Causes of the disability
The learning disability is the categorization of a human life that consists of several operating areas in which a person has complexity that is caused by some unknown factors. Learning Disorder is the learning problems in the academic grounds and does not severely need diagnosis. Learning disability is a sort of approved medical analysis for meeting some norms given by the psychologist and the pediatrician. The learning disorder is a group of disabilities that happens due to insufficient academic and communication ability. The learning disorder is consisting of a group of learning disabilities due to insufficient academic and communication skills (Swanson and Harris 2013). The types of learning disabilities are Dyslexia caused due to the lack in reading power, Dyscalculia caused by the lack of solving mathematical problems and Dysgraphia caused by the lack in writing power. The focal problems of the disabilities are that they affect the human brains and stop its ability to obtain and deal with the information (Gaddes 2013). The problem of a human with learning disability is that it slows down the process of learning of the individual in comparison to a person without the learning disability (Scanlon 2013). The person with learning disabilities often faces problems while trying to complete a task by themselves.
Famous persons like Sir Albert Einstein, George Washington have suffered from dyslexia but left the disability behind and nailed their names in world history hence learning disability is not a sickness but sometimes proves to be strength (Kamhi and Catts 2013).
This essay will discuss about the effect of the learning disabilities on the life of a human being.
The causes of the learning disabilities are mostly not properly determined because in many cases there is absence of exact reason of the disability (Mackelprang and Salsgiver 2016). However, there can be certain common reasons for having learning disability. Those are:
The disability can come from family. The adolescent having disability may have same kind of problem in their family or relatives. Some have the development disorders due to which the disability may occur.
The disability can happen due to premature birth, illness, consumption of alcohol or due to anomalies while brain development.
Head injuries, toxic exposure or malnutrition can increase the amount of disability in the child.
The persons with learning disabilities face various challenges throughout their whole life. The effects of the disabilities are not only in the academic base but the person can have disabilities in social appearance as well. The psychological difference effects the perceptions of social indication with the cohorts (Hen and Goroshit 2014). The persons with learning disabilities not only faces problem in distinctions of learning platforms but also due to carrying of stigmatizing tag. Determining the efficacy of the services provided for the special education is very difficult due to the limitations in the data collection and methodology. The adolescents who are disabled in their learning process face a lot of outcomes due to their lack of understanding and functioning (Geary 2013). The reason behind the lower learning outcome of the adolescents is to some extent the reduced amount of expectations of people around them. The research states that the teachers expect less from the students who have learning disabilities (Emerson, McGill and Mansell 2013). Students with positive ability of learning have improved self-esteem than those who have the learning disability and studies states that the students with less learning ability suffers from lack of self-esteem which creates a lot of problems throughout life. A person or an adolescent if lacks in self-esteem faces tremendous problem in almost every step of life because trust in own self and the ability to have faith to take major decisions is an important feature of a person throughout life. The record of the people who have learning disabilities is never a bed of roses but a bed of thrones. There is also a problem of less employment and less schooling of people or students who are disabled in learning. Sri Lanka has amended a bill regarding the rights of disabled person that states that the persons will have rights in decision making, get employment and will be given training regarding the development of vocational skills (Geary 2013).
Effects of the disability in human life
The learning disabilities are identified by either the psychiatrists and psychologists or some intelligence test of aptitude, presentation, memory, thinking ability, social dealings and abilities of language. The result of the tests declares whether the child is commensurate with cognitive ability. If the result is higher, it is declared that the child possess learning disability. As there is enhancement of technology, presently the testing of learning disability is done by the measurement of IQ of the child (Mirza, Nisar and Ikram 2017).
The current research regarding the learning disability is based on a diagnostic process which is also a treatment known as the response to intrusion. The recommendation of the researchers about the process is that this will show the students performance and start the treatment accordingly without the waiting of when the child will be able to meet the criteria of the learning disability and then send them for the treatment. The people with learning disability mostly remain unspoken and undetectable in many context of real life and this extends the degradation process in their lives (Gaddes 2013). They end up staying in the hospitals and the main reason behind this reaction is their unspoken and invisible attitude. Earlier the persons with learning disability were hidden from the society and histories due to the thought of revealing the disability will lessen the prestige of the family and if the girl of a family suffered from learning disability it was more shameful for those families as per the society norms of those days (Chandrasekara, Wijesundera and Perera 2016). In societal life, people with the learning disabilities are generally treated as people who always need support and care and cannot perform any activity without the help of the normal person. The people with learning disability are used as an example by the normal people in narrating stories to others about the disability. The learning disability people in their life time also want to speak like normal people and wish that they also had someone to listen about their thoughts and behave with them as normal people because even they want to interact socially and be an active part of the nation.
In recent times, there is an emergence of encouragement among the people of learning disability and they have started to open up with others and share their experiences with the other people and are able to explain themselves even without the help of a facilitator in certain times (Ceci 2013) . The person with learning disability have the potential in themselves due to which they are able to represent themselves in the limelight and provides themselves with the opportunities that is hard for others to achieve, may it be on academic basis or any other level of activities. The people with learning disability often suffers from lack of words or dyslexia in order to narrate their stories to others that is when they need a facilitator to help them with appropriate words so that they can complete the narration (Gaddes 2013).
Research
The disability is never a reason to exclude the person form social grounds and cornering the person from others, the challenge is to include them in the social grounds and help them overcome their life barriers with sensibility and guidance so that the persons feel safe and sound among others (Lovett and Sparks 2013). They should not be treated as abnormal because they do not deserve to be treated that way as they are not solely responsible for the disability. The families are also seen to behave rudely with the child having learning disability but the behavior is not at all respectable or accepted because it is not their fault and neither their choice to be disabled. The disabled child are often treated as a matter of joke by the other students of the school and sometimes the parents of those children are asked to change the school and transfer them to a school for the specially challenged because the authority thinks that they are not eligible of gaining education from a normal school and keeping those child will spoil the reputation of the school. The people with learning disability need self-advocacy because only that can help them to develop sense in their lives and understand the relation of others with them (Lovett and Sparks 2013).
Almost 11% of the school going students in Sri Lanka suffer from learning disabilities and needs special guidance. Among them 96% do not attend schools and only 0.4% attends school that to with fear in their expressions and actions (Reid, Lienemann and Hagaman 2013). There are many misdiagnosed cases in Sri Lanka and that is because of the lack of support and information of the students with learning disabilities. The education provided by the parents to their children in Sri Lanka is often very fanatical and similar with other parents they also want to see their child top the class and blames the education system and the teachers for the deficiency in their child and admit them to tuition classes (Lerner and Johns 2014). The learning disability in any child mostly affects the brain and senses.
Sri Lanka records approximately 80% of the students with reading problem and as the problem is not well supervised the self esteem of the child gets doomed and the child lacks in information and education throughout the life (Cortiella and Horowitz 2014).
The constitution of Sri Lanka has few years ago amended a law stating the fundamental rights for the person with learning disability. The negative attitude of the society often forbids the family members to utter that they have a LD person in their family. The country is not still that efficient to provide cooperative services to all the persons with learning disability. The children with LD hence are either treated in a specialized school or by a foundation. There are 10 specialized schools for the LD students in Sri Lanka but the main problem with those schools is that it lacks efficient number of teachers who can cooperate and educate the students with LD (Peiris-John et al. 2014). There is still no proper record of the students with disability in Sri Lanka and hence the country still lacks to provide the fundamental rights to the persons having LD. This lack of information reduces the scopes and paces for the LD person and is not benefited by the society at all. There are no regular schools that provide the required education to the students with LD and there is no transparency in accepting the students with LD in the society (Ceci 2013).
Present state
The parents role in the lives of the children with learning disability is very vast and the most important one. The learning disability is not the fault of the student and neither should be marked as a form of sickness but the parents must take up the disability as a challenge and deal with the child with lots of patience and time. The parents should encourage their child and treat them normally as that will help the child to be social and teach them to be confident with their attitude and self-esteem (Seligman and Darling 2017). The main concern is not only to know the needs of the child who has learning disability but also the impact that a family suffers when the society declines to accept the child and treat them equally with others. In Sri Lanka the parents are often embarrassed to talk about their child with learning disability in school or in any other places and this give the society more authority to treat those children with negative attitude. The parents must take the charge of providing the child the comfort zone which will help them to be an active part of the society. There is also a superstition that the child is having the learning disability due to the parent’s negative attitude towards another person or due to the sins that are committed by the students. As the special schooling system is only till the age of 14, the parent’s of those children suffer from a fear that once the child cross the certain age their education will stop and that will lead to many large problems in future (Meppelder, Hodes and Schuengel 2015).
The school teachers are loaded with experience and they are the secondary ones who can help the child with LD to be social and complete their education by being cooperative towards them.
The psychologist can support the child better than anyone else because they understand the disability and the mindset of the students better than anyone else because a psychologist mainly deals with minds and thoughts of people.
The university professors can provide the student with background and proper understanding for the condition of the child and there are few foundations that help the student having learning disability and many foundations help the students by interacting with the teachers and parents of the child and developing many education and social programs for them (Scanlon 2013).
Implementation
The individuals having learning disability always needs proper understanding environment and cooperative surroundings and when they are not comfortable in the atmosphere around them then they quit schools and lock themselves in the house so that no one can find and laugh at them. The individuals with learning disability are always afraid due to the fear of rejection and amusement of other people around them. The individuals can only succeed in their lives when they get proper cooperation and bonding from the people around them. The individuals face enormous problem throughout their life and search for the proper cooperation that will help them to be a part of the society (Cowan and Powell 2014).
Conclusion:
In the conclusion it can be said that the individual with learning ability will match up with the environment once they gets a welcoming environment at school from where they start being social. School is the pillar of everyone’s life which decides the future of every person and hence the individuals with learning disability also need proper education to get rid of the future problems in academic base. The child with learning disability wants to go to the same school that a student without any disability attends so that they can have the same opportunity and education that the other students have and most of all they want to be treated as a normal person. It is good to know about the concern of the Sri Lankan government for the LD children but it is still under developed as the country lacks in efficiency in the learning process of the students with Learning Disability.
References:
Ceci, S.J. ed., 2013. Handbook of cognitive, social, and neuropsychological aspects of learning disabilities (Vol.1).Routledge.(https://books.google.co.in/books?id=9v8qzQbQxmkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Chandrasekara, B., Wijesundera, S. and Perera, H., 2016. Fragile X syndrome in children with learning difficulties and the diagnostic dilemma. Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health, 45(1). (link- https://sljch.sljol.info/articles/abstract/10.4038/sljch.v45i1.8084/)
Cortiella, C. and Horowitz, S.H., 2014. The state of learning disabilities: Facts, trends and emerging issues. National Center for Learning Disabilities.(link- https://www.ncld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-State-of-LD.pdf)
Cowan, R. and Powell, D., 2014. The contributions of domain-general and numerical factors to third-grade arithmetic skills and mathematical learning disability. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(1), p.214.(link- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3906804/)
Emerson, E., McGill, P. and Mansell, J., 2013. Severe learning disabilities and challenging behaviours:Designinghighqualityservices.Springer.(https://www.kent.ac.uk/tizard/staff/documents/Emerson1994SeverelearningdisabilitiesandCB.pdf)
Gaddes, W.H., 2013. Learning disabilities and brain function: A neuropsychological approach. Springer Science & Business Media.(link-https://aune-anst.weebly.com/uploads/4/9/2/9/49293649/handbook_of_clinical_child_neuropsychology.pdf)
Geary, D.C., 2013. Early foundations for mathematics learning and their relations to learning disabilities. Current directions in psychological science, 22(1), pp.23-27.(link- https://www.psy.cmu.edu/~siegler/418-Geary13.pdf)
Hen, M. and Goroshit, M., 2014. Academic procrastination, emotional intelligence, academic self-efficacy, and GPA: A comparison between students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of learning disabilities, 47(2), pp.116-124.(link- https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.826.7688&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
Kamhi, A.G. and Catts, H.W., 2013. Language and Reading Disabilities: Pearson New International Edition. Pearson Higher Ed.(link- https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=specedfacpub)
Lerner, J.W. and Johns, B., 2014. Learning disabilities and related disabilities: Strategies for success. Nelson Education.( https://www.omicsonline.com/open-access/linking-executive-functions-and-written-language-intervention-forstudents-with-language-learning-disorders-2469-9837-1000178.php?aid=78142&view=mobile)
Lovett, B.J. and Sparks, R.L., 2013. The identification and performance of gifted students with learning disability diagnoses: A quantitative synthesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 46(4), pp.304-316.( https://journals.library.wisc.edu/index.php/wej/article/viewFile/887/855)
Mackelprang, R.W. and Salsgiver, R., 2016. Disability: A diversity model approach in human service practice. Oxford University Press.(link- https://www.worldcat.org/title/disability-a-diversity-model-approach-in-human-service-practice/oclc/953325244/viewport)
Meppelder, M., Hodes, M., Kef, S. and Schuengel, C., 2015. Parenting stress and child behaviour problems among parents with intellectual disabilities: the buffering role of resources. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 59(7), pp.664-677.(link- https://books.google.co.in/books?id=x9C5DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=Meppelder,+M.,+Hodes,+M.,+Kef,+S.+and+Schuengel,+C.,+2015.+Parenting+stress+and+child+behaviour+problems+among+parents+with+intellectual+disabilities:+the+buffering+role+of+resources.+Journal+of+Intellectual+Disability+Research,+59(7),+pp.664-677.&source=bl&ots=ABnphl7g8V&sig=FstVJAslf1BvvEN-NbBA1YxpTwE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiL1r3625fVAhVCtpQKHcWuBPcQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=Meppelder%2C%20M.%2C%20Hodes%2C%20M.%2C%20Kef%2C%20S.%20and%20Schuengel%2C%20C.%2C%202015.%20Parenting%20stress%20and%20child%20behaviour%20problems%20among%20parents%20with%20intellectual%20disabilities%3A%20the%20buffering%20role%20of%20resources.%20Journal%20of%20Intellectual%20Disability%20Research%2C%2059(7)%2C%20pp.664-677.&f=false)
Mirza, N.M., Nisar, N. and Ikram, Z., 2017. Knowledge, Attitude & Practices.( link- https://jduhs.com/index.php/jduhs/article/viewFile/451/259)
Peiris-John, R.J., Attanayake, S., Daskon, L., Wickremasinghe, A.R. and Ameratunga, S., 2014. Disability studies in Sri Lanka: priorities for action. Disability and rehabilitation, 36(20), pp.17421748.(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/09638288.2013.864714?scroll=top&needAccess=true)
Reid, R., Lienemann, T.O. and Hagaman, J.L., 2013. Strategy instruction for students with learning disabilities. Guilford Publications.(link- https://www.guilford.com/excerpts/reid.pdf)
Scanlon, D., 2013. Specific learning disability and its newest definition: which is comprehensive? And which is insufficient?. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 46(1), pp.26-33. (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.937.1183&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
Seligman, M. and Darling, R.B., 2017. Ordinary families, special children: A systems approach to childhood disability. Guilford Publications.(link- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/13668250.2017.1326588)
Swanson, H.L. and Harris, K.R. eds., 2013. Handbook of learning disabilities. Guilford Press. (https://www.childdevelop.ca/sites/default/files/files/WAM%20LD%20handbook.pdf)
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
