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Learning Disabilities and Life Stories

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Learning Disabilities & Life Stories

Edited by Pano Rodis, Andrew Garrod & Mary Lynn Boscardin (Allyn & Bacon, 2001; ISBN # 0205320104)

Reviewed by Peg Dawson, NCSP

On a recent flight to France, I sat next to a French physicist, currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His specialty was optics and he told me he knew Ansel Adams personally. When he asked what I did for a living, I told him I was a psychologist specializing in children and adults with learning and attention disorders. His reaction, like so many adults outside the fields of education and psychology with whom I converse, was: "Don't you think that young people who claim to have these problems are, in fact, just lazy and unmotivated, and use the labels LD and ADD as an excuse?"

While in France, I began reading the book, Learning Disabilities & Life Stories, and I wished I could have given my friend the French physicist a copy of the book to read. How cavalierly he suggested that learning disorders are really excuses for character flaws. This book is a series of 13 autobiographical narratives written by adult students with learning and attention disorders. Each autobiography is different, yet each is laden with pain - many express anger and triumph as well. I have worked with students with disabilities all my professional life, and I thought I had a grasp on what it means to have a learning disability. After reading this book, I realized that my understanding of learning disabilities has been grounded in a logical-scientific-cognitive world. Students with disabilities view their learning problems through an emotional filter - and no student, it appears, grows up in America with a disability and emerges unscathed from the experience.

I have always viewed with some suspicion the argument that learning disabilities are the creation of a socio-cultural context. I have questioned this argument because I know the students I work with have genuine difficulty reading - or doing math, or paying attention, or remembering things. The point this book makes is that the impact of a disability on a student is powerfully affected by the environment in which that student finds himself or herself.

American students grow up in a world that rewards ambition, personal achievement and competition. The current emphasis on high stakes testing only accentuates this. And it's not just that teachers and parents have this bias - although this can be devastating enough, as several of the essayists in this book attest. Children, too, absorb this message from a very early age. Most of the students writing these essays endured teasing and ridiculing by their peers. And the ones who didn't still managed to learn that they were defective when compared to their classmates. Every contributor to this book had to dig themselves out of a fairly deep hole to get to the point where they could survive in college and write about the experience of growing up with a disability. In fact, a majority of students with disabilities fail to graduate from high school and only a scant 7 percent of them go on to higher education. Bruised as these writers are, they are clearly the survivors!

The book concludes with several essays written by scholars in the fields of education and psychology. While I found the autobiographies themselves the most useful part of this book, the essays by professionals were informative. It was helpful to find the socio-cultural argument amplified. One author described the stages that students with disabilities go through in dealing with their disability, a description that matched my own professional experience. But the enduring lesson I brought away from the book is how absolutely critical it is to view these students as more than a collection of disabilities. Too often, we pay lip service to the need to recognize a child's strengths as well as weaknesses. Think about it: humans develop strong self-concepts by locating and expanding their areas of competence. Robert Kegan, one of the contributing scholars, asks, "How wide a range of a child's endeavors are we willing to respect?" The task of childhood, in Eriksonian terms, is to develop "industry." This same writer states, "If we shrink the respectable 'industrial' arena down to the one domain in which children who have learning disabilities have the most difficulty, we create childhood worlds of pain."

Reading this book has led me to make new resolutions about the way I do my work: Never again (if I ever did before) will I write a psychological report that only lists a child's weaknesses. In every encounter I have with a child with a disability, I will work to identify that child's passions and talents - and to hold up a mirror so that the child - and the child's parents and teachers - can see them and celebrate them, too.

Peg Dawson, Ed.D., NCSP, works at the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, NH. She is President-elect of the International School Psychology Association, a past President of NASP and a Contributing Editor to the Communiqué.

Learning Disabilities and Life Stories is a landmark work. It is one of the few books that provides the 'insider's' perspective on the complex, controversial problem of learning disabilities. Thirteen college students vividly recount how LD affected their academic, social and emotional lives, and how they overcame these problems. Some of the students also suffered from ADHD, emotional problems (i.e. anxiety), and social problems (i.e. stigma). Although these students are probably not representative of the entire population of LD students, their stories make a wonderful contribution to the understanding of LD.

This is a must-read book for educators, parents, and LD students. It is especially helpful for LD students. They will likely find a particular author that they relate to. The 13 authors have a variety of life experiences, learning problems (i.e. dyslexia, auditory processing difficulties, etc.), and perspectives on LD. Each story is inspirational in its own way. As each author attended college, the book is especially suited to inspired other LD students to consider pursuing higher education.

Also read: The Pretenders by Barbara Guyer. She is a teacher who vividly describes the lives of adults with LD.

New Ways of Looking at Learning Disabilities is an excellent book for educators.

From someone working in the school system for the past 15 years, this book, Learning Disibilities and Life Stories, touched me more than any other book on the subject. Reading the personal accounts of former students with LD, they pointed out many shortcomings of our school systems throughout the country. In reading the book, one can hope that we as educators, counselors, psychologists, and parents, will help educate all who are involved in the lives of children, especially those who are crying out for our help in the classroom. Hopefully we are changing the way we look at disabilities of any kind. This book is a constant reminder that if we do not work to help children with these disabilities, we will be losing a generation of potentially contributing adults to society. What a great tribute to these children, who are now educating us on the plight of being lost in our classrooms. I plan to share this book with fellow educators, and parents.

Andrew Garrod has turned the case study into an art form. This has been evident in his previous books which look at the lives of adolescents, African-American students, International students, and First-Nation people. Garrod has a remarkable ability to work with individuals to guide their own autonomous reflection and to capture their experience in evocative and eloquent prose. Pano Rodis and Mary Lynn Boscardin, two experts on learning disabilities, and he have collaborated to produce a powerful anthology of students voices which tell what it is like to grow up and attend our schools with a learning disability.

If you are contemplating a career in special education or have a child or friend with learning disabilities I highly recommend you read this book. You have first hand accounts of what it is like dealing with the day to day difficulties, frustrations and emotions faced by individuals with various types of disabilities. These are their own personal stories told with their unique insight. Very good read.

This book was recommended by an instructor for a class this semester. What a book! The editors present a series of essays from individuals who have various learning disabilities and how they have approached a hostile world, and how they have handled their journey. If you want to know how a child feels this is the book to read. You will walk away with a different viewpoint of people who are differently abled.

I had to purchase this book for a class on learning disabilities in the classroom. This book is a perfect example of what is right and quite wrong about our educational system, particulary in our special education programs. The autobiographical stories within gave me huanting reminders of my childhood in the public school system. If you have a child in school who feels that they are olone, hand them this book. I also feel that all proffessional educators should read this as well. It gives an insider view that is uncomparable to anything that I have ever read on the subject.

This seller delivered exactly what they promised: a great quality book that arrived quickly.

I didn't even need it by the time I received it. It took that long...