PLN 8-1 (15)

I have recently read a post by Dave Warlick titled A Conversation about Failure which talks about the hardships of people (especially students) with disabilities and centers around a guy named Henry Winkler who suffers from dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disability where people's brains process written or verbal language differently. Through out this post, Henry Winkler was quoted on talking about his life as a student with dyslexia which was a while ago. He talked about how people who might be extremely gifted with knowledge, would be classified as "slow" in the classroom because they are not able to read as well as others.

"Yet, when a person has difficulty reading, regardless of other exceptional
skills, they seem to be labeled, automatically, in traditional classrooms, as
slow."

I believe that no one should be classified as slow or anything related to it. People are all different so we all learn differently. If you are classified as "slow" then some people start to question if they are good enough and start feeling like they are doing something wrong. This has resulted in many high school drop-outs which is horrendous! It is the worst feeling in the world to feel like you aren't good enough. Many drop outs feel this way and to help prevent this from happening, schools have to stop classifying people in terms of their learning abilities. Kids who learn at a faster rate should be in a more rigorous class so they don't get bored but no one should be classified as better. One program that only certain people are able to attend is called GT or gifted and talented. If you are not in this program, you start to question if you are gifted or talented which everyone is. Every one around the world is gifted and talented in their own way and classifying people with names like "slow" or "gifted and talented" give the wrong message to people who are either in a certain classification (like "slow") or are not in one (like gifted and talented).