Visual Spatial Children: Learning Disabled, Learning Disadvantaged

Imagine how difficult Jerry would have found life in the average classroom.

Jerry had and has great difficulty relating to the world, he sees the world and wants to join in but doesn't know how to partake.

Try to imagine how difficult it must have been for both Jerry, and Pat to feel `normal'.

It must have been incredibly difficult for Pat when he was sent to remedial class for reading (when he could read perfectly well) or for Jerry when he could not articulate what was spinning around in his head.

I asked Jerry and Pat independently whether they thought of themselves as `Disabled Learners' Their responses were amazingly similar.

Both Pat and Jerry do not see themselves as `disabled', they see the educational system as established to assist people other than themselves.

Thus they view themselves as `disadvantaged' learners rather than `disabled' learners.

Many children do not understand why they find it so difficult to learn in a regular classroom - they do not understand that there are differences in learning styles. In a society such as Australia's that values conformity, to be a visual learner at school is to be an alien - a Stranger in a Strange Land.

Teacher's can alleviate these feelings of not belonging by understanding and valuing the differences in learning technique and teaching to such children in a way that values the visual learner's style.

It must always be remembered that visual spatial children grow into visual spatial adults who can look back at the school based learning with fondness or distrust.

As discussed earlier in the article it is possible to teach to visual learners in the regular classroom.

When this is combined with the realisation that many children have visual learning capabilities, not just the ones branded `disabled', there really is no excuse for implementation of at least some of the ideas explored in this paper.

Teachers will find children that they had thought of as `slow' or `average' blossom and they will see the gifted visual learners gain confidence, motivation and willingness to participate.

Perhaps then the term `disabled' in relation to visual learners will be disbanded for something more like `different learner'.