Ability vs performance

SASWATI DAS MOHAPATRA, BBUL Jain Vidyalaya, Bangalore

What do Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Nelson Rockefeller, General George Patton and Whoopi Goldberg have in common? They all had learning disabilities.

Learning Disability is a hidden handicap - a disorder in children who despite conventional classroom experience fail to attain the skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities. When there is a distinct difference between the ability and the performance of a child then there is something wrong. An educational assessment becomes imperative to determine the exact nature of the problem. We have to rule out difficulties due to mental retardation, visual or hearing handicap, lack of opportunity, inadequate schooling and emotional disorders. We have to identify the problem and chalk out a specific remedial programme to meet the needs of the child.

Now IQ tests are outdated and people are talking of Emotional Intelligence and Multiple Intelligence. The theory of Multiple Intelligence says it is not "how smart you are" rather "how you are smart". Intelligence, according to this theory is always expressed in specific tasks, domains and disciplines and has to be assessed on tasks and cannot be evaluated by a battery of tests. In our school system only the linguistic and logical mathematical intelligence are considered and the other kinds of intelligence like, visual, spatial etc. are wasted away. Why is everything evaluated with paper, pencil and language excluding vast avenues of intelligence?

Growing awareness has resulted in the mushrooming of many centres and resource rooms in schools. Parental acceptance is important as without it remedial teachers can do little.The teacher has to be careful not to brand the child "lazy", "careless", "incapable" because children are sensitive. The need of the hour is to identify the the problem and remedy it.

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