Mental Retardation - Learning Disability or Not?

In one of my education classes, we've been part of a semester on children with disabilities. I was looking through some educational blogs when I saw this one. Is Mental Retardation a Learning Disability? This intrigued me as it's fitting to what I'm learning now. I really appreciated how they first discussed the difference between a learning disability and mental retardation. Most people might make this mistake easily and use these terms interchangeably, but as we can see in that blog, that's not the case. Learning disabilities only really apply to their intelligence and being able to retain information and process it. Whereas mental retardation is not only affecting the intelligence, but it also affects their daily function of life.People must be aware of these differences, especially teachers. They need to be able to make that differentiation so that one, if and when discussing with the student's parents, the teacher is not confusing the two terms as they are quite different. Second, if one wants to help suppress it, they need to be exactly sure what disability they have.With learning disabilities a student can go through special education with help from organizations like IDEA. On the other hand, with mental retardation for some parts yes, special education can help, but really it's a condition.There are many cases too of children who have both a learning disability and mental retardation. Of course this makes it harder for them, but teachers just need to be aware of it and try to creative in helping out those students in improving academically.Teachers really need to be careful about how they treat students with these disabilities. These students after all are individuals, so teachers need to be aware and concerned about their well being and doing whatever they can to help students improve in their education.Another point that I really liked in that blog was the amount of examples they put in. They had a lot of outside sources emphasizing the definitions of both terms and giving some statistics. That really would help out eager teachers who want to know how many children are out there with disabilities and the proper definitions to learning disabilities and mental retardation.One important point I'd like to bring out to those who are reading this blog. My education teacher for this class cannot stress enough and now I'm telling my readers, that never put the disability before the child. As mentioned before, the children are individuals so it's not nice to put a label on them. One must always make sure the child comes first and then the disability. Just a little note to remember!Do look at that blog for those interested in learning more about these disabilities!