The Myth of Learning Disabilities: When the System Fails, We Label the Child
- Barry Smith
- 21 hours ago
- 3 min read
When you type "disabled" into a thesaurus you will get terms like defective, broken, impaired, flawed, dysfunctional, incapable, limited, inadequate, and weak. Learning disabilities are signs of brokenness—innate flaws, defects, impairments to be treated, managed, and ultimately owned by the child.
My question is this: What, exactly, am I disabled from learning?
What if these so-called “disabilities” are not inherent at all? What if they’re institutional labels—socially constructed and systemically applied to manage kids who don’t conform to narrow, privileged norms? What if the real dysfunction lies not in the child, but in the systems that pathologize difference? We’ve been sold a myth: that learning disabilities are innate flaws—diagnosable, treatable, and owned by the child. But what if many of these so-called "disabilities" are just institutional labels, constructed to manage kids who don’t fit into narrow, privileged norms?
These labels often fall hardest on kids from racialized, immigrant, and low-income communities. They rarely open doors. More often, they funnel kids into systems of exclusion—segregated classrooms, behavioral surveillance, or worse, the pipeline to prison.
Let’s Talk About Math.
"Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe."— Galileo Galilei
Mathematics might be the greatest tool we’ve ever used to divide the “smart” from the “special.” It’s sold to us as elite knowledge—reserved for gifted brains, quick thinkers, and kids with quiet homes and after-school tutors. But that’s a lie.
Try this: start your next staff meeting with the Pythagorean Theorem and watch the room squirm. The fear of math is deep, cultural, and constructed—and it follows us for life.
But here’s the truth: math should be the most democratic subject. Math is logic. Math is the universe. It’s a natural process that every brain can learn—just like riding a bike, swimming, or driving a standard. You struggle, you practice, you internalize. You don’t copy your way through math—you understand your way through.
And today, with Khan Academy, YouTube, ChatGPT, and free open-source tools, the “mystery” of math is dead. The gatekeeping is unnecessary. The narrative that only some kids can learn math? That’s the real disability.
Who Profits from the Problem?
While we label kids, an entire industry thrives—testing companies, consultants, educational tools, and therapy programs. All well-funded. All well-marketed. Many are accessed mainly by privileged families. Public dollars flow in, and profit flows out.
Meanwhile, children in underfunded schools get reduced expectations, behavioral plans, or worse—nothing at all. We spend more money figuring out what’s "wrong" with kids than we do building environments where they can thrive.
Higher Education: Still a Fortress
Let’s not pretend that universities are equalizers. Access to higher education is still chained to wealth, social capital, and conformity. Students who break norms, speak differently, dress differently, or carry trauma are often treated as broken, not brave.
It’s time we stopped handing out degrees only to those with privilege—and started awarding recognition to those who’ve survived the most.
From Diagnosis to Empowerment
What if we stopped pathologizing children and started confronting the real deficits—in our systems, our expectations, and our imaginations?
We should be asking:
What does this young person need to thrive?
What strengths do they already bring?
How do we build on that instead of fixing what isn’t broken?
Education reform doesn’t start with better labels. It starts with better questions. And it starts when we recognize that poverty is the most disabling force in education—not kids themselves.
Let’s stop diagnosing resilience as disorder. Let’s stop mistaking cultural difference for deficiency. Let’s stop pretending that the child is broken when the system is cracked from top to bottom.
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