Misconceptions in Special Needs

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Today I had a friendly debate with a colleague about special education. He was annoyed at the fact that some students seem to “use” their learning difficulty diagnose as an excuse to not try hard enough. In our school, most SEND cases are mild and don’t include severe diagnoses; they are, nonetheless, important and require attention. To lure me into the discussion, he blamed my department – the special needs department in our school – for this. I was, of course, quite aggravated by that unfair provocation and gladly took part in this little debate and we ended up allowing ourselves the opportunity to reflect on some interesting issues regarding special education.

Despite the friendly provocation, as Freud would say, a joke is not just a ‘slip’, but it can reveal a lot! There is a misconception about what having a special needs diagnose or learning difficulty indication means. Saying someone has concentration deficits or language processing difficulties is the beginning of a conversation that must include a cooperation plan between home and school. It does not mean the child or teenager is absolutely unable to do certain things, such as focus on a task or comprehend a text and respond to it, but it means this student needs help to develop certain strategies to do so that other students might not. It means that certain classroom adaptations will be needed to nurture the development of these abilities, which does not mean doing it for the person or accepting all kinds of behaviour. Both parents and teachers get confused sometimes and need extra support (and a lot of patience!) to overcome these communication obstacles.

Some parents will come and ask to please let them know when their 13-year-old has a test so that they can help him/her study at home; when we say we can´t do that, they throw the ADHD argument in the picture. Well, in this case, not having us become his/her agenda or secretary is precisely what your child needs in order to learn skills that will help him/her cope with the difficulty the diagnose present. On the other hand, some teacher will respond back mad at us that a pupil we are saying requires certain adaptations in the teaching is rude and lazy and that is the problem altogether. Even if this behaviour is related to the learning issue – which in many cases is – it is only fair enough that the teacher can, of course, tackle the behaviour according to school protocol, but it is also fair that this protocol is imposed on this pupil only after the school has done its part in offering learning support provision to this pupil.

In other words, working with this communication gap between what special needs really is and what some parents and teachers think of it is an integral part of the learning support work. It is necessary to develop empathy and think about where these people are coming from, listen to their complaints, frustrations and even misconceptions – that may occasionally annoy the experienced SEND profession! But that is the only way to build the cooperative atmosphere that can support the learning community.

(1) https://www.woodcockpsychology.com.au/learning-disorders/