Abstract
Without character education and a personal commitment to positive values and proper choices people with learning disabilities have a far greater chance of ending up in prison than those who do not have learning disabilities. These are strong words, yet as we will find out in this short paper, juvenile halls and jails are full of people with learning disabilities. We will see that individuals with learning disabilities and without learning disabilities must be taught character education carefully, purposefully and thoughtfully. But we will emphasize that for people with learning disabilities certain accommodations and learning tools must be used to give the extra assistance that is needed for them to effectively conceptualize and internalize character education.
Character Education: An Imperative for Students with Learning Disabilities.
We try to teach them (the students) the simple things; good manners, hard work, honesty, respect, things they aren't learning in the public school" says Jim Tetreau, co-founder of Strive-LA, an inner city afterschool program in South Los Angeles. Tetreau and co-founder Don Anderson have been working without government funding in South Central since the early 1990's to try and introduce a character based educational support program to needy kids and families in one of Los Angeles's worst neighborhoods. It was my pleasure to sit down with the pair recently at Strives headquarters at the corner of 92nd and Main in the heart of infamous South Central Los Angeles.
The pair met when they both worked at the Hyatt Park Regency hotel in Century City, and both found out they had a desire to do more than serve high end hotel clients the rest of their working careers. Jim and Don both knew that more could be done to help needy kids in South Central, so with a vision and plenty of ambition and hard work they headed off on their own to start Strive. Their vision was to offer a safe place in the heart of the city where kids could come and learn the value of respect, integrity, honesty, self reliance and hard work. Their mission has been to work with any child who comes to their facility to help those children master academics and promote positive character traits.
Their mission to South Central has not been an easy one. One would think that developing a character first foundation would be well accepted in the community, yet their journey has been fraught with funding and political challenges. Having chosen to not accept any government monies from day one has made them somewhat suspect in the eyes of some local political leaders who rely heavily upon government money to run pet projects in the area. The two relayed a testimony from a former police official who confirmed what many people from LA already know, Los Angeles and particularly South Central is one of the most divided and politically "hot" communities in the whole country. While local politicians who represent the area may talk about the nobility of prioritizing positive character into the community, these same politicians are some of the most ruthless, self motivated and non cooperative people imaginable. So it's against this backdrop that Jim and Don have chosen to work with kids and families from the community who value character education and who accept personal responsibility and accountability.
As we are seeing in our research project, character education is a necessary component of education that has been missing in action for too many years in the American public school system. Since American schools began replacing the Judeo-Christian value based McGuffey Readers in the early 20th century with the progressive pragmatist philosophies of John Dewey, we have seen a slide in value based character education in the U.S. school system (Dougherty, 2006). Programs such as Strive-LA are too few and too isolated to have produced any broad based changes in American education and society. Yet programs such as Strives are desperately needed in all communities across the country today.
While a slide in character education is detrimental to all members of the community and society it is particularly detrimental to the needs of students with Learning Disabilities (LD).
Having worked personally in the social/human services profession for over a dozen years,
I saw and experienced the need to provide solid character education to children and youth
who were learning disabled. Studies indicate that learning disabilities such as Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder is often a precursor to serious antisocial and delinquent behaviors
(August, Realmuto, Macdonald, Nugent, & Crosby, 1996). Too often a child with a behavioral
disorder is misunderstood as a child who is simply a behavior problem, when in actuality the underlying cause of the behavior problem may be a learning disability that has been undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. While much progress has been made in the diagnosis of learning disabilities,
much work still continues to be done in the correlation of behavior and learning disabilities
(Lee, Harris & Graham, 1996).
Teachers, me included have too easily looked at the negative behavior manifestations that a child may be demonstrating, rather than looking at the cause of these manifestations. While many of us are aware that ADHD manifests itself in impulsive behaviors and poor attention span (Columbia Encyclopedia, 2007) we may be less aware of other possible character flaws that may be precipitated by a learning disability. It cannot be said that a person with a learning disability has a character flaw because of the disability, but it could be argued that a person with a learning disability may be much more susceptible to a character flaw over a person without such a disability.
Statistics show us that in the U.S. prison system today 30 to 50 percent of the prison population has learning disabilities compared to only 5 to 15 percent of the general population (Parkinson and Steurer, 2007). Though this statistic does not prove that a learning disability led to the prisoner's incarceration, it can be shown that "something as basic as the respect for the property of others may be totally missing from the knowledge and understanding of some inmates". (Character Development Foundation, 2008). Of course there may be a host of deficits in a prisoner's life and background, from a troubled childhood and a dysfunctional family, to a life of poverty, and to a lack of adequate education and positive role models. Many in U.S. public education today call for more money to be spent on schools, to provide better teachers and smaller classrooms. But could it be that at the basis of our growing prison population may be more about the lack of character education and personal morality rather than the lack of well funded schools?
It is the view of this author we need to return to a value based character education in the school system. I would hold that we especially need to provide accommodations for the students with learning disabilities to learn and to be able to demonstrate the values of trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. Again, while a person with a learning disability is not a person with a character flaw; the statistics seem to indicate that this person has a greater chance of getting in trouble with the law than the typical learner. Due to the challenges of a learning disability, teachers who are concerned not only the education their students but also their moral development, need to accommodate the special needs of the learning disabled. While character education is not a panacea to all the problems faced by those with learning disabilities, it does provide a structure for them to learn ethical values that may or may not have been taught in their families (Martinez, 2008)
If you research the topic of special education and learning disabilities it's easy to find and read inspiring stories of the great people of history, such as Mozart, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Nelson Rockefeller and Charles Schwab who struggled with and overcame their learning disability. But unfortunately the only time we hear of the millions of the lesser known people with learning disabilities it is on the news or in the crime reports. We seldom if ever hear about the millions of others who have been less successful in overcoming their challenges. It is for these countless unnamed millions for whom I advocate character education as an imperative for all people, but above all, for people with learning disabilities.
References
Character Development Foundation (2008). Character Education in Prisons. Retrieved October 7, 2008, from http://www.charactered.org/
Learning disabilities. (2006). In (Ed.), Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 2, 2008, from http://questia.com
Lee, S. H., Harris, K. R., & Graham, S. (Eds.). (2003). Handbook of Learning Disabilities. New York: Guilford Press.
Martinez, J. Y. (2008). Character Education in Juvenile Detention. Corrections Today, 70(2), 150-154.
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