TV REVIEW : KFMB Offers a Learning Experience

Rosie Sanchez of Oceanside didn’t know until she was 37 why she didn’t know more.

Until 17-year-old Alex Fraley of Coronado was introduced to a computer, he had trouble programming the system he was born with.

El Cajon preteen Chuck Beers said one of his elementary school teachers looked “me right in the eye” one day and told him: “You’re stupid!”

Chuck Beers is not stupid. Neither is Sanchez, nor Fraley. They were born with learning disabilities (some experts estimate that 20% of all schoolchildren are) and they might have spent their entire lives living down to the expectations of others if their problems had not been diagnosed. (Sanchez, like Albert Einstein and Nelson Rockefeller, is dyslexic.)

All three are doing fine, as can be seen in the documentary “Learning the Hard Way” tonight at 8 on KFMB-TV Channel 8. On that level, the locally produced program delivers an upbeat message.

But the response of viewers is more likely to be that of the parents of learning-impaired children and the learning-impaired themselves: frustration and anger.

“I was surprised. When I started (on this project), I didn’t think it would be that controversial,” said Eileen Brennan, who wrote and produced the one-hour special, the fourth in KFMB’s “Eight Cares Project.” “I thought the biggest problem would be finding out where to tell people to go for help. Now I feel the biggest obstacle is finding someone who will even listen.”

Brennan said she kept running into people, even in the school system, who denied such a thing as a learning disability even existed. People are still in the dark ages on the subject, she said, and would rather treat children with impaired school performance as either lazy, and therefore in need of discipline, or intellectually limited.

One woman interviewed for the show said she wanted “to rip the lips off” her daughter’s teacher after the teacher told her, “Well, she’ll never be a rocket scientist.” Her daughter, the woman learned after finding help, was of above average intelligence; she simply had a problem tracking words on paper. She can be a rocket scientist if she wants to.

One of the specialists interviewed said that catching learning disabilities early is vital. Children whose problems are flagged by the second grade are helped 85% of the time. If the problems are not caught until the sixth grade, she said, the success rate drops to 15%, and by high school to 2%.

Brennan said she decided to do “Learning the Hard Way” after Channel 8 last fall ran “I’m Not Stupid,” a syndicated documentary on learning disabilities.

“The response to that program was so incredible I thought we should do something locally,” she said. “It was a learning experience for all of us.”

“Learning the Hard Way,” hosted by Channel 8 reporter Hal Clement, doesn’t break any new ground in educational documentaries, but it is community-service programming at its best. The series of interviews with students, parents and professionals has been edited into an intelligent, compelling one-hour package, with a point of view that is appropriately one of outrage.

It is sad that so many children are burdened with learning disabilities. But since most of them can be helped, it is sadder still that our educational systems themselves are disabled.