Our Labeled Children: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs To Know About Learning Disabilities

by Robert J. Sternberg, Elena Grigorenko

Twenty percent of all school aged children in this country have been labeled Learning Disabled. But what is a genuine learning disability and how does it differ from garden-variety poor learning? How can we more accurately assess and then teach to learning strengths instead of to weaknesses? In this passionately argued yet clear-headed book, internationally acclaimed cognitive psychologist Robert Sternberg and research scientist Elena Grigorenko tackle these controversial issues, urging that we must first understand the full range of factors that contribute to learning disabilities (and sometimes to their misdiagnosis) in order to improve the American educational and diagnostic systems.From the biological bases of dyslexia and other disabilities, to the tests that do and do not accurately assess learning abilities, to the social and educational pressures that contribute to misdiagnosis in this country, Our Labeled Children clearly outlines the issues that concern both parents and teachers, ultimately pointing to clear strategies for improving our system to help children with all manner of learning problems.

Genres: Education

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Robert J. Sternberg's spectacular research career in psychology had a rather inauspicious beginning. In elementary school he performed poorly on IQ tests, and his teachers' actions conveyed their low expectations for his future progress. Everything changed when his fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Alexa, saw that he had potential and challenged him to do better. With her encouragement, he became a high-achieving student, eventually graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University. In a gesture of gratitude, Dr. Sternberg dedicated his book, Successful Intelligence to Mrs. Alexa.

Dr. Sternberg's personal experiences with intelligence testing in elementary school lead him to create his own intelligence test for a 7 th grade science project. He happened to find the Stanford-Binet scales in the local library, and with unintentional impertinence, began administering the test to his classmates; his own test, the Sternberg Test of Mental Abilities (STOMA) appeared shortly thereafter. In subsequent years he distinguished himself in many domains of psychology, having published influential theories relating to intelligence, creativity, wisdom, thinking styles, love and hate.

Dr. Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of (Successful) Intelligence contends that intelligent behavior arises from a balance between analytical, creative and practical abilities, and that these abilities function collectively to allow individuals to achieve success within particular sociocultural contexts. Analytical abilities enable the individual to evaluate, analyze, compare and contrast information. Creative abilities generate invention, discovery, and other creative endeavors. Practical abilities tie everything together by allowing individuals to apply what they have learned in the appropriate setting. To be successful in life the individual must make the best use of his or her analytical, creative and practical strengths, while at the same time compensating for weaknesses in any of these areas. This might involve working on improving weak areas to become better adapted to the needs of a particular environment, or choosing to work in an environment that values the individual's particular strengths. For example, a person with highly developed analytical and practical abilities, but with less well-developed creative abilities, might choose to work in a field that values technical expertise but does not require a great deal of imaginative thinking. Conversely, if the chosen career does value creative abilities, the individual can use his or her analytical strengths to come up with strategies for improving this weakness. Thus, a central feature of the triarchic theory of successful intelligence is adaptability-both within the individual and within the individual's sociocultural context.

Reviews

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who read one of the author's thoughts on creativity I thought it would be worthwhile to see what he (a noted popular psychology writer) thought about other subjects.  Much to my pleasure, I found that he had co-written a thoughtful work on learning disabilities and the complexity of how they are handled by contemporary society.  As someone who knows some kiddos who have been labeled as having learning disabilities and as someone who narrowly escaped such a fate as a child despite considerable native intellect, this book is clearly one that has a personal resonance to me.  Quite intriguingly, this book not only pursues a particular point--one that I support to a high degree--but it also manages to thoughtfully wrestle with the problem of consequences and logistics in the way that diagnoses represent a minimax solution on the part of many parents and how they have considerably unfortunate consequences for educational institutions as well as parents and, of course, the children themselves whose diagnoses often become self-fulfilling prophecies of decreasing learning and difficulties in achievement.

This book of about 250 pages is divided into four parts.  The first part of the book looks at what learning disabilities are, who has them, and what has been done about them in four chapters (I).  The authors look at the inconsistency of how learning disabilities are diagnosed, with large amounts of both poor and disadvantaged students (especially bilingual ones) and wealthy students whose parents seek advantages for them being somewhat over-represented among them (1), what is at stake (2), how difficult it is to really identify students with learning disabilities (3), and issues regarding accommodations and special services (4).  The second part of the book looks at the science of reading disabilities (II) by discussing the cognitive (5), biological (6), and genetic (7) bases of reading and reading disabilities among children, all of which presents a complex picture.  The third part of the book discusses learning disabilities in school, the courtroom, and society (III), providing a look at how it gives a better ticket in school (8), if not in adult life, and how difficult it has been to understand the vagaries of learning disabilities in the court system (9).  Finally, the last part of the book discusses what needs to be done (IV), looking at the lottery that everyone wins and loses (10), after which there are notes and an index.

The authors' approach to learning disabilities can be briefly summarized as follows:  everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to our abilities, and that these become noticeable or critical only when they relate to a social context that values some abilities and does not particularly care about others.  The fact that resources for education are so limited and that providing special services to adults in the workplace so limited means that a great many children are harmed in not being educated to the extent possible by virtue of resources being spent (some of it fraudulently) in dealing with those who have reputed issues in certain areas, some of which are created to give children an edge by having untimed tests, and some of which represent a wide variety of difficulties in reading and understanding and communicating that people have.  The fact that the diagnosis of learning disabilities tends to reduce the content that is learned and therefore tends to exacerbate the gaps that existed already and to make them difficult if not impossible to bridge later on.  All of this only points out the fact that most interventions when it comes to public education tend to make things worse and not better, something the author points out when it comes to the declining difficulty of content of reading material in contemporary elementary schools even for ordinary students.

[Tara]

oops i only read the first chapter

[Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Simply put: one of the most useless books I've read in a while. Not helped by the 1999 copyright.