In the early 2000s, the Ad Council published a series of public service advertisements promoting awareness of “learning differences.” Many of these ads were wonderfully conceptualized and produced.
1 They sold the notion that disability was not something terrible, that kids with disabilities did not have to be dismissed, disdained, disrespected, or (in the vernacular) just plain “dissed.” Here is an example of one of those ads.
In the context of 2026, when we are experiencing renewed concerns about disabilities—particularly about reading, reading instruction, effective instruction, and such—I find this spot particularly evocative. We are experiencing, in my view, a resurgence of concern about not letting kids fail in acquiring fundamental academic competencies (viz, Sold a Story).
That same concern was evident 5-10 years before the Ad Council advertisements were published. I remember a video (I would show it if I still had access to it) from the wonderful Marilyn Jagger Adams.2 In the spot, she spoke about young children going to school and watching as their peers learned to read and they did not, as these kids failed.
She had a very compelling interpretation of a child’s thinking (I paraphrase here, and I’d be glad to correct my version): Kids start school, and they think that reason they are at school is to learn stuff, especially reading. This is their first chance out in the big world. But, the child who watches his peers succeed and recognizes that he is not getting it thinks, “I can’t do it. I’m stupid. Reading is stupid. School is stupid.”
I can’t do it. I’m stupid. Reading is stupid. School is stupid.
We do not need kids to think that. And they do not have to think it. They can think that they are smart, as the actors in the foregoing ad spot say. Just as the preschoolers demonstrate in the antique videos of Zig Engelmann challenging them to solve equations with missing addends show. Educators can provide instruction that obviates the “I’m stupid” conclusion. Kids can achieve. Indeed, that is an important idea associated with currently popular “response to instruction” and “multi-tiered systems of support”: Give students effective instruction in the first place.
Ahh, but “there’s the rub”:3 We are back to effective instruction. And, we know that some methods of instruction are more effective than others. So, should we employ instructional methods, practices, procedures, and curricula that have been documented to be effective? I think so. I recommend that educators do so, even though those effective methods may not appeal to their gut instincts.
The key idea, in my view, is that we know how to teach kids so that they don’t get the idea that there is something the matter with them. They can learn and they can learn that they are capable and competent.
Now, I don’t give a damn whether we say those kids have LD, ADHD, ADD, DID, autism, emotional problems, atypical neurology, inherited unusual blood flow, or are green and just landed on Earth last week…. We educators are duty bound to teaching them effectively.
Find the appropriate goal and objective for this little Jimmy,
Determine what he must know and be able to do to reach that goal,
Implement evidence-based procedures to teach those concepts and operations effectively, and
Monitor whether what we are doing is working (and change or continue what we are doing accordingly).
Footnotes
Not all of the ads were so wonderfully conceptualized. As we noted in an earlier post, at least one of them promoted a misunderstanding of reading problems: Advocacy for disabilities run awry: What is amiss about this video encouraging the public to seek help for students with LD?
Marilyn Jagger Adams wrote one of the most valuable and impressive books about early development of literacy: Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. She is an expert whom you, Dear Readers, can trust.
Hamlet, right?
“To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,”