Learning disability: Truth or trap

The diagnosis learning disability is applied all too often and too loosely. Clinical experience at the Gesell Institute of Human Development suggests that a very large percentage of the children referred as learning disabled have been children of apparently quite normal academic potential who simply were overplaced in school. It is recommended that any psychologist or educator involved at least pursue the possibility that the poor school adjustment of any child may be due simply to immaturity and unreadiness for the work of the grade in which the child is placed rather than to some general learning disability. Though the diagnosis of learning disa-bled currently is most commonly ap-plied when children are having difficulty in school, opinion about this term is still sharply divided. There are those who maintain that there are really no more boys and girls who have trouble academi-cally than there ever were, but we merely have added a new term to our diagnostic armamentarium. There are others who insist that the number of such young people is ever increasing. Regardless of which position one takes, many admit that the diagnosis of learning disability is applied all too often and too loosely. Statistics abound to the effect that a shocking number of boys and girls are given this label when their problem is simply that they are "general under-achieves"