If we can meet their needs, they will all bloom at their own best time.

As Armstrong explains, "Children get saddled with diagnostic terms such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and the like, making it sound as if they suffer from very rare and exotic diseases. Yet the word dyslexia is just Latin bafflegab for 'trouble with words'... hundreds of tests and programs purport to identify and remediate these "neurological dysfunctions. Yet medical doctors have yet to clearly establish any measurable brain damage in the vast majority of children with these so-called symptoms. It seems clear to me after fifteen years of research and practice in the field of education that our schools are largely to blame for the failure and boredom which millions of children face..."

Are learning disorder labels the "emperor's new clothes" of the schools? Philosophers have an interesting tool called Occam's Razor, a handy device for cutting through preposterous theories: "the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected." What are the facts? It is a fact that many school children, mostly boys, have learning difficulties. But it is also a fact that there is a group of hundreds of thousands of children in the world, both boys and girls, among whom this "genetic" defect is absent: homeschoolers. In this group, learning difficulties are virtually unknown, except for those children recently in school.

Are learning disorder labels the "emperor's new clothes" of the schools?

Families who have done just that are relieved to find that their children regain the love of learning which they had in their early years. Unlike school teachers, who see a cross-section of different children each year, homeschooling parents watch learning take place within the same child over many years, and thus learn to respect each child's unique learning style, to trust the child's personal timetable, and to recognize that mistakes are a normal and temporary part of the learning process for everyone. (There is no rush, after all; many homeschoolers who did not read until age ten or twelve nonetheless have done very well in college.) This relaxed attitude on the part of homeschooling parents keeps the child's self-worth intact, makes labels irrelevant, and allows learning to take place as readily as in toddlerhood: homeschoolers regularly out-perform their schooled peers on measures of academic achievement, socialization, confidence, and self-esteem. In fact, Gatto reports that "children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think."

For many years, Holt challenged schools to "explain the difference between a learning difficulty (which we all experience at times) and a learning disability. He asked teachers how they discriminate between causes which lie within the nervous system of the learner and those factors outside of the learner- the learning environment, the teacher's explanations, the teacher, or the material. Not surprisingly, he reported that he "never received any coherent answers to these questions... [yet] this distinction is so crucial that I don't see how we can talk usefully about the learning problems of children unless we make it." Why, then, are teachers so sure of the existence of widespread neurological disabilities? Perhaps they confuse cause and effect: as Holt observes, "Teachers say 'reading must be difficult, or so many children wouldn't have trouble with it.'" Holt argues that "it is because we assume that it is so difficult that so many children have trouble with it...all we accomplish by our worrying, 'simplifying', and teaching, is to make reading a hundred times harder for children than it need be... we think badly, or even perceive badly, or not at all, when we are anxious and afraid...when we make children afraid, we stop learning dead in its tracks."

Indeed, many research studies show that the expectations teachers have about a child's learning abilities strongly influence the child's academic performance. Other studies show a high correlation between children's anxieties and perceptual handicaps- and further show that lowering those anxieties (and treating food allergies, if present) greatly lower the incidence of such difficulties. But we don't need researchers and experts to tell us what is wrong. We need only listen to the children themselves, who have tried for years to communicate their pain, frustration, confusion, and anger. When children are driven to addictive drugs, self-mutilation, and suicide, obviously they are trying to communicate something of critical importance.

"Labeling is disabling" because children believe what we tell them.

What could be done instead? Mcgill University Professor Norman Henchey recommends that we "rethink the whole notion of compulsory schooling"¹. Henchey advocates the return to homeschooling and "other routes to adulthood...apprenticeship programs, formal and informal learning services, public service. A whole variety of things might be presented to young people." Perhaps then we can honor each child's personal learning style, and, as Armstrong urges, "give children the encouragement they need in order to feel like competent, successful human beings."² Children are born to learn. They deserve a safe, nurturing learning environment where they can do so, in an atmosphere of patience, respect, gentleness, and trust, not threats, force, and cynicism. As Einstein warned us years ago, "It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion."

Every child is a gifted child.