The prison of Learning Disabilities for Adults

        Learning Disabilities are a struggle for many people of all ages. When we are dealing with grade school children we tend to treat them with care and compassion trying to help them work around their disability in the classroom. Fundamentally I feel that this is exactly what we should be doing as educators for these students as we help them progress through school. What I think that the system is lacking is giving these individuals solid life skills to deal with their disability when they have left the education system. When they are children we treat them with care and compassion, but not when they are adults. The stereotype of lack of intelligence cause many adults with learning disabilities to live their life in fear of being found out. This fear of being thought of as less intelligent if found out, no mater how moderate the Learning Disability is, becomes a prison that caries a life sentence. They never get out on good behavior no matter what they do. The fear is always there and they can never truly be free.
        "Adults with Dyslexia are more ashamed of their spelling - than their slow and inaccurate reading" ( Barton, September, 2014). The primary reason that they are ashamed of their poor spelling is that this is the dead give away that something is wrong. Many people feel that this problem should not be as significant now as everyone works with some sort of word processor that automatically checks the spelling. "For Adolescents and Adults with Learning Disabilities and ADHD, these new literacies have the potential to redefine their disabilities and give them new ways of over coming them" (Gregg, P. 127). This might be true but it is not the little magic red lines under words we have typed. This in many ways is actually worse then how adults with poor spelling operated before. For example we have the two words "Status" and Statues". That magic little "e" does change the word significantly. Someone with Dyslexia, who has problems putting the letters together to form sounds and then words, might read these as the exact same word. It might get a green line when in a sentence but what about when it is a stand alone word in the heading of a chart?
         Now the issue is starting to grow as we are connecting digitally at an alarming rate. We send countless numbers of texts and e-mails daily. The world is shifting to more of a written word type of communication and less of a verbal one. This makes it much worse for the Dyslexic. "In the global conversation made possible by the internet, the easiest way to tell the smart folk from the knuckleheads is how often they make seemingly ignorant mistakes" (Adams, October, 2011). If one Albert Einstein was born at the beginning of this century instead of the last we may have never known the theory of relativity. He had Dyslexia and was unable to read until he was nine years of age. It is very possible that poor spelling would have rendered him into the "Knucklehead" category and no one would take him seriously. 
         I think that when students get to post secondary programs we should be developing courses that are mandatory for them to take on how to deal with their disability in the World of work they will soon enter. It is a very important step in preparing these young adults for a professional life.Letting them know about the potential pitfalls would be a huge step in helping them become all they wish to. I would suggest using new variations of the ways in which adults with Learning Disabilities dealt with the issue in the past. I suggest that they could have a dictionary with them. Any word that they try to figure out how to spell they should not rely on the red line. Even if they write the word and the red line does not come up they should look up the meaning of the one they have used. Keep another separate word document open also helps as they can then use the word in a different sentence that could expose if the word is the correct one. The easiest would be to have the software that will read them back what they have written. The problem with having a person prof read is they can relate the word to those written around it and might not pick the small mistakes out. The computer will simply read back each word on its own merit. I think that it is cheaper for the software that takes what is spoken and creates the document. This might even be a better solution for a Dyslexic. In any event, they need to be aware of the pitfalls and how they can overcome them.



Barton, S. (September, 14, 2014) Poor spelling is the Most Obvious sign of Dyslexia Retrieved from;
             http://susanbartondyslexiastories.com/2014/09/14/poor-spelling-is-the-most-obvious-sign-of- 
             dyslexia-2/

Adams, C.( October, 21, 2011) Are Poor Spellers Stupid? Retrieved from; http://www.straightdope.com
             /columns/read/3019/are-poor-spellers-stupid

Gregg, N. (2009) Adolescents and Adults with Learning Disabilities and ADHD, New York, NY:
             The Guilford Press