Learning Disabilities and Life Stories

This book was recommended by an instructor for a class this semester. What a book! The editors present a series of essays from individuals who have various learning disabilities and how they have approached a hostile world, and how they have handled their journey. If you want to know how a child feels this is the book to read. You will walk away with a different viewpoint of people who are differently abled.

Learning Disabilities and Life Stories is a landmark work. It is one of the few books that provides the 'insider's' perspective on the complex, controversial problem of learning disabilities. Thirteen college students vividly recount how LD affected their academic, social and emotional lives, and how they overcame these problems. Some of the students also suffered from ADHD, emotional problems (i.e. anxiety), and social problems (i.e. stigma). Although these students are probably not representative of the entire population of LD students, their stories make a wonderful contribution to the understanding of LD. This is a must-read book for educators, parents, and LD students. It is especially helpful for LD students. They will likely find a particular author that they relate to. The 13 authors have a variety of life experiences, learning problems (i.e. dyslexia, auditory processing difficulties, etc.), and perspectives on LD. Each story is inspirational in its own way. As each author attended college, the book is especially suited to inspired other LD students to consider pursuing higher education. Also read: The Pretenders by Barbara Guyer. She is a teacher who vividly describes the lives of adults with LD. New Ways of Looking at Learning Disabilities is an excellent book for educators.

I had to purchase this book for a class on learning disabilities in the classroom. This book is a perfect example of what is right and quite wrong about our educational system, particulary in our special education programs. The autobiographical stories within gave me huanting reminders of my childhood in the public school system. If you have a child in school who feels that they are olone, hand them this book. I also feel that all proffessional educators should read this as well. It gives an insider view that is uncomparable to anything that I have ever read on the subject.

Learning Disabilities & Life Stories Edited by Pano Rodis, Andrew Garrod & Mary Lynn Boscardin (Allyn & Bacon, 2001; ISBN # 0205320104)Reviewed by Peg Dawson, NCSPOn a recent flight to France, I sat next to a French physicist, currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His specialty was optics and he told me he knew Ansel Adams personally. When he asked what I did for a living, I told him I was a psychologist specializing in children and adults with learning and attention disorders. His reaction, like so many adults outside the fields of education and psychology with whom I converse, was: "Don't you think that young people who claim to have these problems are, in fact, just lazy and unmotivated, and use the labels LD and ADD as an excuse?"While in France, I began reading the book, Learning Disabilities & Life Stories, and I wished I could have given my friend the French physicist a copy of the book to read. How cavalierly he suggested that learning disorders are really excuses for character flaws. This book is a series of 13 autobiographical narratives written by adult students with learning and attention disorders. Each autobiography is different, yet each is laden with pain - many express anger and triumph as well. I have worked with students with disabilities all my professional life, and I thought I had a grasp on what it means to have a learning disability. After reading this book, I realized that my understanding of learning disabilities has been grounded in a logical-scientific-cognitive world. Students with disabilities view their learning problems through an emotional filter - and no student, it appears, grows up in America with a disability and emerges unscathed from the experience. I have always viewed with some suspicion the argument that learning disabilities are the creation of a socio-cultural context. I have questioned this argument because I know the students I work with have genuine difficulty reading - or doing math, or paying attention, or remembering things. The point this book makes is that the impact of a disability on a student is powerfully affected by the environment in which that student finds himself or herself. American students grow up in a world that rewards ambition, personal achievement and competition. The current emphasis on high stakes testing only accentuates this. And it's not just that teachers and parents have this bias - although this can be devastating enough, as several of the essayists in this book attest. Children, too, absorb this message from a very early age. Most of the students writing these essays endured teasing and ridiculing by their peers. And the ones who didn't still managed to learn that they were defective when compared to their classmates. Every contributor to this book had to dig themselves out of a fairly deep hole to get to the point where they could survive in college and write about the experience of growing up with a disability. In fact, a majority of students with disab

Andrew Garrod has turned the case study into an art form. This has been evident in his previous books which look at the lives of adolescents, African-American students, International students, and First-Nation people. Garrod has a remarkable ability to work with individuals to guide their own autonomous reflection and to capture their experience in evocative and eloquent prose. Pano Rodis and Mary Lynn Boscardin, two experts on learning disabilities, and he have collaborated to produce a powerful anthology of students voices which tell what it is like to grow up and attend our schools with a learning disability.