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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why on Earth would you send away your child with a LD? That's a child you should hold close [/quote]

Absolutely agree. Sounds the height of insanity. Poor kid.[/quote]

What's insane is telling smart kids who struggle to read (which is not inherent like intelligence) that they're stupid. It's insane to tell a kid who struggles with multiplication tables that they can't revolutionize the investment industry. Yet we do it every day in elite private schools as well as public.

Why? Because so many adults don't understand the neuroscience of learning to read and write, especially in an arbitrarily complex language like English.

English is an insane language. Say this out loud: I, too, know two ways to get to apartment 2. Ten words. Five words sound [b]exactly [/b]the same. But there are four [b]different [/b] ways to visually process the same sound. Why? It's incredibly inefficient and, in this century of AI, insane to waste brain capacity on rote memorization. It's nuts.

A human child is born with the capability to verbally comprehend up to five spoken languages at once! But by the time they've mastered arbitrary spelling and grammar rules from centuries ago, they have lost some of the brain capacity it takes to communicate multilingually. Unlike speaking, reading and writing force your brain to do something it wasn't [i]designed[/i] to do instead of efficiently using your innate comprehension capacity. Crazy, no?

LD does not mean intellectual disability. Learning Disabilities, or Learning Differences, like dyslexia and ADHD are very common in people with above average intelligence. Frequently, kids with LD are seen as late bloomers who do well with abstract reasoning, visual processing, creativity, etc. Think neurosurgeons, lawyers, entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley, most of Hollywood. ;)

So bright kids with LD go to boarding schools for the same reason any kid attends their school. Because their parents think it the best learning environment for their kids. The difference is not the schools, it's the educators. Teachers who understand the strengths and mental efficiencies that come with some LD won't make the mistake of dinging a kid for a typo on his quantum physics project. (Einstein was a horrible speller in all three of his spoken languages.)

So there's no need to pity a child with LD. No matter the school setting, they can be great at using their learning capacity to achieve amazing things.

Here's small list of people with LD. There are thousands of people like them who get "bad" grades, low scores, and are told they're stupid or slow. Isn't that insane?

California Governor Gavin Newsom, Steven Spielberg, Richard Branson, Octavia Spencer (Oscar winner and children's book author), Octavia Butler (Sci-Fi author par excellence) Salma Hayek, Steve McQueen (director of 12 Years a Slave), Tim Tebow, Anderson Cooper, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), Ben Carson, Astronaut Mark Kelly, Lee Kuan Yew (created modern Singapore https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/22/393824362/founding-father-of-modern-singapore-lee-kuan-yew-dies-at-91), Dav Pilkey (Captain Underpants), Anne Rice (Vampire Lestat et al, couldn't read until high school), and countless others from all backgrounds and fields of expertise.

*Note, I prefer not to use terms like crazy or insane because of the stigmas associated with mental illness. I did it because PP chose these words.[/quote]

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