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To the Editor:
I was criticized in last week’s Rappahannock News for being insensitive to the learning disabled. I only meant to imply that today’s public education system would probably have deemed me, in the eighth grade, to have a learning disability, that is, “attention deficit syndrome,” or some such psychobabble.
Of course I know that some people suffer from real, physiological learning disabilities - Helen Keller, with all her handicaps, was only helped by being challenged to meet the standards of accomplishment of other, unhandicapped children.
I know from my reading that the percentage of students considered “learning disabled” has grown since the concept was first addressed by public funding. What accounts for these growing numbers? Is something in our drinking water changing the ol’ bell-shaped curve?
The only other explanation I can think of is that we are defining as learning disabled more and more students who simply aren’t doing their school work. Students who are considered “learning disabled” - I wonder who decides, and how? - are, so I am told by high school teachers, put in “special ed” classes,
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