Learning a Living

Learning a Living: a guide to planning your career and finding a job for people with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and dyslexia
Dale S. Brown
Nonfiction 342 pages
Woodbine House, Inc. 2000

Many books have been written about career planning and job hunting. This one’s a little different. While it offers all the usual stuff found in books of its type, it also offers useful information for people with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder (ADD), and dyslexia.

People who don’t swim in the mainstream while learning can be victimized by misconceptions held by others and themselves. This book aims at dispelling some of these misconceptions and takes a realistic look at learning disabilities and difficulties.

Because learning disabilities, ADD and dyslexia manifest themselves in a variety of forms, no one career planning approach fits all. The author addresses questions like:

• How does a learning disabled person identify his strengths and weaknesses?
• How does he know when he is being objective, instead of influenced by his own bias or that of others?
• How can a weakness be turned into a strength?
• In what jobs are those strengths assets?
• How can weaknesses be compensated for?

He also considers the relationship between the job market, the individual and the law. For example, when is it advisable to inform an employer of a handicap and when is it best not to do so? What protections are offered under the Americans with Disabilities Act and what does the act not cover? What constitutes reasonable accommodation? When can an employer refuse accommodation due to undue hardship?

Sometimes asking the right questions is more useful than knowing readymade answers. This book teaches people with, and without, disabilities how to ask good career planning questions.

The Learning Disability Myth

The Learning Disability Myth*

Dr. Robin Pauc with Jacqueline Burns

Nonfiction 213 pages Virgin Books, 2006

In his book, “The Learning Disability Myth,” Dr. Pauc addresses a number of developmental and behavioral disorders and presents the basics of his treatment methods. These disorders include: learning disabilities, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Childhood Turette’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. Each of these conditions share overlapping symptoms, causes and treatments and should therefore be reclassified as aspects of what he calls, Developmental Delay Syndrome. The cause of Developmental Delay Syndrome is that spindle cells, which appear in the prefrontal cortex four months after birth, fail to properly integrate with other parts of the brain. The treatment involves proper diet and stimulation of these cells. Dr. Pauc prescribes removing unhealthy foods and food additives from the diet while adding healthy ones. His book includes a two-week eating plan. He is less specific, however, about his therapies for stimulating wayward spindle cells. Quoting from the letter of a thirty year old patient, these therapies could include, “listening to Mozart, with a view to gain right-ear dominance, looking through a Syntonizer at different lights for an hour a day for two weeks to open the fields of vision, … walking up the stairs with my eyes shut and holding a tray with a glass of water on it to help stimulate the left cerebellum!” Has Dr. Pauc made revolutionary discoveries, or are his claims exaggerated? Dr. Pauc readily discusses neurology, but never mentions that he is a Chiropractor, not a Neurologist. If the reader wrongly infers his profession, Dr. Pauc can, at worst, be accused of omission, rather than of deception. Evidence presented in books written for casual readers tends to be anecdotal rather than statistical. Dr. Pauc’s evidence is also anecdotal. If you want statistics, you’ll need to read elsewhere. Based on the evidence offered, I am unable to form conclusions. I invite your opinions, be they based on personal, or professional, experience.

*March 12, 2021 - No longer published under title above