LD and Elite Colleges

shawbridge
Mon, 04 May 2009 12:46:55 +0000

toadstool, it’s obvious that you have a belief that helping people compensate for learning disabilities is somehow unfair. It’s not clear to me why you feel it is appropriate (or even worth your time) to try to put down folks with LDs in the section of the CC in which kids with LDs and their parents are seeking advice on how to apply to college, how to manage while they are there, and where to attend given their issues. [As we discussed in an earlier post, you might want to get over it because all of these institution are bound by law to deal with disabilities, but if you want to continue to fume, OK, but why to the folks who need advice and not someone trying to tell them they’re “weak?”]

Given the context, your final statement seems to imply that folks with LDs are “the weak” and those without are “the strong.” I’d generally take issue with your apparent characterization, but, let’s stick with your labels. By implication, you are asserting that a society that provides accommodations to folks with LDs is making itself weaker. This strikes me as unsupported and in the current world, likely wrong. It may well be the case that as we have switched from an economy based upon physical labor to an economy based upon thinking that societies that don’t get their brightest people to use their brains effectively will lose out. [Yes, there’s a cost argument, which does matter because if the marginal cost of getting some of the intellectual benefit exceeds the value of the benefit, we shouldn’t squeeze that hard].

Reading and writing were not key skills in human evolution until recently and they are not inherently tied to other intellectual abilities. Maryanne Wolf, who studies the neurology of the reading brain, argues that the pattern recognition and other skills that dyslexics have caused them to be the leaders and generals in earlier societies. That is, leadership ability may be negatively correlated with reading fluency. [Indeed, according to Forbes, dyslexics seem to be overrepresented among successful entrepreneurs]. If, by imposing a screen based upon reading/writing skills, we are blocking the path for leadership, we may be doing real harm to our own society’s capacity.