The other day I was checking my e-mail, when I found
THIS in my inbox. And when I say
THIS, I want you to get swept up in the moment, like I was about to unveil some get-rich quick scheme or great deal on Amazon.com, or something much, much more awesome than what I am actually going to share with you.
Because what I am going to share with you is a forward that tells a possibly pretend simple story and tries to light a fire inside of you to make you want to solve all of the world's problems without actually giving you the tools to solve anything. Here it is:
My brother is 18 years old. He has an IQ of 30-40 and has been in school for 12 years. My brother has always attended an elementary school. He has had a number of years of individualized instruction and has learned to do a lot of things!
My brother can now do lots of things he couldn't do before!
He can put 100 pegs in a board in less than 10 minutes while in his seat with 95% accuracy.
BUT, he can't put quarters in vending machines.
Upon command, he can touch his nose, shoulder, leg, foot, hair and ear. He's still working on wrist, ankle and hips.
BUT, he can't blow his nose when needed.
He can now do a 12 piece Big Bird puzzle with 100% accuracy and color the Easter Bunny while staying in the lines.
BUT, he prefers music. However, he was never taught how to use a radio or record player.
He can now fold primary paper in halves and even quarters.
BUT, he can't fold his clothes.
He can sort blocks by color; up to 10 different colors!
BUT, he can't sort clothes; whites from colors for washing.
He can roll Play-Doh and make wonderful clay snakes.
BUT, he can't roll bread dough and cut out biscuits.
He can string beads in alternating colors and match it to a pattern on a DLM card.
BUT, he can't lace his shoes.
He can sing his ABCs and tell me names of all the letters of the alphabet when presented on a card in upper case with 80% accuracy.
BUT, he can't tell the men's room from the ladies room when we go to McDonald's.
He can be told it's cloudy/rainy and take a black felt cloud and put it on the day of the week on an enlarged calendar(with assistance).
BUT, he still goes out in the rain without a raincoat.
He can point to 100 different Peabody Picture Cards with 100% accuracy.
BUT, he can't order a hamburger by pointing to a picture or gesturing.
He can walk a balance beam, side ways and backwards.
BUT, he can't walk up the steps or bleachers unassisted in the gym to go to a basketball game.
He can count to 100 by rote memory.
BUT, he doesn't know how many dollars to pay the cashier for a $2.59 McDonald's coupon special.
He can put the cube in the box, under the box, beside the box and behind the box.
BUT, he can't find the trash bin in McDonald's and empty his trash in it.
He can sit in a circle with appropriate behavior and sing songs and play "Duck, Duck, Goose"
But, nobody else his age in his neighborhood seems to want to do that.
I GUESS HE'S JUST NOT READY YET!
Awww, that's so cute and cuddly and it just makes me want to GET OUT MY FREAKING TORCH AND PITCHFORK AND FREAKING THE FREAKING....oh, sorry. Sometimes I get carried away with myself when I read stories like that. Stories that are, you know, BS.
Any time I get an e-forward dealing with some vague story in the cheesy forward font (that I have so painstakingly preserved for you...but seriously, what is
up with that font?), with the CAPS and the colors- I tend to just delete it or ignore it. But something about this one rubbed me the wrong way. And so I'm devoting a whole flipping blog to it.
First of all, I should acknowledge that there is some good stuff here. The premise is solid, and not just for special education. I do believe that education should be more pragmatic in many regards. There's all these 'academic pursuits' that on the surface don't really have any real-life application at all. Why should kids have to learn their times tables, and memorize state capitals, and how to do all that other crap we had to do in school that I honestly don't remember? So they can all grow up and get the good factory jobs that we're now outsourcing?
As a parent, I have to say that I'm...well, I'm in 'wait-and-see' mode when it comes to public education. I'm not super cynical, but I am also afraid that my kids will end up missing out on something awesome. Both my kids are smart. And they love to learn, so I'm not worried about them failing in the system. My fear is that they won't develop the ability to think critically until they're in college (which is what happened to yours truly) because the system is set up to produce a bunch of times-table knowing, state-capital spouting drones. And yes, that's pretty much truth I just spit.
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| Word |
Back to our story. The problem I have with this forward (and others of similar ilk) is the whole 'Bumper Sticker Philosophy' behind it. These forwards, as I alluded to earlier, try to use some vague and mysterious and shameful anecdote to spur people on to action without really taking a meaningful look at the issue that they're trying to solve. So you end up with a bunch of frothing mad villagers with fire and sharp objects that are just standing around looking confused while whatever pet cause you were trying to promote is still in the same place of non-solvedness that it was before.
That's where I come in. I'm like the Michael Clayton of e-mail forwards. Let's look at a few things that bother me about this particular forward.
1) We don't know anything about the socio-economics of this situation. Are we talking a rural or urban area? Is there lots of money- or is it dirt poor? What about the family? Are they scraping by, trying to do the best they can with the hand they were dealt, or do they have a lot of resources at their disposal? These are not trivial questions, either- they determine the gap between where the child is and where they want him to be. Lots of money=travesty, No money=lower your expectations.
But our author wants us to completely look the other way and just blame the Evil Education System for this kid walking into the ladies room at McDonalds and dumping his trash on the floor at McDonalds and holding up the other customers in line at McDonalds and...wait a minute...I just figured out what the problem is.
STOP GOING TO MCDONALDS.
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| Won't somebody please think of the chickens? |
Seriously though, it's easy to blame the education system without knowing what exactly the education system is able to provide. Do they have enough aide support? Do they have access to auxiliary services, such as speech and OT/PT? Do they even have the appropriate placement? I bet that not every district has a 'middle-school'-type program, and in some areas they might not even have a high school program.
Unfortunately there are districts that can't afford to provide the services that would help this kid to be successful. They can't afford to pay another teacher or two more aides or a speech pathologist and they don't have extra space for such a program, let alone the space they would need for the population they would be providing services for. Thus, you end up with an elementary schooler who is 18 years old. So while it's easy to blame the school for being incompetent (without the pertinent information) maybe, mystery person, your brother is an 18 year old in an elementary school BECAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO PLACE ELSE FOR HIM TO GO.
2) It sounds like the problem isn't so much that this kid wasn't taught anything- he just wasn't taught specific skills that you're looking for, or at least he wasn't taught how to generalize the skills he did learn. On that point, I will concede that part of that blame could fall on the school. Many of the areas he seems to be experience deficits in are ones that could be worked on in a classroom setting. It shouldn't be too hard to find time to fold clothes or put coins in a vending machine or even operate a CD player. Those skills could be taught in class, so checkmate. You win.
NOT.
A couple things could get overlooked here. First off, we know a little bit of his academic level, but we don't know how long it took to reach the point where he is at. We don't know how many hundreds of hours were spent trying to get this kid to be able to just put the cube inside the box. The forward makes it sound like these people were just twiddling their thumbs every day for twelve years while little 'Bro was stringing beads and doing Big Bird puzzles like some poor lost ship without a rudder. Even though I have only worked in special education for four months, I can assure you that is not (usually) the case. To get to those levels from the initial baseline is a long, slow, painstaking and arduous process. Sure, it's easy to look at that list and think 'Why the heck would they work on
that? That's pointless', without realizing that it can take years of determined effort to achieve those specific skills. Skills which, when generalized, have very broad applicability in the lives of our young protagonist.
It's too bad that the school failed to help him broaden the scope of his efforts. If only there was someone who was with this child even more than the school- someone who could work with them during the summer...and on weekends! Someone who knew how this child functioned outside of the walls of the school and knew which things they needed to work on and could communicate that to the school and maybe...just maybe...work on those things after school hours!
Too bad nothing like that exists. Oh wait, it does. It's called FAMILY.
3) Before I get run away with here, I should say that I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to raise a child with severe special needs. I have been fortunate enough to have been blessed with two healthy children who are certainly a chip off the old block in the smarts department (desmartment?), so I really have no idea how difficult it can be. At most, I get about a seven hour glimpse five days a week, and sometimes that is more than I can take. So I don't mean to be too smarmy and condescending. You..do know what condescending means, right?
That said, what probably pisses me off the most about this forward is the latent idea behind all of those red lines- that the shortcomings, the 'failures' are the fault of the poorly run, insufficiently planned, educational process that this poor child was subjected to his entire life while the poor family stood helplessly by, unable to stop the juggernaut that was too busy carrying their child towards another payday to get wrapped up in actually helping him.
Wait a minute...just what was the family doing for those twelve years?
I'm not going to entertain the possibility that this family (unlike some) is uncaring and non-involved in the education process. After all, a mere sibling is able to spout off achievements with nearly 100% recollection- that's impressive. And they're taking him out into the community- to McDonalds, to basketball games, out in the rain- so kudos to them. It seems that they're putting forth some effort to make this work.
And we won't talk about how a number of parents (and this goes for the general populous, too) are willing to sit back and let the education system foot the education-of-our-children bill while they stand by pointing fingers. We won't lump these parents in with those that just send their kid to school, hope that they learn something, and then plop them in front of the computer/TV/X-box all night so the house can finally have some peace and quiet. Freaking kids.
No, instead we're going to take this route- did they ever voice these concerns in a staffing or IEP meeting? Did they ever go, 'You know, George is simply lights out on that DLM card...but, he can't exactly tie his shoes. We should talk to his teacher and treatment team and see if we can have George start working on that'? Maybe they did, but that doesn't seem to be the case- otherwise our finger-pointer surely would have brought it up.
We constantly brought up these issues. Every IEP meeting, every staffing, we even started to document the phone calls we made to the teacher and school administrators, as well as comments made in passing to the aides. All we wanted was for them to actually start working with my brother on skills that would help him in real life.
BUT, nope-they just kept working on that stupid s***.
Not that an IEP is a miracle cure. It's not like sitting down and having some dialogue is going to automatically make things all better. It is, however, a communicative process where the family can ask about progress, and express things that they'd like to see accomplished, after which the team of educators come up with some sort of curriculum/plan to help the student to achieve those objectives.
If the family isn't happy with the level of services, they bring that to the attention of the team at the next meeting, the IEP gets tweaked, and they try, try again. Maybe tangible progress is made, maybe not- but at least everybody moves forward having had an open exchange and knowing that everyone was trying to get to the same point.
Instead, some sibling who is probably jealous due to lack of attention decided to type up a cutesy little forward and sent it around to special education departments everywhere, in the hopes that the soft-hearted special education department people would be galvanized into action. Nothing like putting some grease on the squeeky wheel while the car is about to drive off a cliff, right?
I leave with this- the intentions behind this forward, honorable as they might have been, are dangerously misleading. There are many hands in the cookie jar of education, and to think that all of those hands are not equally guilty of stealing the cookies is naive at best, damning at worst. Sure, the educational system is not nearly what it could be, but as long as the anonymous are willing to sit behind their computer screens and fire off passive-aggressive anecdotes and call for teachers' jobs instead of being willing to accept responsibility and look at the whole system (families included), then we're going to keep churning out generations of children that are JUST NOT READY YET!
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