Mrs. Reuven phoned the Rov in a panic. "My daughter's teacher
told me that I have to take my child for testing because when
all the other children are sitting quietly waiting to make the
brocha over their mid-morning sandwich, my daughter
does not wait but starts eating straight away!"
"How old is your daughter?" asked the Rov.
"She is three years old," the mother replied.
The Rov burst out laughing. "There is no need to worry. That
is perfectly normal behavior for a child of that age."
*
Mrs. Shimon's gannenet told her that she should send
her three-and-a- half-year-old boy to a neurologist because he
would not sit down the whole time and sometimes he hits other
boys. But Mrs. Shimon had enough experience from her other
eight children to know that her child was normal.
*
Mr. Levi sent his teenage boy for evaluation because the boy's
tutor insisted that his writing was completely illegible and
that it indicated serious learning problems. The evaluator
asked the boy to write for him, first slowly and then quickly.
The writing was not perfect, but it was as legible as any
other boy of his age. The tutor, who was new to the job,
continued to insist that the boy was learning-disabled.
Finally, the evaluator organized a meeting with the tutor and
the Rosh Yeshiva. The tutor went through all the difficulties
he was seeing in the boy. The evaluator explained that all the
issues were well within the range of normalcy, that the boy
was also of exceptional intelligence and showed how the
insistence of the tutor to focus on the failings was
preventing him from developing the boy's potential.
The Rosh Yeshiva and the tutor accepted the arguments, but the
next day, when they spoke to the father, they reiterated their
demand that the boy go for further testing.
*
Mr. Yehuda brought his seven-year-old son for evaluation
because someone had seen his son's writing and had commented
that because it was not neat, it might indicate that the boy
was suffering from severe hidden psychological problems.
*
Yissachar is an intelligent 14-year-old boy. He was under-
performing seriously in his studies. Evaluation showed that he
is suffering from eye- convergence deficiency, which is basic
to many areas of learning and behavior.
Someone suggested to Yissochor's parents that they take him
for further testing before correcting the vision deficiency.
The new tester found a whole range of problems and arranged an
extensive (and expensive) program of remediation and therapy.
The original evaluator protested to the new tester that the
problems she found were normal for a person with convergence
deficiency and would probably be self-correcting after the
vision disorder was corrected. The tester insisted that the
problems were problems and had to be dealt with
individually.
*
The evaluator mentioned in these stories has thirty years of
experience tutoring and teaching regular students. He is,
therefore, able to maintain a realistic perspective of what is
`normal' and the relationship between cause and effect and how
dealing with one basic problem can enable a regular person to
take care of a whole range of other, consequential
problems.
The `testers' and advice-givers in the above stories worked on
the `checklist principle'. According to the checklist
principle, each problem is accorded a list of characteristics
and anyone matching a certain number of characteristics is
defined as being `problematic' and needs to undergo therapy
for that problem.
But a person is not simply an aggregation of behavioral modes.
Every aspect of his performance is linked to every other
aspect. Ideally, before entering into the field of evaluation
and remediation, the trainee should have several years of
experience working with regular students so as to establish a
base-line of norms with which to compare the results of
evaluations. The evaluator needs to be able to see beyond
statistics and recognize the uniqueness of the individual
before him.
