Category: Profile Feature

“Children with special educational needs need a lot of time and effort, do not let anyone lie to you”, that is how former special education teacher clarified the myth around learning disabilities.

In education, not all people grasp concepts of the curriculum the same way, and for all to succeed, the system has special education schools for children with learning disabilities. The Foundation for people with learning disabilities describes a learning disability as finding it hard to learn certain life skills and these may include communication, managing, reading, writing or personal care.

There are variations to what causes learning disabilities; however, they are mainly caused by something affecting the development of the brain. This may happen during birth, before birth or in early childhood. Other causes include genetics and the environment in which they live.

The Diagnostics Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM -5) classifies learning disabilities as Specific Learning Disabilities and they rare classified by these symptoms:

• Persistent difficulties in reading, writing, arithmetic, or mathematical reasoning skills during formal years of schooling. Symptoms may include inaccurate or slow and effortful reading, poor written expression that lacks clarity, difficulties remembering number facts, or inaccurate mathematical reasoning.

• Current academic skills must be well below the average range of scores in culturally and linguistically appropriate tests of reading, writing, or mathematics. Accordingly, a person who is dyslexic must read with great effort and not in the same manner as those who are typical readers.

• Learning difficulties begin during the school-age years.

• The individual’s difficulties must not be better explained by developmental, neurological, sensory (vision or hearing), or motor disorders and must significantly interfere with academic achievement, occupational performance, or activities of daily living.

The five main learning disorders are-

Dyscalculia- A specific learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand numbers and learn math facts.

Dyslexia- A specific learning disability that affects reading and related language-based processing skills.

Dysgraphia- A specific learning disability that affects a person’s handwriting ability and fine motor skills.

Non-verbal learning disabilities- Has trouble interpreting nonverbal cues like facial expressions or body language and may have poor coordination.

Oral / Written Language Disorder and Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit-

Learning disabilities that affect an individual’s understanding of what they read or of spoken language. The ability to express one’s self with oral language may also be impacted.

There are other related disorders such as ADHD, Dyspraxia and Executive functioning.

Lindokuhle Phila Hadebe, born in Soweto and raised in Barberton Mpumalanga is a Psychology graduate majoring in education who had the opportunity to work with children with learning disabilities. She is also the host of a podcast, Learning with Lindo, which is available on Anchor, Apple podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast that outlines in great detail the different symptoms of each learning disability and what parents should know and look out for.

She talks to us about her journey as a teacher in a special education school.

‘Intrinsically, I have always had an interest in language acquisition, and I used to wonder how we learn languages, to speak and communicate but I also wanted to solve problems that children had. And because my grandmother helped every single person we met, I learnt at a very young age that every problem had a possible solution.

I did not choose special education instead of a normal teaching degree, I went to university and studied social work. For the social work degree I needed to do a bit of internship work and I found a school for children with cognitive learning challenges; this school had children as old as 9 in Grade 1 struggling to learn so I made an Enquiry about types of learners they have and then made a decision to change course to Psychology and chose Education as a second major.

Curriculum

‘I spent my entire year in complete emotional and mental exhaustion and with little strides made because a lot of the work required an integration of the curriculum objectives which were suitable for mainstream children with the reality of “what does this child need to learn?”, so at the height of all issues is the reality that the current curriculum does not cater for children with cognitive barriers to learning.

I would have a child who is at the age of 13 who cannot identify alphabets or read and write, this same child would be required, by the curriculum expectations, to answer questions about The Renaissance in Social Science class instead of spending the time we have filling in the literacy gaps and centring their learning around accommodations which are meant to help them all through life. They were learning about 1652 and the Cape of Good Hope, instead of advancing their life and social skills we had to cover content for them to be assessed by the curriculum and report back to the Department of Basic Education.

But it was also amazing to see children who could not read, learn how to read, children who could not communicate be taught how to use communication cards to express themselves, children who struggle with maths be given appropriate aids in class to help them conceptualise information. It was also great to see a relative improvement in the children who received the right therapies. These therapies include occupational therapy, remedial therapy, and classroom interventions.’

Awareness in townships

Learning disabilities in local townships is rarely taken seriously by parents according Educational Psychologist Thobani Manci, “The majority of parents in black disadvantaged communities are not aware of services rendered by educational psychologists. They also do not know about learning barriers and disabilities. Even when teachers inform them of these, they become in-denial because no one wants to believe that their child has an intellectual disability, therefore they normally ignore this, and teachers get frustrated on their own.”

The disadvantage that black communities face is poverty, most black families cannot afford the assessments by Educational Psychologists and the therapies that would be needed.

Therefore, there is a lot of educating that still needs to be done for black parents to understand that learning disabilities are most times genetic or caused by injury to the brain. It is not anything a child does to render themselves with a learning disability. “Another issue is that certain parents who may be aware of learning disabilities and processes involved may not be able to afford fees charged by Ed Psychologists in private practice and therefore kids would be forced to go through mainstream school even though they are struggling” Manci said.

Lockdown a blessing disguise

‘COVID-19 has presented a lot of parents and caregivers with an opportunity to be part of their child’s learning because of remote learning and a lot of parents are realizing that their children are struggling with some things related to school work, especially after concepts being learned and relearned and children still struggling to understand or carry out tasks. That should be enough for any parent to notice that their child might need help. So ask your child’s teacher if they’ve noticed the same issues in class or at school and find out what methods they have used that have worked and if they’re not making any progress then see a general practitioner who may refer your child to the relevant professionals.

Early intervention is always best and it has proven successful for most children, this does not mean that your child will be cured but it means you and your child will get to understand what they struggle with and what assistive measures and accomplishments can be made for them.’

Availability of facilities

According to Manci there are very few remedial and special needs schools in the black community. Even when assessments are done, it is difficult to find placement for these kids and this frustrates parents even more.

We are all different and learning disabilities do not mean one cannot learn; they just mean that others learn differently to others and some will find some things more challenging