LD and the problem of scientific definitions.

Abstract

Editor's Note: Ronald P. Grossman studied architecture with Mies van der Rohe, and took his BA and PhD (1965) at the University of Chicago, where he held the Catherine Cleveland Fellowship. He has taught at the University of Nebraska, St. Olaf College, Michigan University, and Lake Forest College, where he is currently associate professor. He also has been a visiting fellow of the Newberry Library. During 1974 he was a consultant to a study of special education facilities in Illinois made for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the coauthor of its final report. He also is a consultant on interethnic affairs to the Institute On Pluralism and Group Identity of the American Jewish Committee, a member of the steering committee of the Illinois Consultancy on Ethnicity and Education, and a frequent contributor to the popular press on a variety of social and educational issues. His articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines such as the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Magazine, as well as scholarly journals such as Contemporary Psychology, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, and Balkan Studies. His article, State Initiative in Learning Disabilities, appeared in the November 1975 issue of this Journal. Among his current research interests is psychohistory — the application of the concepts of psychoanalysis to the study of historical problems. This invited article derives from Dr. Grossman s continued interest in the validity and lawfulness of the extension of the methods of the scientist to other scholarly fields — in this case the concept of learning disabilities. He is currently working on a book comparing the failures of the criminal justice system and the high schools to provide for the needs of contemporary young people at both ends of the social ladder. Dr. Grossman is the author of a book, The Italians in America (Lerner, 1975).