Parenthood: "lack" is not same as wrong
Psychologist argues that school districts are too quick to label students with childhood "disorders"
McClatchy Newspapers
Over the past 40 years or so, child advocates have given a good amount of lip service to the view that adults, especially educators, should respect children's "individual differences."
In theory, this recognizes the fact that every trait is distributed in the general population in a manner represented by the bell-shaped curve. Whether the issue is general intelligence, sociability, optimism, musical aptitude, artistic ability, or mechanical skill (to mention but a few), relatively few people are "gifted" and relatively few people are disadvantaged.
Whatever the characteristic, most folks are statistically "normal." That is, they possess an adequate amount, enough to get by.
People gifted in more than a couple of areas are rare, and people gifted in one area but lacking in another are not unusual. A person with outstanding musical aptitude, for example, may be noticeably lacking in social skills, and a person with outstanding verbal skills may be mechanically inept.
The mere fact that a person is lacking in some characteristic or ability does not necessarily mean something is "wrong." That a certain 10-year-old child is shy, lacks conversational skills, and prefers solitary activity to group play does not mean something is amiss inside the child's brain. Nor does the mere fact that a child struggles with learning to read or do math mean his brain isn't working properly. Also, it is well known that the child who is "painfully" shy at ten may be outgoing at age forty-six, and a child who struggles to learn to read may grow up to be a best-selling author. Very little about a human being is set in stone.
All of this is to say that for all the prior lip service, today's educators seem to have absolutely no respect for individual differences, no respect for the fact that "lack" is not synonymous with wrong. In today's schools, the range of acceptability concerning an ever-increasing number of aptitudes has been getting narrower an