A feature article in last Saturday's Press alluded to the growing number of learning disorders that the medical-come-educational establishment is defining, and that parents and educators are struggling to keep up with new developments.
This got me thinking about how children with genuine learning disorders are supposed to be identified, given the huge number of students who go through the education system, and such identification be done in a cost-effective way.
The usual way that children are identified as having learning difficulties is for a parent or teacher to spot some problem with their school work or behaviour and then refer them to a specialist. The problem with this ad hoc approach is that not every child has a doting soccer mom to keep track of their academic progress - and it's too subjective - how do know whether a children has a learning difficulty or just isn't very smart.
By contrast, if a psychometric approach was used, and all children were given IQ tests, then we would have a pretty efficient way of sorting out the vast majority of academic underachievers from the genuinely slow learners.
The ADHD kids would be pretty easy to identify since there is likely to be a gap between their academic grades and their IQ score, and or, they are likely to have atypical profiles, with low scores on concentration dependent sub-tests like digit span. Again, kids with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, are either going to have a big gap between their IQ score and their school grades, or they are likely to have unusually skewed IQ profiles. For example, it's fairly obvious that someone with a non-verbal learning disorder would likely struggle with the non-verbal part of an IQ test.
No doubt this neo-empiricism will be offensive to many liberal parents who see IQ tests as a return to the dark days of the1950s, but if they don't like this kind of approach, they can always get a second opinion - working class and underclass parents, with less money and knowledge, don't always have that luxury.
Who knows, 21st century-style IQ testing could be the next big learning break-through since depression-era school milk, which ensured poor kids were finally able to get through the school day with a little concentration-inducing protein.
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2 comments:
I dont think the school is the one responsible for diagnosing learning disabilities. At least in much of the USA, if you as a parent come to the school with a diagnosis that your kid has such-and-such disorder, you have the right to have him placed in special education.
Testing laboratories use IQ tests, problem-solving tests, and the whole shebang to make sure they are giving the right diagnosis. However there are a few shady operations here and there that will pump out fake diagnoses for a fee, because there are advantages to having your kid diagnosed with a learning disability, and parents will pay a lot for it.
The situation is probably better in the US, where there is a greater appreciation of the uses of IQ testing, and you have a stronger self-improvement culture.
In New Zealand, Britsh anti-empiricism coupled with egalitarian ideology has meant has meant many kids of above average intelligence with learning disorders have been left to muddle through school without remedial help.
For example, dyslexia has only just been officially recognised, and ADD without hyperactivity is still not really accepted as a valid diagnosis, as it is in the US and Australia.
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