People should be taught what their learning abilities are when they are young. I'm not going to call it learning "disability" because it's not a disability a lot of times - it's just that we individually have different preferences about how we learn and absorb information from the external World around us. For example, most men are, on average, more visual than most women.
I think people's learning abilities can easily be measured if you take each measurable brain function and test for it. A good diagram of the brain's functions can be found at: http://hiddentalents.org/brain/113-left.html and http://hiddentalents.org/brain/113-right.html) Regardless of whether this website is completely accurate, you've got to wonder - what are MY strengths? For example, I have EXCELLENT visual memory. I never need a GPS, as long as I've been there once before. And I remember faces very well. But not names. Names, I suck. In my mind, I see the first letter and that's all I can recall sometimes. I also know of a genius who has exceptional taste memory. This one friend of the Oracle's could recall the taste of wine in minute detail - as in sequences as well as overall sensation on the tongue at any moment during that experiential taste sequence.
Another case in point: After graduating from Berkeley, I went to law school and then got another degree in tax after law school - and at the very tail end of my 38 year ascent through the educational system I FINALLY realized - oh, I have what other people call a learning "disability." I have trouble retaining "words" in my memory. I can remember pictures and concepts better than most other people, but not words. So becoming a biologist was not possible for me. I couldn't remember the different parts of our anatomy, even if my own life depended on it. I made up for it in other ways, obviously. The practice of law works for people who can memorize concepts - which is something I do really well because I see the World in pictures. (Because I'm bilingual, people often ask me whether I dream in English or Japanese. I always say I don't dream in either language. I dream in visual sequences - in other words - I dream in pictures, not words. And it's not that I'm completely incapable of memorizing weird words - it just takes me longer. But thanks to the Internet - most of the times, no one notices, because I can just look up the word that I can't remember on the Internet.)
Another thing is that concept driven people (me) are better at certain tasks. We make good Judges / Teachers / Business Owners because we can be given pretty confusing instructions but prioritize what's important and create order out of the chaos. Concept-oriented people thrive in the gray areas of life. People who are more literal prefer receiving more concrete instructions, and pay more attention to the details - and that's a good thing too.
Oh, and the other thing about my brain is that I tend to remember the small stuff (like statutes and case law), if it's useful or interesting. I enjoy tax law and immigration law both because tax and immigration policies are both full of politics and human drama. And I learn something about human nature in both of these areas.
Point is, I would have loved to have learned when I was younger that what works for Jane Doe didn't necessarily work for me when it came to learning. I wasted so much time trying to learn like everyone else!! Doth I protest too much? It's because I struggled for 30 years thinking there were parts of me that were retarded. I've known several people in my life who were considered geniuses, and none of them are perfect either. Point is, we are ALL flawed. And conversely, we all have individual strengths. I joke that our personalities are a composite of our respective brain damages - which is why we need each other. The point is that TOGETHER, we become more whole and can see the World more clearly.
I offer to you my flawed thesis in this blog, so that at least I could have a starting point to this conversation that I want to have with you. I offer them to you with the hope that we become better people as a result of this exercise. I just want us to start this conversation, a conversation about how we can create a better World, together. If we put our heads together - I think we will prevail. After all, there are seven billion paths to peace. Each of us is an integral piece of this puzzle.
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