advocacy represents a major political theme in LD. A case could be made that the large numbers of students with LD, to the point where LD is by far the largest category in special education, could be attributed in large measure to advocacy.
The desire to provide special education for any student experiencing school difficulties has created a situation where students are presumed entitled to special education when any achievement problem surfaces. The minimal stigma and favorable attitudes surrounding LD have made advocacy the vehicle through which something is achieved i. In this sense, advocacy is good politics and permits LD to be a "safety valve" wherein students failing between the cracks receive the required services presumed to enhance their academic performance.
Unfortunately, advocacy is not without consequences. Rather than a safety valve, LD may be better viewed as a "dumping ground" and the present numbers, without rhyme or reason, attest to this view. The large LD population has become increasingly ill defined, resulting in a vagueness surrounding the LD concept. In a majority of instances, it is possible to question the validity of LD diagnoses because of an inability to answer the question, "What is LD?
There is little confidence that we know what we are talking about with respect to LD, but there is little discomfort because of the appearance that LD is doing well. After all, look at the number of students being served. Isn't this sufficient evidence that LD is doing well? The LD field, like the fabled emperor and his new clothes, seems to enjoy the status and prosperity that enable its nakedness to go undetected.
As most categories in special education, LD has its roots in medicine. Histories of LD reveal origins in language and reading disorders emanating from neurological impairments. The study of dyslexia was particularly important because it examined not only the neurological origins of reading problems but also the notion of unexpected reading failure in otherwise average-functioning students. Later investigations demonstrated that language and perceptual-processing deficits were contributors to the underachievement manifested in reading.
The later work of Strauss and Werner broadened the parameters to other academic areas, but all were still viewed within a medical model perspective. When LD was formally recognized as a category of special education, a tension arose between its medical origins and its educational context.
A medical model of LD is sufficient for conceptualizing the abstract nature of the condition but fails to include real-world contingencies like school. After all, students with LD are referred, diagnosed, and classified within the context of school. It is not difficult to imagine that without schools we would not have an LD category as we now know it. Thus, the field of medicine laid the foundation for LD but special education shaped its present form.
Once removed from a strict medical foundation, LD was subject to social influences. LD is presently a behavioral phenomenon where there may be a medical foundation that becomes secondary to the individual -manifestations shaped by social forces in the environment. Within a social context, a major force can be found in political beliefs that present a variety of views about the way things are and the way things should be. It is these differing world views that have reshaped LD over time and that engender debate, not on scientific, but ideological grounds.
Unlike advocacy , which is more concerned with political action, ideology focuses on the underlying political themes and ideas that direct action. Within special education, ideology serves to guide broad goals and aims. Regardless of whether one adheres to a liberal or a conservative ideology, a shared goal has been the provision of equal educational opportunity to enable students to attain the knowledge and skills required to achieve personal success.
The development of special education suggests that for some students with particular kinds of problems equal opportunity was not possible in a general education context. Within this context, special education should not be viewed in a pejorative sense but as the optimal environment for a student experiencing particular difficulties in school. The idea of equal educational opportunity has been subverted, however, by ideas that equate equality of opportunity with the results of education; unless all students perform equally well, the system is inherently unjust.
Any educational system is responsible for providing access to knowledge, but the individual student is responsible for what he or she does with that opportunity. The greater difficulty encountered by special education students in accessing educational opportunities is the very reason why special education was created. The special education student is not relieved of the responsibility of achieving educational opportunity but is provided with a vehicle to obtain it. Even under the optimal circumstances provided by special education, the special education student must provide the ability, temperament, and motivation to succeed.
The aim of equal outcomes has also been exacerbated by the belief that every student's potential for achievement is nearly unlimited. The tenor of this belief is captured in statements like, "After all, who is to say which individual may become another Shakespeare or Einstein? A problem is encountered, however, when a student does not possess the ability or motivation to succeed in such a no-limit environment. The problem is readily resolved by relaxing standards, but this leads to bogus outcomes that are unreliable and degraded.
For special education, in particular, the focus on what is learned is of primary importance, but it is often subverted by debate about the proper amount of time spent in either general or special education, for example. By emphasizing firm and substantial standards, the quality of education is improved, and for a student meeting the standards, genuine achievement is gained because the opportunity in education has meant, in fact, the opportunity to go as far as talent and motivation permit.
If equal educational opportunity is an agreed upon ideology for both liberal and conservative perspectives, then how has it become subverted by the demand for unlimited potentials, relaxed standards, and equal outcomes? The answers are found partially in Marxist ideology, which frequently views schools as serving the interests of elites, as reinforcing inequalities, and as fostering attitudes to maintain the status quo. The standard Marxist approach to education features a rejection of "technical-functional" theories of education that emphasize the need for technical and vocational skills deriving from the changing occupational sectors of advanced industrial societies.
Instead, Marxists view the major emphases in education as reproducing the "social relations of production. The reproduction of social relations is predicated on the assumption that educational differentiation and certification exist in order to provide a neutral and legitimate foundation for the unequal and hierarchical division of labor associated with capitalism.
Additionally, education transmits appropriate attitudes and habits to each strata of the occupational hierarchy e. Thus, education's primary aim is to maintain the capitalist social order, with social harmony dependent upon the working class being denied access to knowledge through the operations of a selective and differentiated educational system. Education plays a central role in the transmission of capitalist ideology and has become the dominant "ideological state apparatus.
The Politics of Learning Disabilities
This brief sketch of Marxist views emphasizes broad societal concerns, but other analyses provide more focused views of education. For example, Young discussed knowledge, the acceptance of a "common culture," and control, the imposition of meaning with respect to curriculum, context, and cognition abilities. Additional analyses have emphasized the role of Marxist ideology in analyzing the relation between social philosophy and the mechanics of education e. In practice, Marxist theorists have posited a number of alternatives including "deschooling," an abandonment of traditional schools in favor of other educational arrangements.
Such Marxist analyses, however, potentially present a distorted world view. All criticisms are based on the assumption that government schools are nefarious ideological tools of the state that cannot be changed satisfactorily until the form of government i. Fortunately, this will never occur, and democracy, even with its faults, is here to stay much to the chagrin of Marxist's critics. Furthermore, there is little evidence that education has performed the functions attributed to it by Marxist interpretations.
There is also little evidence that the educational systems of capitalist societies either have been or are particularly critical in the reproduction of capitalist production relations'. Finally, Marxist interpretations are not capable of accounting for major ongoing processes within capitalist educational systems as the traditional "technical-functional" theories that they criticize. Consequently, there is no necessary "fit" between any specific form of educational organization and the "needs" of capitalism.
Thus, educational debates do not represent conflicts within a wider socioeconomic context. They only fulfill the ideological needs of "progressive" educators because of the potential for them to assume a revolutionary role if reproduction were dependent on education. Perhaps this hope and desire among "progressive" educators is the reason why Marxist views have demonstrated a certain popularity. Whether the analyses are based on theories termed reproduction, conflict, social alienation, cultural deprivation, social construction, or authorization, or concepts like resistance, differentiation, allocation, labeling, indoctrination, interactionism, control, and so on, they all suffer the same fate: Their premium thus tends toward a fantastical ideal over reality and is the reason why Marxist analyses are not readily dislodged by logical and rational argument.
Consequently, Marxist apologists are less inhibited by ignorance, but nonetheless possess an instinctual appeal. A broad outline and critique of Marxist ideology in education was provided to give an overview of basic concepts and a sense of the way arguments are presented. Within special education, Marxist ideology has become fashionable as evidenced in social-constructivist theory, which holds that students with special needs are not really disabled because "disability" does not reside within the person but is invented by society for societal reasons.
This particular view has had the most influence on perceptions about LD, and it would be useful to examine the ways in which the origins and development of LD have been viewed within a Marxist ideological perspective. Carrier , using the orientation described by Bourdieu and Passeron to analyze LD theory, suggested that an emphasis on biophysical foundations for LD masks the societal forces i. In essence, class conflicts have resulted in the construction of inequality in American education; "Marxist models suggest that learning disability theory might be explicable as a set of beliefs which legitimate capitalist inequality and social relations".
Rounding up the usual suspects of cultural deprivation theory, authorization theory, interactionism, and reproduction theory, Carrier attempted to place LD solely and exclusively within a social context without reference to any biophysical influences. It is finally concluded that LD represents "sociogenic brain damage because. Sigmon, using radical socioeducational analysis, suggests a conflict perspective where "the root source of many social problems in America lies in the simultaneity of political freedom and economic inequality", and a reproduction theory where LD is "really an attempt to conserve and perpetuate the culture and its institutions of which the school is an important one".
The interpretation begins with an analysis of the LD problem that is followed by a new interpretation of the development of American special education and an analysis of the evolution of the LD concept. With respect to special education, Sigmon concluded that it is nothing more than a massive and formal mode of tracking. With respect to the history of LD, Sigmon accepted the conventional renderings but embellished them with notions about cultural influences, especially the study of individual differences.
With the idea of mild mental retardation entrenched, LD developed as an idea about brain damage and average intelligence but merged with the notion of the slow learner. LD then, became institutionalized and produced new special segregated tracks". Finally, the LD controversy was examined, and the scientific and conceptual bases for LD are viewed as weak. Instead, a social basis was offered where.
This struggle has led to the inadvertent cooperation of special education by including millions of so-called mildly handicapped children instead of concentrating on the best possible education for the moderately and severely impaired. Sleeter offered a reinterpretation of the history of LD, suggesting that LD represented a social construction, rather than a special education classification, whose origins are in medicine.
Sleeter begins by suggesting that we examine "how the raising of reading standards, coupled with social expectations that schools help America's cold war effort and also sort students for future work roles in a stratified economy, led to the creation of learning disabilities". School failure, particularly in reading, led to students being divided into four categories slow learner, mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, culturally deprived and, by the late s, the new category of learning disabilities.
Sleeter then suggests that LD classes were initially populated by a select group since classes were overwhelmingly white and middle class during LD's first 10 years. Sleeter goes on to say that. The learning disabilities category probably was not consciously established just for white middle class children, even though it was populated by them. It was established for children who, given the prevailing categories used to describe failing children, did not seem to fit any other category.
Since most educators explained the failures of children of color and lower socioeconomic backgrounds with reference to the other four categories, such children tended not to have been placed in LD classes. White middle class parents and educators who saw their failing children as different from poor or minority children pressed for the creation and use of this category.
Marxist analyses have thus examined the foundation of the LD field and have offered radically different interpretations of its development and purpose. In reviewing these analyses, it is impossible not to think that one has gone straight through the Looking Glass and into the land of Jabberwocky. There is a permeating unreality to these analyses that bears little resemblance to any LD that was known then or is known now.
The unremittingly racist, exclusivist, and undemocratic trends assumed in these basic class-conflict perspectives about LD are red herrings that cloud rational argument and result in a warping of reality. Actuality is pushed aside in favor of a Byzantine mixture of ulterior motives and sinister plots, but such conspiracy theories usually collapse under the weight of their own unplausibility, and these are no exception. Each of the analyses presented ignores historical reality surrounding LD. They dismiss as irrelevant and immaterial facts that demonstrate, for example, the original medical etiologies of dyslexia, which place LD in the realm of biophysical phenomena.
The people and events of the past pose an inconvenience when you attempt to place LD only within a year framework; the result is a distorting of reality and a failure to appreciate the true origins of a complex phenomenon. The limited historical framework presented in Marxist analyses is necessary in order to emphasize the villainous effects of school reform.
Because school reform is always associated with raising standards, it is probable that raised standards will result in a greater number of below-average students, but the real motivation is to enhance the abilities of all students in order to improve schools and society at large. The distortions about the purpose of school reform is necessary for the Marxist egalitarian fallacy: Marxist interpretations generally believe students are in no way responsible for their own achievement.
Consequently, achievement is decried and performance as a measure of merit is derided as discriminatory, but the real discrimination is against students exhibiting the necessary ability and motivation rather than those students who could not keep up. The Marxist analyses also fail to recognize the reality of each special education category.
Through some tortured logic, special education categories are assumed, in Marxist analyses, to represent classifications created specifically to deal with failure not related to the primary handicap but rather the circumstances surrounding its social and economic function. Sleeter , for example, based this assumption on early literature prior to and an analysis of subject descriptions in special education journals published between and Although this is viewed as clear evidence of the specter of discrimination, it should be neither alarming nor surprising if two pertinent facts are not ignored.
The first is the exclusion clause found in LD definitions from their beginning. Eliminated from LD consideration were students whose learning problems are primarily the result of "environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage. Discrimination would be a problem if there were no alternative arrangements for students excluded, and this points to the second fact that has been ignored. Students who are environmentally, culturally, or economically disadvantaged receive a range of services from preschool to college years.
These programs were also being developed during the s, the same time that LD was beginning as a category of special education.
The politics of learning disabilities
With the initiation of compensatory education programs to serve a different population of students, is it alarming or surprising that the new LD category would include mostly white, middle- class children? While LD was being established, there was an almost parallel development of programs for students who had previously been classified because their school failure was the result of extra-school factors.
With all programs aimed at enhancing school success, the only reasons for the Marxists' distress must reside in the politics of envy. But might we not find discomfort in the fact that compensatory education programs are populated primarily by minority and low-SES children, given the benefits accruing from an early start and enrichment activities? Of course we are not discomforted, because we do not see a conspiracy at every turn, and possess a reality-based understanding of the purposes and assumptions behind program development.
Thus, Marxist analyses fail to enhance our understanding of LD in any meaningful fashion. The failure to recognize the reality of the LD condition, the fanciful distortions of history, and the application of all sorts of "theories" make for these Marxist distortions regarding LD. They do, however, demonstrate the significant influence of ideology on thinking in the LD field, especially when a field becomes highly politicized. Politics, as discussed, represents the force required to establish and to develop a field through legislative action and usually surrounds a single voice with respect to ideas.
Once established, however, an entity is likely to become politicized, meaning that many different voices are heard, and policy is likely to change because of the influence of different social and economic motives and goals. These policy changes may bring conflict, and we believe many of the problems faced by the LD field are the result of its politicization rather than its original politics. Under such circumstances, the LD concept is likely to be viewed differently, and this politicization becomes fertile ground for application of Marxist ideology. The fallacy, however, is that the politicization of the LD field is viewed as the original state with no concern for the initial politics.
Thus, there is a failure to distinguish between means Le. The three Marxist analyses presented above represent the most egregious examples of applying a failed ideology to LD. There are, however, less polemical but no less dangerous distortions that, nevertheless, reach the same conclusion: LD is best viewed as solely a social construction. The prime example of this genre is the influential and popularized "The learning mystique: A critical look at learning disabilities" by Gerald Coles. Coles began by exploring the roots of the LD field, particularly the influence of Hinshelwood and the study of dyslexia congenital word-blindness.
It was suggested that the foundation of the field provides solely a neurological interpretation of LD and a biological determination where all cases are reduced to biophysical explanations. The analysis went on to explore perceptual, memory, attention, and linguistic research, but all areas were found wanting because of methodological and conceptual problems. Coles then discussed drugs, genetics, and gender with respect to LD, but again, all were found wanting.
In summary, Coles concluded that. Hinshelwood's spirit is pervasive, biological reductionism abounds, all but biological explanations are disregarded, causation is confused with correlation, logic is frequently contorted, circular reasoning is prevalent, statistics, numbers, and other data are manipulated to demonstrate 'proof,' convenient explanations are substituted for complex analyses, bias constantly skews conclusions, and at times calculated distortions appear to underlie 'findings.
In place of biological determinism, Coles provided a social interpretation of LD through an "interactivity" theory of LD that combines the concepts of interaction and activity. It is described as follows. Interaction emphasizes processes, relationships, and transformation, but insufficiently denotes activity. Activity emphasizes events and active persons, including the makeup of persons such as neurology, language and reading abilities, motivation , but insufficiently denotes interaction.
Interactivity, in combining the concepts, denotes the numerous and complex activities and interactions that comprise the creation, sustenance, remediation and prevention of learning disabilities.
The Politics of Learning Disabilities | LD Topics | LD OnLine
Interactivity is not simply an environmental interpretation of LD where external influences affect an individual, rather it "involves active persons who are affected and changed by and in turn affect and change circumstances The influence of family factors, schools, and educational factors in producing interactivity resulting in LD are reviewed, and a number of scenarios leading to LD are described.
Although less egregious in tone and scholarship than the earlier cited Marxist analyses, Coles is also in left field because of the assumption that "systemic, economic, social, and cultural conditions are the principle influences contributing to learning failure".
Any mention of a biophysical formulation of LD is viewed as "blaming the victim," because "they serve to misdirect attention from the need for fundamental social changes [and] 'encourage' individuals and groups to accept and make the best of their destiny". With the one-sided view of LD proposed, it is little wonder that Coles, in a chapter entitled "Reconsidering Neurology," posed a view of neurological difference and dysfunction strikingly similar to the "sociogenic brain damage" discussed by Carrier, as evidenced in the assertion that "both brain difference and brain dysfunction are created within dysfunctional social relationships and are created within dysfunctional social relationships and activity ".
Finally, Coles called for partisanship about LD and its foundation. Partisanship is required because the interests of both children and the professionals who work with them are not in harmony with the interests represented by the structural conditions in which learning failure arises. Of course, these evil interests are conservative groups e. This partisanship on the side of educational inequality mandates that we take up a partisanship to eliminate educational inequality". The most distressing aspect of Coles' analysis is the way it captured the public's imagination. The book was favorably reviewed in the popular press e.
Rather than idealistic, this tradition is better termed Marxist and suffers from far more basic difficulties. Within the professional LD literature, Coles' analysis was given center stage; the Journal of Learning Disabilities devoted almost an entire issue to "The learning mystique". Seven reactions to the book were solicited that included both favorable and unfavorable responses, which appeared to reflect not only scientific views but also ideological differences.
For example, the favorable responses were from those who endorse the "interactional" or "ecological" perspective for LD. The more critical pieces emphasized the positive contributions of neurological, neuropsychological logical, genetic, and linguistic research and the ways in which they have enhanced our understanding of LD. The difficulty with Coles' position is the intransigent resistance to accept scientific evidence of biophysical influences for LD. There are harsh critiques about the theoretical and methodological approaches used in such research that require it to be replaced by a unidimensional view that insists "LD must develop into a critical field, to examine and contest the social organizations, power, practices, and ideology that shape the conditions for educational failure".
A good deal of sophisticated research was cast aside, and LD was placed within the same context as poverty, racial inequality, gender bias, and any other social ill that views LD solely as the result of sociopolitical struggle. The basis for such views was formed in Soviet psychology, which shows an unquestioned acceptance of sociopolitical influences. The role of the social environment does not need to be proved and conditions like LD are viewed as developing solely within interactive social relationships.
Such views were heartily endorsed by Coles in earlier writings even though they were roundly criticized. The ideological views of LD presented above possess two fundamental problems. The first is a unidimensional view suggesting the importance of only sociopolitical influences and a complete rejection of most if not all biophysical influences, while the second is a resistance to accept even validated scientific evidence. Ideological analyses of problems result in ideological solutions to those problems. The proposed solutions are solely political in character and usually require nothing less than a revolutionary restructuring of present society.
The proposed solutions are simplistic because they fail to recognize the reality and complexity of phenomena and are dangerous because they emphasize egalitarian fantasies that serve only to exacerbate existing relations. The ideological theories are to be adopted without criticism or question presumably because they are "good" and "just" , but are quite scanty with respect to details. This situation creates little consternation as suggested by Coles in discussing his interactivity theory. When we abandon an explanation that for decades has been the primary formulation for research, an alternative theory will almost certainly carry limited evidence, at least initially.
This limitation is almost a given in the progress toward acceptance of theories of greater explanatory promise than those older but still inadequate ones that have received the most empirical attention. However, evidential limitations alone should not prevent the adoption of a new working theory.
Other apologists weighed in with equal disdain for decades of scientific inquiry. Miller, for example, under the guise of presenting an even-handed view, suggested that Coles' analysis is similar to those who have argued against the hereditarian view of IQ because "the diagnosis of learning disabled, like the hereditarian theory of IQ, has served as a rationalization for discriminatory and unjust social practices". Miller appeared to accept uncritically the view expressed by Coles that. He feels that the biological explanation of their learning problems is a form of blaming the victim. Its purpose is to conceal the fact that they are not receiving the same opportunities as the children that the school system generally favors.
By suggesting that Coles has written "a detailed, comprehensive, and well-reasoned critique of the most fundamental axioms of the LD field", the Marxist underpinnings of the analysis are ignored, and it is taken for granted that the LD problem is one "stemming not only from the way our educational system works but also from the way our society, culture, and economic system works". Of course, "the Devil is in the details" and like most Marxist analyses it is less than satisfactory with respect to the actual dynamics of change.
But Miller apologized by suggesting. The real problem is not that Coles is one-sided or dogmatic- he is neither of these, but rather that his ideas, although interesting, provocative, and suggestive at least as they presently are formulated , remain too loose and abstract to be useful to most researchers and practitioners who work with children with LD. In fact, Coles' analysis is indeed one-sided and dogmatic. Miller's suggestion that the problem resides only in the theory being too loose and abstract is nonsense.
His assumption that the reason for this lack of theory development is Coles' recognition that most LD professionals are likely to have difficulty understanding his central concept, "interactivity", is outrageous, as is the suggestion that Coles' thinking is viewed as "too radical to be accepted by most members of a middle class profession".
The Marxist analyses possess little merit for an enhanced understanding of LD. The idea that large-scale social influences result in a discrete condition like LD lacks conceptual clarity. This is not to suggest, however, that social forces have no bearing on LD. The biophysical foundations of LD take form in a social context. The real question becomes one of proportion, and the proper response is not either-or but how much biophysical and how much social influence. This sort of nature-nurture debate has been a central focus in discussions about the nature of intelligence, and it is generally accepted that IQ is a product of both heredity and environment.
Account Options
The question about how much of each remains open to debate, but it would behoove the LD field to begin serious discussion about its own nature-nurture controversy. This question has not been a central focus and, in this vacuum, Marxist analyses have filled the void. Consequently, the dominant view of LD sees it as a social construction with no credence given to any biophysical foundation. Such a view appears validated when large-scale samples of students with LD are examined and no evidence of any biophysical manifestations is found. The difficulty, however, is that we can have little confidence in the populations studied; the long-existing failure to provide an agreed-upon formal and operational definition of LD makes any sample suspect and limits our ability to label students "truly" LD.
Under these circumstances, the social constructivist view appears validated but, in reality, creates only a lamentable Catch This is why the scientific side of LD must be reaffirmed and a better balance introduced into ideological discussions about LD. While ideology is concerned with world news and large-scale influences in social structure, political philosophy is more narrowly focused and attempts to provide an analytic method for particular problems. Philosophy thus holds a middle ground between the massed action associated with advocacy and social goal structure and setting associated with ideology.
The LD field has been witness to many philosophical debates that represent basic political differences. The following section examines these philosophical debates and their influence on the LD field. Many of the philosophical debates in LD have surrounded issues about assessment and intervention. While the ideological debates in LD have examined the origins and development of the field, philosophical debates have often focused on the best means of treating students with LD. As an example, the early years of LD saw an emphasis on process training; the idea that intact basic psychological processes were required for adequate cognitive performance and, in turn, academic learning.
The LD concept suggested that these impaired processes were the source of learning difficulties. For example, individual visual- or auditory-perceptual skills, the ability to integrate visual and auditory information, or the ability to integrate perceptual and motor skills might be impaired.
Regardless of the process deficit postulated, training for the impaired process was the primary focus of intervention and took precedence over academic instruction, since it was assumed that efficient learning could only be achieved if all processes were intact and functioning normally. The process- training idea was pervasive and probably attributable to early pioneers in the LD field, who provided process interpretations of LD and accompanying remediation programs.
The first dissent with respect to process training appeared in philosophical attacks, which were followed by research suggesting that major process-training approaches were not effective in improving academic, cognitive, or even process skills. Within the context of the time, the negative evaluations of process training placed much at stake with respect to professional standing and vested interests in programs and materials.
The professional debate in the research literature soon extended to professional organizations with respect to what they would advocate and who they would endorse. The professional meetings became political battlegrounds and, as suggested by Hammill. The controversy polarized the field, and most professionals more or less identified with the process orientation or with direct instruction.
The political center of the learning disabilities movement practically dissolved in the mid s. As one might expect under those conditions, the professional climate at that time was acrimonious and often vituperative. Organizational structure and function. The polarization was so complete that it led to a reorganization of principal LD organizations that altered the basic professional and political character of the field.
This became the primary battleground and, in , an anti-process faction forced a vote that resulted in the Division becoming disassociated from CEC. Thus, two distinct organizations were created based on basic philosophical differences about the nature of LD and the most appropriate forms of intervention. The philosophical schism has never been bridged, and the two groups remain disparate factions with different orientations, journals, and methodologies regarding LD.
Basic philosophical differences have also created tensions between LD organizations in the form of disputes about their purpose. It is largely a parent group founded for the purpose of promoting LD programs and services. As such, advocacy is its central mission and, at times, this purpose overshadows attempts to understand the condition in question. The primary focus of its activity is on developing and instituting programs and services for students with LD. This activity, however, proceeds as if a clear and unencumbered view of LD exists that furnishes an agreed-upon definition and conceptualization.
In many respects, understanding LD is a secondary concern, since the primary aim is on providing service to those who need assistance. Politically this means that there is a continuing call for more LD programs and services, and even a cursory view of the numbers suggests that this political action has been enormously successful. At the same time, however, there is increasing debate about the question: With this question remaining unanswered, there' is an ever-increasing possibility of misclassification.
At some point, political reality will demand more accountability and the unfettered proliferation of LD programs and services will end abruptly. Such an end will damage the LD field because of the increased probability of not providing service to a student who really requires such service. If a greater balance could be achieved between helping and understanding, the inevitable retrenchment in LD programs and services might be achieved in a far more rational manner.
The difficulty, however, is that politics is usually most successful when based on trendy and fashionable issues. Unfortunately, understanding LD is not nearly as chic as helping students with LD. While this view continues, the field appears to be doing well and groups like LDA are viewed as positive and committed voices. But, at some point, they may collapse under the weight of justification. The differences among LD organizations raise an interesting question: Who speaks for the LD field? In fact, there are many voices in the LD field, and it is difficult to identify a single dominant entity.
The field is structured by a variety of organizations with differing views, which results in a fractionated picture of LD.
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Although many different professional groups e. For example, the changes in MR definition over the years have had immediate impact because when AAMR speaks, the field listens. Thus, their messages have limited impact, and that is the reason why LD organizations have had limited influence on the way the field behaves. In many respects, there is a political vacuum in the LD field that is filled at various times by various organizations for various reasons, not usually either rational or logical. The lack of a single voice in the LD field has periodically led to conflict between LD and allied fields.
For example, not long after its official recognition, the LD field found itself in debate about the roles and responsibilities of LD and reading disability RD specialists. A symposium in The Journal of Special Education examined the issue with respect to four areas. First, there is some debate about whether or not the population of pupils served by these two groups differs in any significant respect.
Second, many question whether any significant differences exist between the groups' theoretical approaches to etiology and treatment. Third, does professional preparation differ in any significant respect for remedial education and learning disabilities? Finally, many educators maintain that the functions of the two groups do not significantly differ in the schools.
A review of the papers in both LD and reading journals suggests that the debate, in reality, had little substance, and that the issue was primarily political in the sense of being about territorial concerns and competition for clients. A variety of "straw men" were created with respect to definition, identification, intervention, and certification, but the real issue was about responsibility for this new and growing population that required some form of intervention. The International Reading Association IRA , as the single voice of the reading field, passed a series of resolutions demanding political action seeking IRA-guided certification for read ing-language-learning problems through dual endorsement that would certify individuals as specialists in both reading-language disorders and learning disabilities.
The dilemma, however, was found in the disparate nature of the LD responses; they were all sound analyses but lacked the impact found in the single and focused statement from the IRA. Thus, this represents a prime example of where the lack of a single voice worked against the LD field. The IRA was able to present a more politically savvy response while the LD field, with no single voice, could only muster what appeared to be petulant and negative responses in the face of competition.
A more unified response resulting in a more coordinated and more focused analysis would have better served the LD field, but unfortunately there was no single voice that could bring a more politically powerful message to bear on the problem. Philosophical arguments about LD interventions have not abated.
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The initial debate surrounded issues about indirect versus direct instruction. The process orientation was eventually replaced by a more behaviorally oriented approach that emphasized direct instruction as well as concepts such as task analysis, positive reinforcement, and criterion- referenced measurement to improve academic performance. It was evident, by the mids, that the process approach to LD intervention was waning, but also evident was the realization that behavioral approaches were not as successful as hoped because of associated problems of maintenance and generalization.
In an effort to focus more on how a student learns than what is learned, methods derived from cognitive psychology and information-processing research became popular during the s. The assumption that students with LD possessed performance rather than ability problems, particularly in their inactivity surrounding learning, led to procedures based on the development of cognitive and learning strategies. These metacognitive interventions were assumed to teach students with LD "how to learn," which subsequently improves their acquisition and retention of academic information.
Again, however, problems of maintenance and generalization were noted, and the LD field still faced a philosophical dilemma over the most effective form of intervention. During the late s, a new interpretation began to emerge that possessed significant political implications for the LD field.
Poplin argued that all models presently identified with LD intervention suffered from reductionist tendencies that results in the belief. These reductionistic tendencies are the reason for the failure of present teaching methodologies to produce unequivocal positive outcomes.
In a similar analysis, Heshusius riled against the predominant "Newtonian mechanistic paradigm" found in LD. Accounts of the Newtonian mechanistic paradigm point to the belief in simplicity as the foundation of the paradigm. All complexity is to be broken down into components; translated into practice, this leads to, for instance, task analysis and isolated skill training. The whole is understood by understanding the components as logically and sequentially arranged- assumptions that lead to mastery learning, programmed materials, and behavioral objectives. The basic evil is reductionism, which has been promulgated by present LD theories and only serves to reinforce basic reductionistic tendencies.
A major problem is seen in the failure to understand the difference between theory and paradigm. Heshusius attempted to instruct us on the differences, but the analysis is less than convincing as evidenced in the following conclusion. The contemporary turbulence and ferment that within the constraints of a mechanistic paradigm are seen as fuzziness, chaos, and anti-science, from the vantage point of a conscious and close examination of the paradigmatic boundaries themselves contain the roots and the information needed to move into the articulation of alternative paradigm thinking.
To do so, much of what is sacred needs to be relinquished. A healthy dose of victimology unfortunately appears to be introduced by Heshusius' suggestion that "accusations of fuzziness, mere intuition, and being anti-science are quickly leveled against those who are engaged in the formulation of nonmechanistic thought". The real foundations for such anti-mechanistic thought is revealed, however, when Heshusius discussed the theoretical reorientations necessary to replace the mechanistic paradigm.
When theories about interaction, resistance, and empowerment are discussed, it becomes evident that the anti-reductionist camp appears to have its ideological roots in the Marxist educational ideology discussed earlier. What then is the alternative paradigm that will deliver us from evil? The answer is found in the holistic paradigm. It is not the case that the dynamics of the whole can be understood from the properties of the parts, but rather, that the properties of the parts can only be understood from the dynamics of the whole.
The whole is both different from and more than the sum of its parts. Knowledge of 'parts' does not lead to knowledge of the whole. There are no fixed and reliable linkages among the parts. This does not appear troubling to holists since. While holism is certainly not 'just around the corner,' not in our practice and not in mainstream academic, its influence is slowly but steadily becoming visible.
But mere claims about it being "good" and "better" are not sufficient to bring about the significant and substantial change being called for. Warner, for example, examined the holistic position from the perspective of critical realism and concluded that holists have not. Either the possibility of objectivity and progress in understanding the human world and thus, learning disabilities is rejected altogether, or internal contradictions appear with respect to this question in the writings of the holists.
Holists seem to lean in the direction of conventionalist, subjectivist, or interpretinist notions of truth. Critical realists, while agreeing that all meaning is socially constructed and historically contingent, uphold the possibility that humans can, over time, develop knowledge of the natural and social worlds that is increasingly isomorphic with those worlds, and has increasing explanatory power in open systems. Instead of providing more tangible suggestions about the ways holism might become integrated into LD thought, the most recent publications have an even more ethereal quality.
This New Age wisdom seems also to touch on familiar Marxist ideology, where the articles are said to describe "the problems we face as accomplices in creating and maintaining bureaucracies and other structures that contribute to the current injustices of 'ableism', racism, and classism. Liberatory or critical education asks us to carefully examine how our assumptions and practices in learning disabilities might be oppressing the very students we seek to serve.
The call is for a much more encompassing "sociocultural constructionism", for example, that clearly possesses a Marxist foundation. Thus, we have a philosophical dispute about the best paradigmatic approach for LD that has slid down a slippery slope into ideology where it is far more difficult to resolve controversies in a rational manner. The political philosophy dominating the LD field appears to include entrenched ideas that have become conventional wisdom even though based on questionable assumptions.
The most prominent example is the idea of LD as myth, where "it should by now be clear that there is no such thing as learning disability". The category of LD is viewed as a convenience created by special education; "LD was a well-intentioned but ill-conceived movement that has run amok and is placing millions of youngsters in a disabling trajectory toward failure and low self-esteem from which there is little hope of escape". The difficulties with LD are found in the negative effects of labeling, excessive testing with poor instruments, misguided interventions aimed at phantom deficits, and the general liabilities associated with special education.
Much of Finlan's work is marked by an anti-intellectual attitude represented in a trendier Marxism with a "softer" social interpretation of LD. The basic problem is again a too-easy dismissal of many years of accumulated research that suggests the incontrovertible conclusion of the existence of a particular form of learning problem that has come to be termed LD.
Klatt, for example, termed LD a "questionable construct" and analyzed definitional components e. The primary difficulty with analyses like Klatt's is that they are based on what LD has become. It is true that LD is marked by a wide assortment of difficulties, but almost all represent the effects of the way LD has come to be viewed.
Most notable is the view that any learning problem can be termed LD. The Humean problem of induction has been writ large in the LD field. Originally, the term "specific" LD denoted a particular condition; the "specific" adjective was important for differentiating LD from more generalized forms of learning failure. However, social forces e. Thus, LD moved from a specific condition "all LD include learning problems" to a general condition "all learning problems include LD". The Journal of Learning Disabilities, in its silver anniversary issue, published its inaugural article written by Ray Barsch in A prime issue was whether LD should be viewed as a disability category like auditory impairment or a concept where.
There are yet others who must be included. Barsch argued for viewing LD as a concept, and the evidence in terms of numbers and the continuing debate about classification suggest that he won the argument. It is interesting that such an argument could occur when LD was just beginning its formal recognition. One could imagine that the intention was for LD to be a disability category with a circumscribed set of parameters.
However, the irresistible desire to help all students experiencing difficulty in school almost immediately affected LD negatively and diverted attention from the task of explicating the categorical parameters. Barsch , for example, suggested that LD "is a term to be applied to any learner who fails to benefit from an existing curriculum into which he has been placed" p.
It is difficult to imagine that this was the original intent, but it demonstrates the profound influence of social forces, especially advocacy, for students experiencing school difficulties. Learning disabilities are to be found wherever there are learners. Narrow definition of a precise set of symptoms will inevitably lead to massive exclusion. The language of description must be formulated in learning terminology with no relationship to traditional labeling. Learning disabilities, as a label, constitute a concept for educational thought.
To pursue a course of defining a category to be fitted, among other existing categories, constitutes an entrapment in traditional thought. To treat learning disabilities as a concept instead of a category represents an opportunity to consider an entirely new set of dimensions and parameters. This statement captures all that is wrong with LD, both then and now. A resistance to viewing LD as a discrete condition was replaced by a desire to describe a broad "concept" for the purpose of including as many students as possible. Consequently, stigma was minimal, outweighed by the benefits accrued from receiving special education.
The benefits associated with LD had positive political ramifications but negative consequences for a scientific LD because of the accompanying movement away from enhancing the categorical structure. Scientific activity was not viewed as important; consequently, original conceptualizations about LD were "lost. Thus, a simple axiom captures the state of LD: The inherent vagueness surrounding LD and the inability to stipulate definitive parameters result in the promulgation of LD as a myth.
In a cogent analysis, Bateman suggested that. The fact that many diagnosticians perhaps psychometrician is a better word do not distinguish learning disabilities from generic low performance does not mean it cannot be done. Are efforts directed at examining ways by which the groups may be distinguished? Discussions in and held at conferences of the Association for Citizens with Learning Disabilities, the Orton Dyslexia Society meetings and elsewhere led to the proposal for a small international seminar, meeting annually, which would be concerned with research and education in the area of special educational needs.
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