learning disabilities || teaching children with severe learning disabilities

Teaching Children with Severe Learning DisabilitiesAuthor(s): Dorothy M. HirtSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 23, No. 4, Learning Disabilities (Jan., 1970), pp. 304-310Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20196310 .

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Dorothy Hirt is Assistant Director of the Parkway Day School

and Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry, Hahnemann

Medical College and Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa.

Teaching children with severe

learning disabilities

DOROTHY M. HIRT

the treatment of learning disabilities is as broad a topic as the

classification or diagnosis of learning disabilities. Imagine a school room reduced in size, containing only one table with one teacher; and around the table, five little boys. In the middle of the table is

a big red apple. The assignment of the day is to find out how all can share the apple. Before the question is even directed to him, the first little boy, Stephen, is already half-way to the window to

check on the sound of a fire siren. He pauses, looks over his

shoulder, calls back, "Five," and proceeds to the window. The next

little boy is Paul, who is laboriously shifting gears and trying to

focus on the task. He looks around the table, points at each child,

counts, gives a big sigh, goes through the whole process again, and then with a big question mark in his voice answers, "Six?"

Billy, the next boy in line, starts to whine before the question, "How many pieces do we need?" is even directed to him. When he

is encouraged to try, he begins to count?one, two, three, all the

way to ten?without any attempt to fit the numbers he is saying to the children around the table. When the question "How many

pieces do we need?" is directed to Joel, his response is, "My daddy went fishing yesterday." The teacher reminds him the job is to

figure out how many pieces of apple will be needed. He manages to bring himself back to that job and solves the problem by saying, "One for him, one for him, one for him," never really reaching a

conclusion. The last little boy has been waiting impatiently on

the edge of his chair for his turn. He jumps up and down, shouting

excitedly, "They were both right! Stephen and Paul were both

right! Stephen counted boys. Paul counted people." This one little

incident, from one teacher's day, gives a little taste of what goes on day after day, hour after hour, in a special class for children

with learning disabilities.*

What do these children have in common? Perhaps it is that

* Illustration from Elizabeth S. Friedus.

304



HIRT: Teaching children with severe learning disabilities 305

each one is individually different from the other. Each needs the

careful attention of someone who can relate to him as an individ

ual, become aware of his specific learning needs, and try to meet

these needs in a special class setting. It is true that what has

been described is an isolated class of children with learning dis

abilities. Nevertheless, Stephen, Paul, Billy, and the others may be found in "regular" classes also.

Specific behaviors that are associated with severe learning

disability in general, and cerebral dysfunction more specifically, affect the point of view of the teacher in her program planning, in

her structuring her own relationship with the child, in her arrange ment of the physical setting where the learning is to take place, and in her preparation of instructional materials. The child's

learning problems may be revealed in three general areas; the first in inadequate impulse control, the second in poor integration (per ceptual and conceptual), and the third in defective self-concept.

INADEQUATE IMPULSE CONTROL

The words hyperactive, hyperdistractible, and impulsive can

be neatly defined on paper, but take on a new dramatic dimension when they are met face-to-face in the classroom. The most familiar

way of dealing with inadequate control of impulse is in stripping down the classroom. One must, however, be careful not just to

strip visual stimuli, but be aware the child is also distracted from within. For example, one student had difficulty at lunch time. Someone had to sit beside him to remind him to swallow to break his tendency to perseverate in chewing. It seemed this was a kind of behavioral perseveration typically associated with brain damage, until it was discovered that a conceptual problem lay behind it. In one of this child's therapy sessions he asked the question, "What

happens to my sandwich at lunch?" It seems he had been told the food you eat goes into your stomach, but no one had bothered to take him any further along the digestive process. He had visions of sandwich, after sandwich, after sandwich just piling up down there. In this situation, correction of a misconception alleviated

anxiety and gradually eliminated the "perseverative" chewing. One way to help to reduce the distractibility and impulsivity

of the child in the classroom is to build in a set routine. In this

way the child is not made anxious about what might happen next. Every day he knows that when he first comes in, he goes to a particular spot, does a specific thing, goes to his seat, gets ready for the regular initial activity, and so on through the day. His concentration on the current activity is not then disrupted by won

dering about what might come next. "I'm very content, I'm happy with what I'm doing now, but what does that woman up there have



306 THE READING TEACHER Volume 23, No. 4 January 1970

in store for me for the next fifteen minutes, Maybe that won't be so satisfactory!" It has been said that the kind of routine which

is most effective for hyperactive, distractible children might be

predictible enough to make an observer drowsy within twenty minutes.

A story is told about the late Dr. Alfred A. Strauss, who was

a pioneer in the education of the brain-damaged child. There was

a child in one of his classes who tended to perseverate in writing. She would begin her writing activity and not be able to stop unless

Dr. Strauss would come to her, take her hand, remove it from the

paper, and put the pencil down. They set up a little routine. When

ever she began to perseverate in writing, he would go to her, talk

to her about it as he stopped her, and stamp his foot at the same

time. The idea was that at first the control for the child who did

not have the ability to stop was supplied by the teacher, and then

gradually the control would be transferred from the teacher to

the child. On one day some visitors came to his school, and Dr.

Strauss was himself distracted from his handling of the class.

The child began to write, felt herself out of control in persevera tion and called out, "Dr. Strauss, stamp your foot so I can stop!"

This is a good illustration of what is meant by the term "internali

zation of controls." The child first depends on the outside person

ality, the external ego, to be his control. The teacher verbalizes

what he is doing as he controls, and he may even associate an

action or signal with the verbalization. After a while he can effect

the control without going over and physically stopping the behavior, but merely by the verbalization or by the signal. Later the child

is able to do the controlling himself merely by referring to the

verbalization that has at that point been internalized.

One of the most disturbing kinds of behavior in minimally brain damaged children is disinhibition, which is an inappropriate

display of speech and behavior. One child would remark to a visitor,

"Why are you so fat?" Another young girl, who was just reaching

puberty and was experiencing her first menstrual periods, called

out across the room, "I can't go swimming today; I might make the

pool pink." There was another child who was working on a bed

wetting problem at home, who would announce a successful dry

night without realizing this was not the kind of thing that is

spoken of openly in the classroom. Disinhibited behavior is not

designed to shock or disturb, but is merely a lack of awareness on

the child's part of what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. It is best handled by a very matter of fact statement such as, "I'm

very glad to know this and I want you to know that this is one of

the things we talk about privately. This is a personal thing between

you and me that we don't want everybody else in on." Gradually the ramification of appropriateness can be added as the child is



Hirt: Teaching children with severe learning disabilities 307

ready to accept it.

INADEQUATE INTEGRATIVE FUNCTIONS

Certain children have trouble pulling out of their storehouse

of knowledge things that are pertinent and related to something that is introduced in a class discussion. They may contribute un

related or only tangentially related items. Another child may have

difficulty in categorizing because he has trouble differentiating between essential and non-essential details. For example, a child

might learn a robin is a bird. He might learn a pigeon is a bird.

When he is faced with a blue jay, he may or he may not know this

also is a bird. He may have been able to abstract the wings, the

beak, and the flying skill as being pertinent to the bird's features.

However, he may have focused on two eyes and two feet, and of

course, this generalizes to many "birds" that are not of the

feathered variety and makes a real problem for him.

Another youngster evidences difficulty in comprehension of

general language. On his diagnostic evaluation, the examiner

asked him to describe his mother. There was no response. "What's

your mother like?" His reply: "Steak!" In another context this

would be perfectly appropriate. He was not getting the contractual, "What is your mother like?" He was hearing "What does your

mother like," and did not realize it was inappropriate to the line

of questioning. Other children show different degrees of perceptual difficulties.

In a game of catch, the child who has a spatial perception problem misses the ball and it goes behind him. He may just stand there

without making any attempt to go after it. As far as he is con

cerned, the ball is no more. The ball is gone. Space that he has

looked at before, but turned away from, does not exist for him in

his present orientation. He needs to learn how to retain the aware

ness of space behind him. This is a relatively severe kind of per

ceptual problem. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see how certain

kinds of perceptual difficulties could interfere with the child's

ability to sit up, relax, pay attention, and to pick up higher level

academic skills in a classroom.

Sometimes perceptual difficulties occur because of interfer

ence in the set of perception. This is an example of a typical con

versation in the author's classroom: "I got up at six o'clock this

morning." "I got up at quarter past." "I'm allowed to stay up until

8:30 sometimes." Silence?and then everybody turned on that

child and said, "We're talking about when we got up this morning, not when we went to bed last night." The child who chimed in

third really did not have the set of the conversation.

On one occasion the discussion was of some seashore activi




ties. One of the boys said, "My dad and I went surf fishing." Im

mediately one of the children jumped up: "Oh, you couldn't

possibly have gone surf fishing. Surf fishing! Oh! impossible!"

Immediately the two of them were at sword's point. "Yes, I did!"

"You couldn't have!" Finally the boy who objected so strenuously said, "Surf fishing on those little boards?" and then the structuring

began. On the blackboard surf fishing and surf boarding were

written. "What do these words have in common?" "Surf." "What

do we mean by surf?" "The ocean where it makes waves at the

beach." "What are some things we do in the surf?" "We ride

boards, surf boarding." It seems impossible it should be necessary to go through this detailed development. Yet, with the perceptual and conceptual difficulties of these children, one must recognize the great importance of continued structure.

DEFECTIVE SELF-CONCEPT

Children who have experienced failure characteristically have

very low frustration tolerance. A child bursts into tears when he

gets the feeling he is not going to be able to succeed. He cries, "Oh that's too easy," or he whines, "I know how to do that; I don't

want to do that." WTiat he is really saying is, "I'm scared to death

to commit myself to the learning task; I'm going to fail again." Such a child overcompensates, by memorizing such facts as base

ball statistics, the batting averages and even the earned-run aver

ages of the pitchers. He learns these figures not just for the

American or National Leagues, not just for 1969, but also through a whole series of years, and all teams in both leagues. This is not

a mentally retarded child. Yet, this is a child with a severe reading

problem, particularly in comprehension. What he is saying is,

"I'm not retarded; see how skilled I am." He has picked up one

thing he can do and has over-developed it as a way of defending himself against this feeling of terrible inadequacy.

There is the child who has to control others as a method of

defense. If he lets the teacher be in control, then the teacher is

going to hand him a task at which he is certainly going to fail. He

cannot let that happen. This is a child who says, "No, I'll start

here' when you suggest where he should begin, and who decides

to change the color of the crayon when you give a direction. This

is the type of child who is quite skilled at getting under the skin

of anybody who is trying to set up directions that he wants fol

lowed. As long as he can set up a power struggle with the teacher,

and either be in control, or keep the control in question, he is not

on the spot about learning. The only way to deal, with these be

haviors is to recognize them for what they are, and not be threat

ened by them. This is an easy thing to say, but it is not such an



HIRT: Teaching children with severe learning disabilities 309

easy thing to deal with when one child is whining that the lesson

is too easy and another one is saying, "Oh I can't do this stuff," and another child is tearing up his work because he felt a little

difficulty and is getting quite upset about it. The teacher must

structure the program so that the child does not experience frus

tration and gains a sense of mastery. One thing that is a handy help for the teacher is to prepare

ahead for each child an activity that has given that particular child success in the past. When the teacher senses an explosion

coming, he can isolate the child from the frustrating lesson, put him in a situation where he is comfortable, and give him a task

he knows will mean success to him. This cuts down the threat of

failure and takes away the danger of the explosion. More structure

can then be provided before he is exposed again to the thing he

is so afraid of.

The teacher must expect the unexpected and take nothing for granted by way of skills. Often the children will show a skill

at a high level and yet have very serious gaps of understanding at

a lower level. Diagnostic teaching is imperative. Every presentation of a lesson is a testing situation in that it is necessary to observe

the child, and determine whether the activity is instructionally

appropriate for him. Should it be made a little more challenging or a little easier? In order to make these changes, it is necessary for the teacher to be willing to examine the task, be aware of the

skills that are involved in accomplishing the task, and be able at

a moment's notice to either complicate or lessen the difficulty of

the task to suit the child.

Because of the fear of failure these children experience, they want to have the highest degree of security that is possible for

them. When certain parts of the instructional program reflect

the flexibility of language, and the exceptions to the rules, it be

comes very difficult for the child. For example, consider a simple stroke like this "1." A child who has had a lot of difficulty in

learning that this is the numeral "one," may be most reluctant to

accept that it might sometimes be a small letter "1." He is very

angry at his teacher, at the language, and at the world for allowing this duplicity to be.

In word recognition instruction, the teacher works very hard

to establish, for example, the principle that a vowel followed by a consonant and silent "e" usually has the long sound. The chil

dren who learn the principle are frequently upset when "come"

and other exceptions are taught. Their world is beginning to take

secure form for them, a predictability, and they resent and are

fearful of any threat to this predictability. One must build with

all teaching an awareness of language and its function, an aware

ness of its flexibility, an awareness of the kinds of misunder




standings that are possible with it.

Here is an illustration of this problem?language as language. Man A is saying to Man B, "I like fish," and B is responding en

thusiastically, "I do, too." It sounds great. Agreement! But Man A

is picturing a beautiful tropical fish in its aquarium, while Man B

has his fish stretched out still on a platter with a slice of lemon in

its mouth and parsley at its tail. What seems at first to be a very

meaningful, satisfying communication is the source of all sorts

of problems. It is certainly true for adults, but consider how much more so for the children who are rather rigid and who really do

not want to accept this much flexibility. How often in the classroom teachers ask, "What do you think

happened next?" and then follow up with the answer, "Yes, that's

right." This is really a contradiction! Children are asked to make a judgment about what might have happened next, and then the

teacher gives them the impression that their judgment is either

right or wrong. "That's right! Yes, Jim, you did guess what the

author had happen next." Somebody who does not guess what the

author had in mind might have made an equally valid judgment about what might happen next and could benefit from the aware

ness that there are many possibilities, only one of which happens to be the one that actually did occur. Teachers use phrases such

as "the story suggests that;" "it would seem that;" "in my opinion;" but do they point out to the children the significance of such

phrases? Do the children listen to possibilities the teacher is

offering or to very definite factual statements not open to question?

CONCLUSION

Working with children with severe learning disability is an

exciting and a challenging task with many unanswered questions. One must set limits and hold limits and be consistent. One may be shouted at, kicked at, or manipulated with seductive pleasant ness. There is a tendency to think, "Was I too hard on this child?"

or "Was I too easy on this child?" The interpersonal relationship established between teacher and child is the most essential quality in educational therapy. The learning therapist must convey to the

child a feeling of warmth and strength. "I will help you to do what

is best for you no matter how hard it may be for both of us."

Fifteeth Annual Convention?Anaheim, California, May 6-9, 1970



learning disabilities || teaching children with severe learning disabilities

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