Recognizing the potential contribution of mercury polution to the development of learning disabilities, the Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA), the National Education Association (NEA), and the Arc of the United States published a brochure on the topic 14 March. The purpose of the brochure is to help parents understand the consequences of mercury polution and what they can do about it. The organizations announced the publication in a news release.
Bateria convert mercury into methylmercury and in that form it enters the human food chain via fish. The problem was recognized by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2000 when it endorsed strict safety standards recommend by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1995. The neurotoxic consequences of exposure to methylmercury during gestation include mental retardation.
Another instance of “Learning Disability” misused
Here’s another entry in the “LD means any problem” category. Writing on the BaltimoreSun Web site, Tawanda W. Johnson reports the happy story about students overcoming problems to graduate from high school. She wrote,
Once again, the term “Learning Disabilty” is used to refer to a general set of educational and health problems, not to the legally defined category of special education, “Learning Disability.” Here we have poor attention span (could that be represented as “Other Health Impaired?”) and “ODD” (oppositional defiant disorder in the language of psychiatry, right?) represented as “learning disabilities.” To be sure, Ms. Johnson used lower case letters in “learning disability,” but the reference is still plain.
I guess this is the consequence of failures by the education industry. We simply haven’t taught people to be careful about their language. We’d wish that writers would check the facts, the terms, etc. Still, each misuse such as Ms. Johnson’s—even in an otherwise uplifting story—further clouds the public’s understanding of the concept of LD, making it ever-more difficult for those who champion the needs of individuals with LD to keep the focus on those individuals’ needs.With LD under fire for being ill-defined (see the testimony on this topic during the run-up to the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA for examples of the fire), it’d help if people used the term in ways consistent with law and academic study.
I may tire of functioning as the LD Language Police, but I hope the effort will help us to sustain efforts to meet the needs of those with LD. To be sure, those with other disabilities need help, too. Let’s get it for them, but not by mis-identifying them as having LD.