BETWEEN THE COVERS:

 Confessions of a Bibliophile

by Clara Thompson

As a retired English teacher and literacy tutor, I have an ongoing interest and curiosity about learning disabilities. So when my daughter-in-law Pam handed me a recent book on the subject, I devoted several days of my Minnesota vacation to reading it.

Learning Outside the Lines by Jonathan Mooney and David Cole [2000, Simon & Schuster] is subtitled Two Ivy League Students with Learning Disabilities and ADHD Give You the Tools for Academic Success and Educational Revolution. Quite a mouthful, quite a promise, but one the youthful authors do fulfill.

This hefty paperback is the result of a collaboration between two young men who met in 1997at a college transfer orientation to Brown University, formed a friendship from their common sufferings in public school systems, and ultimately agreed against great odds to write a book about all their educational experiences.

Several themes recur throughout this book. The first theme is that people with so-called “learning disabilities” are not pathologically affected, contrary to their general labeling and treatment in public schools. In spite of the discovery of at least eight styles of learning, public education maintains a rigid exclusion of all those styles, except verbal. The author dramatically expresses the immense harm this inflicts on the one out of five children, tested and labeled as defective, lazy, stupid, or unmotivated. The depth of suffering, frustration, and despair of these students and their families is undeniable.

The fact that these two most unlikely of students – Mooney, with dyslexia and Cole, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a high school dropout and drug addict – did “beat the system,” graduating from college, writing a book, and founding Project Eye-to-Eye, demonstrates the second theme: change is possible, both in the students and in the oppressive system.

The third theme is the action required for change. The authors often emphasize the need for the empowerment of such students. They insist that each student can and must take charge of his own learning. He must protect his learning environment by demanding whatever accommodations are open to him by law and seeking help in every possible form, from proofreading mothers to personal tutors to learning the numerous strategies for studying which the authors have discovered and used so successfully.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part contains their personal stories. The second part, the longest, is a how to/self help with chapters on note taking, class discussions, reading/skimming, writing as a process, cramming, and test taking tricks. This part is full of very helpful suggestions for any student.

Section three takes the reader beyond just beating the system into “Living a Life Less Ordinary,” an extension of the empowerment they advocate in college into living a fully creative and unique adult life. “The Epilogue: Project Eye-to-Eye,” describes their personal activism for service and for change in the system.

Project Eye-to-Eye matches college students with LD/ADHD with elementary school students with similar difficulties, growing in a year into a nationally recognized intervention program. For the over thirty million people in the U.S. with LD/ADHD, the vast majority with average or above-average, this book and Project Eye-to-Eye represent hope and help toward self acceptance and a much brighter, self-directed future.