Learning Difference or Learning Disability? Your Thoughts
Sometimes, the English language becomes outdated. Because societal attitudes change, and abhorrent things become less normalised, old terms are seen as offensive, and thus new ones replace them. For example, the adjective handicap (coming from when disabled people would beg for money with a cap in hand) was rightly struck out of normal English a while ago.
Today, there are many pushing for the phrase ‘learning disability’ to be changed to ‘learning difference’. Pioneers claim this is to change the narrative, encourage different perspectives and reduce the stigma. However, there is worry that such language would diminish the seriousness of diagnoses of dyslexia, autism, and other recognised learning difficulties.
On the one hand, the word ‘disability’ focuses on hardship- it is what you are unable to do. This never tells the whole story of someone’s learning style and makes a subset of people think they are less able to compete. However, this ignores how diagnoses are not always a hindrance; they can be helpful. For example, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps partially credits his ADHD for helping secure his 14 gold medals. Phelps’ training style may be different to someone without ADHD, but it does not make him any less able than other competitors. By changing it to difference, the bad connotations surrounding the diagnosis of these conditions are removed, and people who need to learn differently get support without annoyance.
However, there is also the argument that keeping the term ‘learning disability’ gives it weight and seriousness in our language. Two people may have different learning types without either having a diagnosis (for example, one might be visual, one might be auditory). However, having dyslexia is different from preferring audio textbooks. For one, dyslexia, like other qualifying disabilities, is protected by law and requires employers and schools to provide reasonable adjustments. Although changing the phrasing won’t change the legal rights, it might make the public take the diagnosis less seriously than it deserves to be.
So what do you think? Should we update the terminology to ‘learning difference’ or stick with ‘learning disability’? Or should there be other terminology?
Sources:
https://sailhelps.org/so-whats-wrong-with-the-word-handicapped/
https://smarts-ef.org/blog/learning-disabilities-learning-differences/
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