Brad P
Research Paper
The reason why the percentage of brain disorders has increased in the past 40 years is because America has advanced in technology so that we can correctly diagnose children. Children with brain damage cannot pretend to be disabled because our technology has advanced so much that the tests will show if they really are or not. According to the Education Department, 2.5 million children, or approximately 6% of the nation's students in kindergarten through 12th grade, were identified as learning disabled in 1995 and enrolled in federally supported programs that give such students specialized help in learning to read, write and do math.
In more current times, scientists have been able to use state-of-the-art techniques, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to look at the brains of patients with learning disabilities, brain damages, or just checking if everything is alright. They didn’t have an MRI 40 year ago, so how could they come close to diagnosing kids back then they what we can now. Specific genes may be partly responsible for the vast majority of learning disabilities involving reading. Some scientists are hopeful that the discovery of such genes could eventually lead to blood tests that parents could use to screen their children for reading disabilities at a very early age.
It is proven that doctors have either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed children at all in the past 40 years. So it cannot just be that out of nowhere kids are just coming out disabled. They did not have the right technology to tell if someone was disabled or not. Many students, performed poorly in certain academic areas even while excelling at others. Students who had more noticeable troubles in learning were often misclassified as brain damaged, visually handicapped or mentally retarded. Public schools considered such students to be uneducable, and until the early 1970s courts generally upheld the right of school districts to separate them from the rest of the class. Without other educational opportunities, learning-disabled students were often forced to stay at home or, alternatively, sent to residential institutions known as supplemental schools. There, all sorts of students who at the time were considered “deficient" and impossible to teach, including the physically and mentally handicapped and delinquent youths. Now the law requires schools, including colleges and universities, to provide "reasonable accommodation" to students who are diagnosed with learning disabilities. IDEA, students who are diagnosed with disabilities must be placed on individualized education plans. "If we do not identify children early, by the end of second grade," says Lyon, "the majority of them will have difficulty reading for the rest of their lives.”
People argue that learning disabilities are indiscriminately diagnosed and that too many underachieving or simply lazy students are using dubious diagnoses of "learning disabled" as excuses for their academic shortcomings. In other words, kids are taking advantage of doctors being generous diagnosing children with brain disorders. They contend that the rise in the number of learning-disabled students merely indicates a better understanding of learning disorders and an improved ability to identify, diagnose, and accommodate them than ever before. They also defend accommodations as a way to break down educational barriers and to expand opportunities for students who are born with life-long learning disabilities. There has also been talk about how parents are to blame for the rise in brain disorders because they deny the fact that their kids have not risen up to their expectations because they just can’t. They think there has to be something wrong for them to under achieve. They are concerned that coddling learning-disabled students by setting lower academic standards, especially at the college level, is unfair to other students and will poorly prepare learning-disabled students for life in the real work world. Parents had been organizing only since the early 1960s to highlight what they called "hidden disabilities." Prodded by parents' groups, Congress officially recognized learning disabilities in 1968, but IDEA proved to be the most important step in helping to recognize such disorders as a distinct class of disabilities that required specialized attention. Because America’s technology has advanced so much we now understand the brain and diagnosing brain disabilities.
Work Cited
"Learning Disabilities." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 4 Apr. 2003. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. <http://www.2facts.com/article/i0300260>.
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