What two learning disabled adults have said about special
education classes in colleges:
- "special" classes are really the same as regular classes -
they just have a different teacher
- there are too many people in the classroom and I don't like
having more than one teacher
- everybody learns at a different level and they're teaching
at one level
- the class is too slow - working at one pace - and is holding
me back
- classes don't offer anything I'm interested in
- I tried so many schools over and over - got depressed every
time. After that, I quit, got fed up.
Other experiences by learning disabled adults:
- Institutions don't care, particularly social service
agencies like welfare and legal aid and doctors. Legal aid's the worst. They
treat welfare people differently from working people and also when they realize
the low level of education an individual has they treat you differently. They
make you feel I'm a nobody. I'm a nothing. A lot of uneducated people are
intelligent but not persistent and when they hit a roadblock they can't get
past it and they give up. People don't come forward because they're ashamed. if
you're uneducated, you're not socially acceptable. You really feel it from all
parts of society. You can't find out where to go to get help. I used to look in
the mirror and wish that I had a physical handicap. People used to expect so
much more of me than I could give because my disability was invisible.
- (The following story was related by the wife of a severely
learning disabled man who was assessed as dyslexic when he was a child.
The learner's wife made the initial call and spoke to the literacy
instructor at a community college. She told the instructor about her husband's
learning disability and inability to read and an appointment was made for her
husband to see the instructor at the college. The learner's wife told me that,
during the interview, her husband was asked to repeat the same information she
had already given the instructor over the phone. She then said,
"J. wasn't in there very long and then he came out
and said they couldn't help him. They were going to test him but J. said 'I
can't read this' and they said there was no point in going further. It's a
letdown when you go all the way up there and then you're turned away.
"
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