What Really Causes Failure – Underlying Learning Weaknesses

What Really Causes Failure

Underlying Learning Weaknesses

An “underlying learning weakness” means that a child never learned how to learn.  To succeed in school, a child must develop dozens of mental skills.  If any of these skills are under-developed, the child will struggle in school.

Here are some of the clues I use to look for an underlying learning weakness in a child:

• The student doesn’t follow directions, takes a long time to finish classwork, and doesn’t look at me when I’m talking.
  • Underlying Learning Weakness: auditory processing preference.
  • Impact on Schoolwork: Children with an auditory processing preference quickly forget what they were taught, especially if they were reading it.  They can’t remember all the instructions a teacher gave, and so frequently forget to do homework or crucial parts of an assignment – thus, they get bad grades, even though they might be perfectly intelligent and capable.

• The student can’t seem to get the “big idea” out of a reading passage, talks on and on about unimportant facts and details, and has trouble taking turns in a conversation.
  • Underlying Learning Weakness: right hemisphere weakness.
  • Impact on Schoolwork: The right hemisphere of the brain is in charge of unifying all the facts that we learn into a concept.  If the right hemisphere did not fully develop this skill, a child might learn all the facts by heart, but never be able to use them on (for example) a test or essay.

• The student is easily frustrated by schoolwork, struggles to finish homework, and has trouble controlling his or her behavior.
  • Underlying Learning Weakness: executive functioning.
  • Impact on Schoolwork: This one is a serious weakness, because “executive functioning” is the conductor that makes all of a child’s learning skills work together.  If a child has not fully developed their executive functioning skills, they can’t actually use any of their skills, and so they struggle to get anything done.  (Fortunately, this is a fairly easy weakness to improve!)

There are many more, all outlined in Beyond Labels.  If a child hasn’t fully developed every one of these skills, they will struggle in school.  And no amount of tutoring or extra help will truly fix the problem.