Welcome to weCan

weCan is a special school in Kolkata, India to support children with special needs, ADD/ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, learning difficulties or disabilities, Asperger’s syndrome, cognitive impairment, hearing impairment, developmental delays, residual vision, speech and any sort of mental retardation with a team of highly educated  caring professional special educators.

We are here to give hope and support to the special children and to the family as well regardless of the diagnosis and prognosis you received from the medical community for your child, we want you to know that there is weCan and hope. weCan caters to various disabilities but the focus is on bridging the gap which exists between the actual performance and the expected performance of the child with learning difficulties. We strongly feel that if a child cannot meet the demands of the education system then we must meet the educational needs of the child.

Every  child has got capabilities to understand and learn. weCan has specialization on elevating a child’s academic performance, physical performance and social adaptability.

weCan functions as a multidisciplinary special school in Kolkata and has got a track record of providing programmes for optimization of competency skills and training in National Institute of Open School (NIOS) Curriculum.

Experts Speak

Why IQ is irrelevant to the diagnosis of learning disabilities by Dr. Linda Siegel

Larry, at age eight, received a score of 78 on an IQ test. This score is in approximately the bottom 10 per cent of the population. He was placed in a class for “mentally retarded” children where he remained until age 14. I tested him at 34, when he was enrolled in a graduate program in a major Canadian university after completing a BA in psychology with an A average. Throughout his school career, Larry had great difficulty in learning to read, spell, write, and do arithmetic calculations. When tested at age 34, his IQ score was 119, well above average and better than about 85 per cent of the population. However, he still had significant problems with reading and spelling. He also had difficulties on short-term memory tasks and had occasional difficulty with verb tenses and finding the right word when speaking. Larry at age 34 displayed a profile of a dyslexic individual; yet at age eight he was labelled as “mentally retarded.”

The case of Larry is a very dramatic example of the consequences of using an IQ test score as part of the definition of a reading disability. At age eight, Larry had dyslexia but, instead, was labelled as “mentally retarded.” Larry was fortunate enough to have a very determined personality and very supportive parents who fought for his rights to be educated.

This case is a real one. Fortunately, it has a happy ending, but for many children with genuine learning problems the ending is not university or graduate school but jail, alcohol and drug abuse, and/or suicide. Larry’s supportive environment did not prevent or cure his reading disability; his reading problem remained throughout his schooling and into adulthood. However, his environment probably prevented Larry from developing the serious social problems that are often a consequence of an undetected and untreated learning disability. Is Larry a rare exception? No. Today a child with poor reading skills and an IQ of 78 would be labelled “developmentally delayed”, “mentally retarded” or a “slow learner”, or said to have a “general learning disability”. They would not be recognised as “reading disabled” or “dyslexic”, or as having a specific learning disability, and would not receive intensive help with reading because it would be argued, incorrectly, that we should not expect better reading from an individual with this IQ level. Unfortunately, children with lower IQ scores who show signs of severe reading problems are barred from getting help for their problem, even today.

Reference

Stuebing, K.K., Barth, A.E., Molfese, P.J. Weiss, B. and Fletcher, J.M. (2009). IQ is not strongly related to response to reading instruction: A meta-analytic interpretation. Exceptional Children, 76, 31-53.

Linda Siegel is Professor of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia, and is also President of the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of the Council for Exceptional Children (to June 2010). She has conducted extensive studies of dyslexia and other learning disabilities as well as cognitive and language development. She was awarded the 2010 Canadian Psychological Association Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Canadian Psychology.

Source : This article was previous published in Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin, Volume 42 No 2 July 2010, pp. 14-15.