Misunderstood Minds: Wasted Human Potential

2006 Winning Speech
Rebecca Fast

"Through God were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible." We are all God's children. We are all created in the image of the Divine. But this verse says something else this verse implies that some of God's creatures are invisible and perhaps even created differently.

I wish to discuss one aspect of that invisible and different nature of God's creation—those among us who have learning disabilities. Most learning disabilities are not apparent to outside observers. Learning Disabilities cannot be catalogued by race, gender, or religion. People with learning disabilities are invisible minorities facing significant levels of systemic oppression in the United States today. This speech hopes to make that invisibility more visible, and further the greater cause of peace and amelioration of injustice for this oppressed minority.

The individuals with Disabilities Education Act defines a learning disability as a "disorder in one or more psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language, which may manifest itself in a imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, write, spell or do mathematical calculations".

Imagine having important thoughts you wish to communicate and being unable to do so. Imagine researching an essay that you have no ability to actually print out. Imagine reading something on the blackboard and having no capacity to copy what you are seeing onto your paper. Imagine being unable to read, and being too ashamed to get help. Imagine sitting in a math class when the concept of ten or 100 cannot be attached to any concrete reality. Students with learning disabilities learn differently from their peers. Although they have average or even above average intelligence, there is a discrepancy between their abilities and their actual achievement.

We are all born with an innate desire to feel competent and therefore successful. What happens to those who do not experience success, particularly in school? Do they not really want to succeed? Or is there something preventing their success?

To demonstrate my point, I would like to ask each one of you to lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand. Were you able to control your foot, or did it change direction? If success is measured in this exercise by maintaining control, did you achieve success- no! Your failure to succeed is a microcosm of the daily experiences in frustration and failure that people with learning disabilities face.

The following two quotes are examples of the pervasive oppression faced by these invisible minorities. " I have been living my whole life with unexplained failures. Everything I do takes longer than other peoples. My teachers tell me to work harder or stop wasting their time". Can you imagine feeling this every day at school? Or these words from a teacher to motivate a student "you know you're a really nice girl, but I just don't think that you should plan on going any further in your academic career, you're not cut out for grad school."

I believe that our society must take responsibility for the failure to properly identify and accommodate people with learning disabilities in our education system. Sadly, people with learning disabilities that are not acknowledged, accommodated, and taught properly simply become invisible and disappear. This is a form of systemic oppression. This result in a low self-esteem making people with learning disabilities more prone to depression, anxiety, and a higher rate of suicide. However this is more than just a personal self esteem issue, it is a serious social problem. The invisibility of those with learning disabilities has vast repercussions on the social fabric of our society.

Are you aware that according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 4.6 million people in the United States have learning Disabilities. Are you aware that according to the National Adult Literacy Survey, 44% of females and 57% of men with learning disabilities drop out of high school? Are you aware that according to the National Longitudinal Transition Study Only 13% of students with learning disabilities attend any post- secondary school program? Are you aware that 50% of juvenile delinquents tested were found to have undetected learning disabilities according to the National Center for State Courts and the Educational Testing Service? Are you aware that 60% of adolescents in treatment for substance abuse have learning disabilities according to the Hazelton Foundation? Are you aware that according to the National Longitudinal Transition Study, 31% of adolescents with learning disabilities will be arrested 3-5 years out of high school? Up to 40 percent of all adults on welfare have learning disabilities according to the Learning Disability Institute. Are you that according to the director of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, the leading variable accounting for suicides among youth under the age of 14 is learning disabilities?

These are macro statistics which illustrate a systemic social problem that requires justice. We must assume responsibility for failing them, whether high school dropouts, criminals in the justice system, or suicide victims. But let us not stop at the mere repetition of statistics. Allow me now to demystify these numbers. Systemic oppression usually begins with ignorance. Stupid. Lazy. Lacking in motivation. These unintentional labels are destructive to persons with learning disabilities. Our larger society ignorance and our individual roles in creating these statistics are perhaps well summarized by the following question often directed to a person with Learning Disabilities: "How can you have a learning disability, you're not stupid like the rest of them?" This naive comment and others like it not only devastate their fragile self-esteem, but as the statistics have demonstrated, too often become a self fulfilling negative prophesies. I name this ignorance as a violence against an invisible minority.

We, and I include our nation, our churches, our educational institutions and each of us personally, have consciously or unconsciously—but nevertheless ignorantly—misunderstood those minds, and we have wasted human potential. And in so doing, I believe that we have misunderstood the nature of God and can be indicted for wasting divine potential among us.

The United Nations declaration of the Rights of Humans, ratified by every country in the world, speaks to this issue in section 26. And I quote— "Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and the fundamental freedoms." Ironically, for the people with Learning Disabilities, educational institutions are settings which can be most destructive.

Albert did not begin to talk until he was four years old. He did not learn to read until he was nine. His teacher considered him to be mentally slow, unsociable, and a dreamer. Albert's learning disability was not acknowledged, assessed or accommodated. He failed the entrance examination for college. Ultimately, Albert Einstein develop the theory of relativity. Too much human potential has been wasted.

In conclusion I invite you to join me in advocating for the understanding of people with learning disabilities. To begin with, I challenge you to become more knowledgeable. Greater understanding fuels the journey from blindness to sight-and from invisibility to visibility. For indeed some of our greatest thinkers, artists, writers, inventors and political leaders have had learning disabilities faced tremendous ignorance but succeeded: Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Sir Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Walt Disney, Agatha Christie, Pablo Picasso, and Sir Isaac Newton.

You can help to enforce the individuals with Learning Disabilities Education Act which mandates accommodations for students with learning disabilities in our education system. For within our own institution, Goshen College, there are 27 individuals with diagnosed learning disabilities. Chances are that if you are a student, you have sat beside someone with learning disability and never known it. I raise the questions are colleges like Goshen doing enough to make these people visible? Or are we too complicit in wasting human minds?

I believe that UNDERSTANDING, EMBRACING AND IMPLEMENTING support for the people with learning disabilities provides the foundation which under-girds peacemaking. Peacemaking begins with a full embracing of the entire image of God in all humanity. For within this vision of peacemaking is the true measure of a great society—how it treats its minorities, both visible and invisible.

 

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