Learning disability

                           LEARNING DISABILITY

Learning disability, can be considered as a living problem with which almost one in every seven persons has problem with and about which we are hardly aware of. Learning Disability is a matter of special concern for the student community as very often we mistake the failure of a student with poor intelligence and indiscipline while the true reason very often is due to a deficit in one or more of the ways the brain processes information.

 Why it occurs?

The causes of learning disability are hard to find. However, the possible causes can be put into three general categories -:

i) Biological or organic, including specific factors like (a) neurological dysfunction or malfunctioning of the brain which may occur due to high fever, head injury, pre-mature birth, anoxia and even low blood sugar, (b) uneven growth pattern, also called developmental imbalances or intra-individual differences, etc.

ii) Genetic or hereditary

iii) Environmental i.e. the factors that lies within the environment like (a) emotional disturbance, (b) failure of teaching, (c) social system, etc.

                      Who is learning disabled person?

Learning disability encompasses a cluster of disorders and generally no individual displays all of them at a time. The major characteristics of learning disability are:

• Significant discrepancy between learning potential and actual level of learning
• Hyperactivity or difficulty in working, waiting for turns, sustaining attention to a task and act without consequences
• Lack of coordination or slow psychomotor development
• Memory disorder i.e. people who fails to recall simple facts and also those who fails to repeat a simple sequence of few words just after listening
• Attention disorder or the inability to focus long enough to learn new material, etc.

                   How can learning disability be cured?

• As learning disability involves a cluster of disorder, its cure, hence, depends on the nature of disorder. Some major approaches recognized by professionals are:
• Process training or training to the phenomena which has led to disability in learning
• Multisensory approach
• Meditation
• Cognitive training or training to change the covert thoughts
• Behavior modification, etc.

Besides the above, right support and timely intervention from people around may do wonder for them. Schools and colleges can help them achieve such success by encouraging their strengths, knowing their weaknesses, understand the educational system, work with professionals and learn about strategies for dealing with specific difficulties. We need to understand that learning disabled children are as smart and can be smarter than their peers if are not left to figure things out by themselves or if not taught in conventional ways. In nutshell the cure for learning disability lies in more in awareness than in any specific treatment.

                                           

Conclusion:

Including the excluded is the Millennium Development Goal of India. 

We aspire to become a developed nation by 2020 and leaving any child behind will certainly not help us to realize this dream. Education for all and a fulfilling career according to ability should not be compromised with at any cost. We should inspire ourselves with those great names like Albert Einstein who couldn’t read until he was nine. Walt Disney, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller of USA and the likes had trouble reading all their lives. Also in the list are such names like actor Tom Cruise, Oscar award winner Whoopi Goldberg and many others have learning disabilities but they were successful.