LD is a bad name

wooaa · Post by **wooaa** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 00:31

for those you who dont know LD is an abrevation of Lerning Disabald. i have NLD (nonverbal learning disabality) and the name has ben buging me for a year or two but now it has just goten too far. In my school aobut 9.5 out of ten kids there have some sorta Learing Difrence. This moring my teacher told the class not to pay atention to anything wrote in the book because the kids were LD. and it is just not that but he has said things like " I know that your hand writing is bad because you are Learing Disabled but do your best." Just because our brans get from pont A to point B a litle difrently dose not mean we shoud get treated like we are brain dameged!

And it is just not him! 1/2 of the other teachers inculed the headmaster treats us like we are 7!

it is wrong to call somone learning disabled just because we have difrent brains!

Antilogic · Post by **Antilogic** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 01:14

Im Dyslexic, and I didnt find this out until I left mainstream schooling. Once I found out about it, it seemed rather clear to me. I feel I was failed by my schools, as I knew I could have done a lot better if I was taught in a different way.

Don't bitch about it on a forum- talk to your parents, look at schools with proper care for this. For example, I now work at a sec school, which is a normal sec school, not a "special school", but has a centre of excellence for learning disabities of all types.

But you can still take your teachers advice and do your best. I for example just googled about 5 words to type this post to try and get the spelling near right (e.g. excellence was coming out as "elexcanance" for me^^). Theres no reason why you still cannot put your upmost into what you do, dont use it as a excuse. You can still do EVERYTHING everyone else can, just in a different way. If your school is not working with you in the best possible way, move schools. Dont let them fail you like they did me.

Also LD as a phrase is used to cover everything. From Downs syndrome to those who have a minor problem with reading. Yes it sucks, but dont get to worried about it.

wooaa · Post by **wooaa** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 01:17

i try my hardest in evrything i do. i was just anoyed at what my teacher sayd. i never use my brain as an exuce. i apologise for @#$ing i just wanted to say somthing.

Antilogic · Post by **Antilogic** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 01:20

No thats fine, I understand what you mean excatly

And thats good. But you still must ensure you are getting the best help possible.

wooaa · Post by **wooaa** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 01:21

thanks.

i need to go but thanks for lisaning to the rants of a 14 year old boy

Antilogic · Post by **Antilogic** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 01:23

Nps. I got really really pissed when I found out I had dyslexic and none of my teachers had f*****g noticed. Thankfully, now im at work and now starting college (at the same time

) I get the support I need from people who know how to teach.

BugMeister · Post by **BugMeister** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 01:38

you're dead right..
nice one, guys..

- keep on pushing!

Tsar_of_Cows · Post by **Tsar_of_Cows** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 01:45

Well I have dysgraphia, so I have a lot of trouble learning the spelling of words (if you ask me, I think I have dyslexia as well, I keep typing things incorrectly even when I know how to spell them).

Something that I found helps on the internet, especially forums is using Firefox + a English Language Dictionary add-on, as it spell checks everything I type.

Without it, there would be probably a good 4 or 5 typos in this post and I would have had to have re-read it a few times.

Edit: spelling of words, I have no problem with meaning... I must have been tired when I wrote this.

LV · Post by LV » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 09:13

If you feel your disability is being held against you then contact your local council and put a complaint in against the school/college

wooaa · Post by **wooaa** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 16:03

that what realy bugs me. people labal me a disabilald! i just think that callying anyone learing disabled for any reason is wrong.

Psychoclops · Post by **Psychoclops** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 16:11

Sorry about this long winded rant, but i have to get this off my chest:

My Primary School failed me badly when i was young, i couldn't read the blackboard, so they automatically thought i was a bit slow and stupid so put me on 'Green Table'. Basically there was a system in place, which placed kids in a class in groups via table 'colours' according to what teachers thought the kids academic abilities were. Green was for the kids considered slow and was the 'bottom' group. Red was the top group, for the brightest kids in class. So my twin sister was in red group (top) and i was in green group (bottom)

Being very young i didn't understand why i was put in the bottom group, i could read perfectly well, i could spell and do maths etc. What they didn't realise (and should've cos my parents told the school when i started about my medical problems) was that i COULD read, but just couldn't SEE the blackboard cos of my eyes. So the idiots put me in green group, which was the FURTHEST AWAY from the blackboard and assumed i was academically lacking

Turned out i was actually one of the brightest kids in class, i stayed in red group thereafter and was in top set of comprehensive after that.

Before anyone asks i couldn't have glasses etc until i reached a certain age, which was 11 iirc. So after some very unpleasant meetings (for the school) the matters were resolved. So my advice would be to talk things over with your school and tell them about your thoughts and feelings on this matter. It worked for me

One good thing about it all though was that the 'green' group took a big liking to me as i was able to help them out when they got stuck, and i was happy to help out. So maybe mixing up the 'slow' kids with the bright ones will:

A: stop an atmosphere of 'elitism' developing (which happened in my school) cos all the kids will make friends and help each other out.

B: might actually help push the educational skills of kids UP overall. Even after i went 'up' to red group, i still went and sat with my friends on 'green' group every so often to help them out. They may have struggled with maths and spelling etc, but that didn't make them stupid. Some people can pick things up quickly, others might need a bit longer to grasp things. Patience was all they needed, as they perfectly capable of learning the stuff being taught in class. Although we did have one boy who was dyslexic and struggled quite a bit. No help for him from the school though, it was a bloody shambles.

I hated my primary school, the bright kids were taught well, but the slower ones were simply ignored. Being clever but ignored opened my eyes up quite a bit, there needs to be a major overhaul in how kids are taught in the UK i think.

Funny fact: I now only see and talk regularly to the people of 'green' group. Red group i cant stand, they've grown up to be a bunch of arrogant people (including my twin sister!)

Probably not the best way of explaining things, as i'm more in rant mode than anything, but i do feel that thousands of kids are being let down every year by the educational authority/schools.

wooaa · Post by **wooaa** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 16:15

thanks. other then the ocashonal coment my school trys its best to help.
P.S nise essay.

Psychoclops · Post by **Psychoclops** » Sat, 13. Sep 08, 16:18

wooaa wrote:thanks. other then the ocashonal coment my school trys its best to help.
P.S nise essay.

lmao, yeah i got a bit carried away there....

MGA · Post by **MGA** » Mon, 15. Sep 08, 03:32

I can sympathise, I have a mild form of high funtionin autism myself, hindered me through primary and high school. I still made a few friends and both schools helped me through, it was only when I left when I came to terms with what was wrong with me. Only problems I had lateron were an unversity that din't offer the same help or similar despite promising it originally and the difficulty of getting a job.

silentWitness · Post by **silentWitness** » Mon, 15. Sep 08, 05:58

I find that learning disability to be just an excuse to protect a poor education system from scrutiny.

To be honest I think Darwinism is desperately needed in schools, I was so bored in school because they had to repeat things slowly so that the morons could understand things. Elitism would have helped me but instead I was left to go neurotic with boredom...

So you don't want to be treated like a moron? Well show them then. Get top/high marks in exams and don't give me "I can't" because you can, you just choose to be in the position you're in. You've got books, you've got the internet... whose permission are you waiting for to learn?

Jericho · Post by **Jericho** » Mon, 15. Sep 08, 09:35

silentWitness wrote:
To be honest I think Darwinism is desperately needed in schools, I was so bored in school because they had to repeat things slowly so that the morons could understand things. Elitism would have helped me but instead I was left to go neurotic with boredom...

Bingo.

And this was many years ago before dyslexia had been invented. TO my knowledge, there was no one with any learning disability in my classes at primary school. But there were a bunch of pig-ignorant morons. Luckily this coincided with the change in ages for English schools, the change was that you now had to be 9 instead of 8 to go to middle school. That meant that suddenly we had an extra year at primary. The 6 brightest got to go up a year and have their final year in the older class. Thank the lord I was one of them.

But to be fair, we did still have a decent education system back then. If you couldn't read by the time you left class 1 (e.g. your first year), then the school did everything to make sure you did learn to read immediately.

On a complete tangent: One of my sister's school friends (now 41 I think) only found out a couple of years ago that she is actually a year younger then she thinks she is. Her birthdate is wrong on every official document, and she went to school a year early through some administrative ****-up. I am not sure if that is a good thing to find out or a bad thing.

Back to the original post: Does anyone know why the word 'disabled' replaced 'handicapped'? We had a perfectly good word, which conjured up the image that Handicapped Man could get through life with 1 leg, but he had a handicap. Now we have 'disabled' which to me says "Sorry, you are disabled, you can't do crap."

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Mon, 15. Sep 08, 13:01

Jericho wrote: Back to the original post: Does anyone know why the word 'disabled' replaced 'handicapped'? We had a perfectly good word, which conjured up the image that Handicapped Man could get through life with 1 leg, but he had a handicap. Now we have 'disabled' which to me says "Sorry, you are disabled, you can't do crap."

I thought the ultra-PC version was "differently abled"...

Antilogic · Post by **Antilogic** » Mon, 15. Sep 08, 20:52

I am so massivly pissed off with what silentWitness and Jericho have just stated, while I agree on one or 2 points there, im going to come back again later when ive calmed down as what i have to say right now would get me banned.

Rapier · Post by **Rapier** » Mon, 15. Sep 08, 22:30

Titanx3 wrote:I am so massivly pissed off with what silentWitness and Jericho have just stated, while I agree on one or 2 points there, im going to come back again later when ive calmed down as what i have to say right now would get me banned.

I wouldn't go that far myself but whilst I would sympathise, I can see both sides of the argument. Before I get on to the needs of the individual versus the needs of society though, lets start with learning disability/differences.

My world view:

Our brains all work differently, many work in very similar ways and a few in very different ones, with a whole spectrum in-between. These are learning differences, and we all have them. When does a difference become a disability? In the case of education, it's when the system doesn't adequately cater for a difference to a point where the individual is unable to cope with the difference themselves and requires additional support. This support could be extra tuition, adapting teaching/learning methods, developing individual learning strategies, use of learning aids (e.g. a computer), note takers etc.

My own learning difficulty is actually physical: I have a mildly deformed finger that means I can't hold a pen 'correctly' and writing for any extended period of time is often painful (and illegible). At school, this was probably a disability only in my geography exam, where I'm told I lost marks due to my handwriting being too difficult to read. At university, it didn't affect me at all as I simply adapted my learning style to minimise the amount of writing I needed to do. My physical difference was never really a disability in education, but it has been in the workplace and I have had to ask for adaptations to be made (I get to use a laptop to take notes of meetings for preparing minutes)

So how does my personal experience help in this case? Well, it backs up the argument that you should ask for reasonable adaptation to be made. In this specific case, it sounds like that should be additional training for teachers to understand different differences and how to avoid them becoming disabilities or reduce the impact of the disability.

But, such training costs money that could be spent on some other training for the teacher. Whilst disability awareness might benefit a small number of people and prevent them getting left behind, other training might help the rest of the class to learn even better and, ultimately, have a greater benefit to society. Which do you spend the money on: giving lots of help to the few people getting left behind or a little help to everyone? Obviously, it would be nice to do both, but there isn't unlimited money, so a balance has to be struck. Where you draw the line is exactly the problem that faces schools and politicians across the developed world. Personally, I think we should spend less on trying to categorise 'learning disability' and standardise support, and more on helping to raise teachers awareness and helping them to adapt to more inclusive teaching. To my mind, the 'rise' in learning disabilities over the past 20 years is due to partly to increased observation and partly too the over standardisation of teaching creating disability where before there was simply difficulty.

As for the genuinely 'thick', or rather those less academic, I don't have a problem with the school system leaving them behind. That's on the proviso that they are given opportunities to become equally valued members of society in other ways; as artists or artisans, in practical occupations or wherever their talents lie.

BugMeister · Post by **BugMeister** » Mon, 15. Sep 08, 23:28

Titanx3 wrote:I am so massivly pissed off with what silentWitness and Jericho have just stated, while I agree on one or 2 points there, im going to come back again later when ive calmed down as what i have to say right now would get me banned.

- hear, hear - well said!

I almost came in earlier to voice something of the same opinion..
it seems that elitists regard themselves as unique individuals, while the rest of us 'oiks' are regarded as all being the same..

- it's an attitudinal problem, and it's made worse by society's
acceptance of the silly notion that only those who come first can ever be winners..

- it would also be wise to remember that "The voice of the majority is no proof of justice."

- it's probably not entirely their fault, so take no notice..

- anyway, you've made some really excellent points so far
- it'd be a shame to spoil it with a rant at other forum members..

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LD is a bad name

LD is a bad name