The type of help children really need and hardly ever get.

Apart from a few years at the beginning of my teaching career I have always worked with children with learning difficulties. People would tell me that I must be a very patient and understanding person to have been able to do this. Just the opposite.

The reason I could do this work was because I was impatient, I wanted these children to learn, and learn quickly. And I was not very understanding, it was because I did not understand why these bright children struggled to learn that I took training courses and did research in search of an answer to their problems.

What I discovered came as a shock.

I discovered that children have learning problems, not because of their inability to learn, but because they do not know how to learn. They had never developed the skills they needed to be able to learn.

So, when a child is struggling to learn how do we help?

Usually the child is sent to a tutor where he has to review the same material he has failed to learn already, or he is given more homework as though by reviewing what has been taught in the lesson he will magically come to understand it! We give children who are struggling to learn more information, more practice, more stuff to do.

The definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

It is madness to treat children this way.

Instead of trying to help struggling learners by making them do the same thing they have already failed at but do it more slowly, or in a different way, we need to help these children understand HOW to learn. We need to help them develop the basic learning skills they need to make sense of the information they are being given.

Let us stop doing our children a disservice. Let us give our children the help they really need, help with developing their learning skills.