My dad once had a math teacher in elementary school who used to say “There’s no such thing as a dumb student, only dumb teachers.” Many times, struggling students cave in under the pressures of excelling classmates, pushy teachers, and distraught parents, concluding that if they can’t get better grades, they must be less intelligent than their peers. In reality, the fault lies primarily in those of us teaching these struggle students, since we tend to assume to a certain degree that the child is in fact not as bright as others and we continually repeat the same methods of teaching in order to get the concept across. First of all, some teachers have the tendency to assume that a student is not very smart if they cannot understand a given concept. I think in most cases it comes as a visceral reaction to the situation and is therefore hard to control. Over time, however, we tell ourselves and those students who look down on their slower classmate that so-and-so is not dumb, just different. Although it is often true that some children have learning disabilities and are therefore different, labeling them as such can potentially harm their self-confidence, especially if they are not actually diagnosed as being “different.” My younger brother, who is now a freshman at LMU, went through this very experience in elementary school, due to the inability of his teachers to understand him see the situation from his perspective.