True Philosophers

The best thing about working with exceptional learners is their natural curiosity. Particularly students with learning disabilities, who seem to be disproportionately eager for knowledge in conversation. Those same kids whose teachers often say he doesn’t want to be here during conventional classroom exercises are the ones who are bubbling fonts of information and ideas during casual conversation.

Why might this be?

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that the experience of missing out on core learning modalities, whether due to reading disability, receptive language disorders, attention disorders, or some other deficit -- I've come to believe that the frustration over that gap in their learning abilities makes them more eager to absorb knowledge in the manner most appropriate to them.

Remember when your parents told you not to go in that room? It’s kind of like that: access denied is access desired. So, instead of the stereotype of the learning disabled student as in need of trade school or vocational learning, in need of a job, let’s think of these students as being sorely in need of knowledge.

Just like everybody else.

The word philosophy is usually applied to a way of thinking (my philosophy of weight loss or the philosophy of our company). This misses out on the basic origins of the word: philos (love) + sophos (wisdom). The philosopher is not the one who has the wisdom, the philosopher is the one who loves the wisdom. And I believe there is all the difference in the world between the two. 



"much learning does not teach understanding" -- Heraclitus