LD and Elite Colleges

shawbridge
Thu, 07 May 2009 14:33:04 +0000

aspiemom, I am OK hearing a number of toadstools comments – she thinks that some people are gaming the system. So do you and I. Although based on her comments, I suspect that she thinks almost all kids are gaming the system. She appears to believe that it is in general unfair to give accommodations; I disagree with that and in some other posts I have tried to explain why I think she is some combination of misguided and wrong. But, I think her comment that implied that kids with LDs were the weak and supporting them by compensation (e.g., rewarding them) and thereby penalizing the strong, we are weakening society as a whole doesn’t have a place in this thread as it is actively undermining kids with LDs and their parents who are seeking advice on how to succeed given the system we have, which in and of itself may be set up poorly as poetgrl has suggested. It is for castigating kids with LDs that toadstool has come in for criticism – and for essentially repeating the same stuff in various posts. I see no reason why a malevolent comment like the last one in her post needs to appear here. Why come on to a thread about how kids with LDs get into and fare at elite colleges and effectively say, “You don’t belong at elite colleges if you need accommodations?”

My concern was that her closing statement was uncivil. I tried to respond civilly to it, objecting to the content and not the person.

Incidentally, your comment about how the overuse of the system relative to expectations, whether due to gaming or just to a bigger population of kids with LDs than was expected, means that the kids who need it have the teachers’ responsiveness diluted or eliminated is quite important.