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> People are hostile when I say there isn't such a thing as a learning disability but rather only teaching disabilities. People are probably hostile because yo

> People are hostile when I say there isn't such a thing as a learning disability but rather only teaching disabilities. People are probably hostile because you're going against scientific consensus and saying a range of disabilities that affects millions of people doesn't exist.

dataviz1000 5y ago
> scientific consensus We should be very careful with scientific consensus of a social science. Maybe we should say if you lead a horse to water, it doesn't drink, and you need that horse to work on the farm to grow food to feed your family, you are going to have a very bad time instead of what teachers told me time and time again, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." What type of person gives up on a horse that doesn't drink instead of figuring out what is wrong with the horse or understanding animal behavior to train the horse to drink and pull plows and stuff?
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  > What type of person... Ones who aren't good at what they're doing. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with school. I think some of the aversion to the "doesn't exist" claim is it seems to leave a hole. There are two ways of saying something doesn't exist / isn't real. You can say the cause isn't there or the effect isn't there. Take malaria. As you might know, the name means "bad air". People used to think bad air from swamps and jungles made you sick. If I didn't believe this I could say "swamp air can't make you sick, malaria doesn't exist". Which, sure, the disease doesn't come from the gas. But people do seem to get sick in a similar way at swamps that they don't get sick in dry areas. Isn't that real? Another reason people will react to you with hostility is you're pattern matching people who have been hostile to them. People with depression get told "it's all in your head". Sure, that's where the brain is. "No, it's just the way you look at things". Sure, yeah, bad at looking at things. Still depressed. I don't think that "gently scolding" people has show up as effective treatment. But the point isn't to help. It's to dismiss and degrade. You're also still only half way to looking at things holistically. You want to zoom out (based on what you've said about yourself and the horse example). But instead of looking at the system all together, you're pulling the blame from 100% on the student (something you got as a painful message) and putting it 100% on the teachers. Neither is representative of reality. Is someone disabled if they can't see well enough to drive? What if they don't want to drive? What if they can drive with glasses? What if there aren't glasses good enough for them, is it that optometrists are disabled? What if they can't afford them? These are all really interesting social questions and there are no perfect answers. But if I get the sense that someone is trying to ignore the reality that some people can see fine and some people see poorly and suffer for it, and that any of this suffering is at all localized on the person who can't see, I'm going to think they're trying to pull one over on me.
romwell 5y ago
The parent is right though. All a "learning disability" is is a requirement for a different approach from the instructor than the one-size-fits-all nonsense that we push down poor kids' throats as "education". The lack of ability to benefit from this farce in millions of students isn't surprising; and it can be absolutely address with better instruction and individual approach. I say this as a former instructor, math PhD[1], and also a person with ADHD[2] who persevered through a fair amount of failing grades on the way there. The #1 reason[3] I ran away from academia was that the system simply doesn't allow one to teach the right way. It's a conveyor-belt manufacturing process with the model 9-5 worker as the intended results, and if you don't fit the mold — tough luck. One has more leeway in teaching topics courses, but even world-class professors don't get away with not teaching intro/foundation courses, which are as rigid as they're atrocious. And K12 is where souls go to die. An enthusiastic teacher will burn out in just a few years, and come back with PTSD and a 1000-yard stare. Anyway. The OP's statement should be seen as "learning durabilities are not an obstacle to a good instructor" — which, in the vast majority of cases, is true. [1] https://romankogan.net/math https://romankogan.net/math [2] https://romankogan.net/adhd https://romankogan.net/adhd [3] The #2 reason is that the industry pays 4x as much; #3 is the 2-body problem; #4 is ..., oh wait, I'll be here for a long time if I keep going.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > All a "learning disability" is is a requirement for a different approach from the instructor than the one-size-fits-all nonsense that we push down poor kids' throats as "education". Tell that to my Dyslexia, I had many mentors growing up, and was taught by many people using many different approaches. I still can’t spell for shit, and my phonic processing is still garbage. No about of different teaching methods is going to change the fundamentals fact that my brain struggles to turn sounds into words, resulting in me hearing noise rather than speech, and turning ideas into written words. I’m perfectly articulate, indeed I’ve been accused of being “too articulate”, whatever that means, by my written prose is poor because I struggle translating phonic sounds into letters and words. Even simple words like “because”, “through”, “thought” etc which I’ve written and read correctly millions of times, I still struggle with, and need help from a spellchecker to get correct. If that isn’t a learning disability, then I have no idea what it is. But it sure as shit isn’t a teaching failure.
zzt123 5y ago
We’re talking about learning basic stuff, not top tier postgrad stuff. The article is about the majority of American adults being unable to read prose at a sixth grade level - that is, years before SF suggests teaching algebra. That is absolutely a massively distributed pedagogical failure of outstanding degree. Unless the average adult is so mentally disabled that acceptable-or-above teaching should result in this outcome.
- thelettere 5y ago
  "The problem of educating the educators is a problem which the democrat forgets in his enthusiasm for educating the pupils." Except now we don't even have the latter. We've just accepted that the least qualified individuals in our society are charged with doing what is arguably the most important work outside of governing, and with a laughable wrong headed course of training.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  I don't know which side is right but I'm detecting a distinct lack of objective criteria or empirical evidence in this debate. What's a sixth grade reading level? Are the majority of US adults capable of that? How do you teach someone to read at a sixth grade level - other than simply having them practice? Can someone reach a sixth grade level only to later fall below it as their skills atrophy by voluntary disuse though adulthood?
- josephg 5y ago
  Both exist. Teachers make a huge difference, and there is absolutely a range of ability amongst students. (For dozens of reasons) When I was teaching programming I realised that by best students were going to become excellent programmers regardless of what I did. Like, if I literally didn’t teach them anything and left them to just goof around quietly on their computer on their own, they’ll still end up great. Teaching still matters. (Maybe more). But the difference is 10/10 meets expectations and 20/10 exceeds them. Weaker students essentially could not learn the material without both of us working really hard to get them over the line. For the weaker students, the default is failure unless a lot of things go right. And so as a classroom teacher you have the devil’s choice - who do you pay attention to? In a large classroom some people inevitably get ignored or fall through the cracks. And in school the problem compounds year on year. Learning issues tend to take a lot longer to fix than they do to create. Didn’t learn calculus last year with everyone else because your home life is a mess? Now the only way you’ll learn it is with 1-on-1 time with an overworked teacher. That didn’t happen? Now you have panic attacks when you think about it. And home life is probably still a mess. I’m not apologising or excusing anything. But it is a hard problem. I don’t believe the same philosophy of teaching which created this problem is equal to the task of solving it.
lillecarl 5y ago
I feel like GP-post is a typical "feel good about yourself post". "Look, even though someone was at fault through all of my early years i still managed to learn these rudimentary tasks on my own as an adult, not everyone is as good as i am".

dataviz1000 5y ago

> scientific consensus We should be very careful with scientific consensus of a social science. Maybe we should say if you lead a horse to water, it doesn't drink, and you need that horse to work on the farm to grow food to feed your family, you are going to have a very bad time instead of what teachers told me time and time again, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." What type of person gives up on a horse that doesn't drink instead of figuring out what is wrong with the horse or understanding animal behavior to train the horse to drink and pull plows and stuff?

travisjungroth 5y ago
> What type of person... Ones who aren't good at what they're doing. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with school. I think some of the aversion to the "doesn't exist" claim is it seems to leave a hole. There are two ways of saying something doesn't exist / isn't real. You can say the cause isn't there or the effect isn't there. Take malaria. As you might know, the name means "bad air". People used to think bad air from swamps and jungles made you sick. If I didn't believe this I could say "swamp air can't make you sick, malaria doesn't exist". Which, sure, the disease doesn't come from the gas. But people do seem to get sick in a similar way at swamps that they don't get sick in dry areas. Isn't that real? Another reason people will react to you with hostility is you're pattern matching people who have been hostile to them. People with depression get told "it's all in your head". Sure, that's where the brain is. "No, it's just the way you look at things". Sure, yeah, bad at looking at things. Still depressed. I don't think that "gently scolding" people has show up as effective treatment. But the point isn't to help. It's to dismiss and degrade. You're also still only half way to looking at things holistically. You want to zoom out (based on what you've said about yourself and the horse example). But instead of looking at the system all together, you're pulling the blame from 100% on the student (something you got as a painful message) and putting it 100% on the teachers. Neither is representative of reality. Is someone disabled if they can't see well enough to drive? What if they don't want to drive? What if they can drive with glasses? What if there aren't glasses good enough for them, is it that optometrists are disabled? What if they can't afford them? These are all really interesting social questions and there are no perfect answers. But if I get the sense that someone is trying to ignore the reality that some people can see fine and some people see poorly and suffer for it, and that any of this suffering is at all localized on the person who can't see, I'm going to think they're trying to pull one over on me.

romwell 5y ago

The parent is right though. All a "learning disability" is is a requirement for a different approach from the instructor than the one-size-fits-all nonsense that we push down poor kids' throats as "education". The lack of ability to benefit from this farce in millions of students isn't surprising; and it can be absolutely address with better instruction and individual approach. I say this as a former instructor, math PhD[1], and also a person with ADHD[2] who persevered through a fair amount of failing grades on the way there. The #1 reason[3] I ran away from academia was that the system simply doesn't allow one to teach the right way. It's a conveyor-belt manufacturing process with the model 9-5 worker as the intended results, and if you don't fit the mold — tough luck. One has more leeway in teaching topics courses, but even world-class professors don't get away with not teaching intro/foundation courses, which are as rigid as they're atrocious. And K12 is where souls go to die. An enthusiastic teacher will burn out in just a few years, and come back with PTSD and a 1000-yard stare. Anyway. The OP's statement should be seen as "learning durabilities are not an obstacle to a good instructor" — which, in the vast majority of cases, is true. [1] https://romankogan.net/math https://romankogan.net/math [2] https://romankogan.net/adhd https://romankogan.net/adhd [3] The #2 reason is that the industry pays 4x as much; #3 is the 2-body problem; #4 is ..., oh wait, I'll be here for a long time if I keep going.

avianlyric 5y ago
> All a "learning disability" is is a requirement for a different approach from the instructor than the one-size-fits-all nonsense that we push down poor kids' throats as "education". Tell that to my Dyslexia, I had many mentors growing up, and was taught by many people using many different approaches. I still can’t spell for shit, and my phonic processing is still garbage. No about of different teaching methods is going to change the fundamentals fact that my brain struggles to turn sounds into words, resulting in me hearing noise rather than speech, and turning ideas into written words. I’m perfectly articulate, indeed I’ve been accused of being “too articulate”, whatever that means, by my written prose is poor because I struggle translating phonic sounds into letters and words. Even simple words like “because”, “through”, “thought” etc which I’ve written and read correctly millions of times, I still struggle with, and need help from a spellchecker to get correct. If that isn’t a learning disability, then I have no idea what it is. But it sure as shit isn’t a teaching failure.

zzt123 5y ago

We’re talking about learning basic stuff, not top tier postgrad stuff. The article is about the majority of American adults being unable to read prose at a sixth grade level - that is, years before SF suggests teaching algebra. That is absolutely a massively distributed pedagogical failure of outstanding degree. Unless the average adult is so mentally disabled that acceptable-or-above teaching should result in this outcome.

thelettere 5y ago
"The problem of educating the educators is a problem which the democrat forgets in his enthusiasm for educating the pupils." Except now we don't even have the latter. We've just accepted that the least qualified individuals in our society are charged with doing what is arguably the most important work outside of governing, and with a laughable wrong headed course of training.
whatshisface 5y ago
I don't know which side is right but I'm detecting a distinct lack of objective criteria or empirical evidence in this debate. What's a sixth grade reading level? Are the majority of US adults capable of that? How do you teach someone to read at a sixth grade level - other than simply having them practice? Can someone reach a sixth grade level only to later fall below it as their skills atrophy by voluntary disuse though adulthood?
josephg 5y ago
Both exist. Teachers make a huge difference, and there is absolutely a range of ability amongst students. (For dozens of reasons) When I was teaching programming I realised that by best students were going to become excellent programmers regardless of what I did. Like, if I literally didn’t teach them anything and left them to just goof around quietly on their computer on their own, they’ll still end up great. Teaching still matters. (Maybe more). But the difference is 10/10 meets expectations and 20/10 exceeds them. Weaker students essentially could not learn the material without both of us working really hard to get them over the line. For the weaker students, the default is failure unless a lot of things go right. And so as a classroom teacher you have the devil’s choice - who do you pay attention to? In a large classroom some people inevitably get ignored or fall through the cracks. And in school the problem compounds year on year. Learning issues tend to take a lot longer to fix than they do to create. Didn’t learn calculus last year with everyone else because your home life is a mess? Now the only way you’ll learn it is with 1-on-1 time with an overworked teacher. That didn’t happen? Now you have panic attacks when you think about it. And home life is probably still a mess. I’m not apologising or excusing anything. But it is a hard problem. I don’t believe the same philosophy of teaching which created this problem is equal to the task of solving it.

lillecarl 5y ago

I feel like GP-post is a typical "feel good about yourself post". "Look, even though someone was at fault through all of my early years i still managed to learn these rudimentary tasks on my own as an adult, not everyone is as good as i am".