I once worked with a student who I discovered had a disability in spelling. He seemed relieved when I told him this. He had felt dumb because he could not spell no matter how hard he tried to memorize the words. Later, he showed me a composition he had written in which many words were spelled incorrectly.
I asked him why he was handing in a paper with misspelled words in it.
He replied that, since now everyone knows he has a disability in spelling, nobody should expect him to spell words correctly anymore.
He replied that, since now everyone knows he has a disability in spelling, nobody should expect him to spell words correctly anymore.
I informed him that is not how it works. Knowing he has a problem with spelling is information he must use to solve his spelling problem. He no longer has to feel dumb or defensive about his disability, but he does have to find ways to compensate for it. He may have to look up every word in the "Bad Spellers Dictionary" when he is unsure of its spelling.
He may have to use "Spell-Check" on a computer. He may need to do many things to compensate for his disability, but he may not use it as an excuse for poor spelling. The same reasoning is true for schools. Schools now know that many of today's children are born in poverty, are abused, andor live in homes which are not intellectually stimulating.
Such children come to school in poor health, with short attention spans, poor motivation, are behind their peers intellectually, and are passive learners. Just because everyone is aware of these deficiencies, does not mean that schools can use this information against the children by assuming they cannot learn. They probably cannot be taught using the same methods which work for children coming from supportive home environments. They can learn, however, with encouragement and the right programs. Even an astute columnist like Joan Beck misunderstands the role of school systems in their mandate to educate all children. Her column starts with the headline: "It's not the school, it's the home."
In this column, she reports on a study from the University Michigan which showed that children from Vietnamese, Laotian and Chinese-Vietnamese families do well on tests when taught under the present American education system. Joan Beck apparently agrees with the conclusion of the study that the present educational system is adequate as long as the requisite familial and social supports are provided for the students outside of school. The system does not have to change, this reasoning goes, the families do.
Since many families are unable or unmotivated to function differently, their children, through no fault of their own, must suffer the consequences of these non-existent support systems. One such consequence is an inadequate andor inappropriate educational program. This type of thinking allows schools to do what the boy with the learning disability did. That is to perpetuate the myth that they are not responsible for deficiencies not of their making. It is true that schools are not responsible for the deficiencies but, like the poor speller, they are responsible for developing strategies which use knowledge and understanding to overcome these deficiencies.
If the poor speller does not develop strategies, the result will merely be misspelled words. If school systems do not develop strategies, the result will be a whole generation of children condemned to poverty and ignorance. Schools are the last hope for those children whom society and their families, for whatever reason, have failed. School systems have the potential to succeed, with our encouragement and our support both financially and emotionally, where other systems have failed. We will have failed a whole generation if we do not give the children and the schools that support now.
First published in 1992
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