Learning Disabilities - Book Review

Learning Disabilities

Jean Cheng Gorman is the author of Learning Disabilities. She is a psychologist whose research focuses on children's emotional health and learning disabilities; her experience includes teaching in urban and suburban elementary schools which encourages me to have full faith in the material she presents in this particular book. Learning Disabilities is a non-fiction book that Jean wrote to acknowledge others of different learning disabilities from her experience teaching in different classrooms. Common learning disabilities, she explains, include those that affect reading, speech, writing, and mathematics. Furthermore, according to Cheng Gorman, other factors that can affect children's schoolwork-such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, memory problems, and difficulties in organizing information-are increasingly being recognized by researchers and educators as learning disabilities. Reading this book has been personally influential because after high school, I plan to pursue a degree in Special Education. Learning Disabilities has taught me many things as well as strategies that I plan to put to use in my near future.

The term learning disabilities is a broad term used to encompass problems with language, mathematics, and writing; visual and perceptual problems; and attention and behavior problems. Most educators define learning disabilities according to federal law. The U.S. Office of Education and Public Law 101-476 defines ‘specific learning disabilities' as "a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological process involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning disabilities which are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, or mental retardation, or emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage." Learning Disabilities is filled with tons of information from the common types of learning disabilities to what causes learning disabilities.

The most important point to me that Jean Cheng Gorman wrote about is the harmful effects of labeling students. Cheng Gorman doesn't believe in a one-size-fits-all education and proves her point in various ways. She believes in a program that focuses strictly on optimism and strengths. This is important to me because I am a firm believer in pushing and encouraging students to reach their highest potential. I also plan to use her strategy of getting her students' parents involved in their education. She gives the parents a foundation and then makes it their responsibility to build it up from there outside