I
think diagnosing students, especially younger children, with a disability is
really tricky. There can be a lot of misdiagnosing disabilities because it
doesn't depend on a single factor. While we are young, we are growing everyday
and are constantly changing. When we diagnose things such as learning disabilities
we usually do it at an early stage in their lives. A teacher notices that one
of their students isn't processing information as fast or even at all like the
other students in her class so he/she assumes that it is because of a learning
disability. It is possible that the child just learns better when taught in a
different way or environment. Teachers should think more about how they can
help the child adjust better than passing the student on to someone else right
away. It is unfair to the child to be penalized for something that could have been addressed
in a way where both the teacher and student were satisfied. Another way we can
misdiagnose disabilities such as a language disability does not know enough
about the student. I think background information is key for situations like
these. I think this ties back to "whiteness" being normal. People
always just assume that if you are in America then you automatically speak
English with no problem when really language in America is very diverse because
their are so many people here from different backgrounds. A child may have been
born in America, but that doesn't mean their parents taught them English from
the start. The parents could have decided to teach them the language from their culture first before
teaching them English. There is also the possibility that the parents do not
know English leaving the child to have to learn on their own. In most
situations, they will learn by listening to English speaking people and don't
really learn how to write it. This can affect the child's ability to
write. Most of the time teachers will not look at the child's background to
understand why they have trouble writing in class and will often just classify
it as a learning disability. Gender can also play a role in diagnosing learning
disabilities. Most of the time we stereotype males as being the ones who cause
trouble and aren't able to sit still when really females can be just as rowdy
as males. This means that it is common that teachers will often overlook girls
who actually have learning disabilities and most of the time pin a learning
disability on a boy.
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