“I like learning, I just don’t like school.”
A 12-year-old student with significant learning disabilities
When shipping a beautiful crystal vase to a friend living a long
distance away, you wrap it carefully. After all, crystal is fragile. In order
for the vase to safely reach its destination, it must be protected and
carefully handled. Though children are not crystal vases, they too are
potentially fragile. As my colleague Dr. Brooks, and I have written, in
our quest to help children find happiness, success in school, satisfaction
in their lives and solid friendships, we chart a course through their
childhood designed to develop the inner strength to deal competently
and successfully day after day with the challenges and demands they
encounter. We call this capacity to cope and feel competent, resilience.
As we have written, resilience embraces the ability to deal effectively
with stress and pressure, to cope with every day challenges, to bounce
back from disappointments, adversity and trauma, to develop clear and realistic goals, to solve problems, to relate comfortably with others and
to treat oneself and others with respect.
Schools rank among our most important institutions to help
prepare children to transition successfully and happily into adult life.
We do a very good job of marketing the school experience to
preschoolers. On that first day of school most children can’t wait to put
on their new clothes and venture out. They are instinctually optimistic
about their future success and intrinsically motivated. The act of doing is
sufficiently rewarding. At that moment, all children are equal in their
potential to benefit and learn from their upcoming educational
experiences. Yet, once they enter the school system it quickly becomes
apparent that not all children are equal in the goodness of fit between the
skills and abilities they bring to school and the expectations, demands
and tasks teachers place in front of them. Put simply, the abilities of one
out of five children impedes their potential to meet the educational
system’s expectations. These children are educationally fragile.
Some might suggest that the term “educationally fragile” is
inappropriately assigned to students with learning disabilities or other
developmental impairments that impede their progress and potential for
success at school. From my perspective, this appears to be a very
appropriate description. The term does not refer to genetics or biological
phenomena but rather as with the crystal vase, the term guides us to
carefully create an environment in which children are able to learn
without becoming demoralized, become connected to others without
feeling different, and are able to make contributions without feeling like
“second class students.” In our efforts to educate these children we
expose them to a far greater degree of frustration, failure and adversity
than other students. When special education systems throughout the
world are examined, despite our best efforts, an unfortunately large
percentage of these educationally fragile children find school a
frustrating and often demoralizing experience. Yet, as a number of outcome studies examining the adult lives of individuals with histories
of learning disability - educationally fragile students - have demonstrated, some manage to overcome obstacles and find success in
school and in life.
During a trip some years ago to Scotland, I had the great pleasure
of visiting the New School. Founded in 1992 by Baroness Linklater of
Butterstone, a parent of a child with significant learning disabilities, the
New School is a co-educational, residential day school for children ages
twelve to eighteen. The school has links with colleges throughout
Scotland. Senior students have college experience and work in
developing independent living skills that allow them, once they leave the
New School, to enter college. The school provides basic educational
services as well as specialized support in language and motor
development. The New School is committed to creating a learning
environment for educationally fragile children in which stress and
adversity are reduced and opportunities to learn, feel connected and
successful are increased. The school is located about an hour by car
outside of Edinburgh. Most students live at the school from Monday
through Friday and then go home on the weekends. Set on a pristine hillside overlooking the Scottish countryside, the school consists of a
number of buildings, including a classic, castle-like structure. Ms.
Sophie Dow, the Executive Director of the international charity,
Mindroom, accompanied me on this visit. Sophie’s daughter, Annie, was
fifteen years old at the time. This was her third year at the New School.
Fees for this school are paid by each local school district much like in
America.
As we pulled up there were a number of students waiting to greet
us. We visited with the headmaster, Bill Colley, and were taken on a
wonderful tour by a number of the students, visiting classrooms and the
surrounding grounds and interacting with dozens of students. Everyone
smiled. Everyone was excited. It wasn’t just excitement because it was
Friday, it was excitement because these youth were connected to their
learning environment. These educationally fragile children had found the
necessary environment to be educated without becoming demoralized.
In my forty plus years of clinical practice, I have evaluated
thousands of children. I have yet to meet a five-year-old about to enter school who has evaluated the potential psychological and emotional
damage an educational experience could afford him or her and decided
that rather than attend school he/she would stay home, and feel good,
even if it meant she/he didn’t learn how to read, write, spell or perform
mathematics. Regardless of ethical, cultural, religious or scientific
beliefs, we must strive to create educational environments for all
students, including those whose learning disabilities create significant
vulnerability for psychological and emotional fallout as they attempt to
learn and we attempt to teach them. I would argue that no child is
immune today from stress, pressure and potential adversity in school. In
our fast paced world, the number of children facing adversity and the
number of adversities they face, even in school, continues to increase
dramatically. Even children who are fortunate to be “good students” are
increasingly reporting the stresses of their educational experiences. As
we learn how to best create nurturing, resilience building environments
for fragile students, we also learn how to create better educational environments for all students.
The International Consensus Statement on the rights and needs of
children with learning disabilities argues that schools must find a way to
educate all students efficiently and effectively. They must provide
students with knowledge, critical thinking skills and resilience qualities.
Competency in basic academic skills, including reading, writing,
spelling and mathematics are essential. Basic academic competency in
the world we have created for our children today and for the future is a
necessity not a luxury. Because of their neurologically based
impairments in emotional, cognitive, language, motor or perceptual
processes, educationally fragile children struggle in our schools. Their
impairments make every day education frustrating. Their achievement is
slow and the gap between them and their classmates widens as they
progress through school. Yet, with appropriate identification and
education, with attention to their rights and needs, most children with
learning disabilities can close the gap and transition successfully into the
world of work and independent living.
The New School and other facilities like it throughout the world,
understand that as Ralph Waldo Emerson has written, “the secret of
education lies in respecting the pupil.” The New School and facilities
like it throughout the world respect and recognize the rights of
educationally fragile children. These facilities provide children with an
education that allows them to develop basic literacy, critical thinking
skills, diversity of knowledge, independent living and vocational skills
in an environment that builds a resilient mindset. Through scientific and
sound educational processes, these facilities understand and address not
just the weaknesses of their students that cause impairments but the
strengths that will carry them through life as well. These facilities
provide children with access to established and effective educational
programs that directly address and ameliorate their educational needs.
They provide them with opportunities to “feel smart” and successful in
school. They provide them with a safe environment that facilitates the
development of psychological health, the embodiment of a resilient mindset. Finally, facilities like the New School help educationally
fragile children transition completely into adult life, competitive
vocation and independent living.
In a time when public education should be creating more programs
for educationally fragile children, we are seeing fewer programs. Many
school districts in the United States have eliminated full day, special
classrooms for children with learning disabilities, arguing that these
children are better served in the regular classroom setting. This argument
is without scientific merit and I believe based entirely on funding
considerations. Science is about proof and replication. From my
perspective, those who would advocate for fewer services, in particular
the absence of specialized schools and classrooms for the learning
disabled, do so based on belief rather than data. One bright hope in the
United States is the introduction in many states of charter schools.
Though these charter schools have been founded primarily as settings
for children without learning disabilities, we are witnessing an
increasing interest by parents in organizing and opening charter schools
to serve specific children’s needs. In Salt Lake City for example, Spectrum Academy founded in 2006 by a group of parents now serves
over one thousand educationally fragile students kindergarten through
high school students on multiple campuses.
In accordance with the United Nations convention on the Rights of
the Child, it is the right of every child to not just survive and be
protected but to be educated as well. Parents’ influence on their children
cannot be overestimated. Research has validated what parents know in
their hearts: children’s ability to cope with adversity whether social,
emotional or educational is best predicted by the strength of their
emotional ties, first to their parents and second to their educational
settings. On both fronts we can and must do a better job of helping
parents help their children and by creating, funding and supporting
appropriate educational programs.
