My dad and myself are the only people in my immediate family who aren't either current or former teachers. That should give you some understanding as to why, when we all get together, education is regularly featured in our conversations. Recently, on the blog, we discussed the education system in Finland, and it jogged my memory about something one of my sisters-in-law mentioned when we were all together on Christmas Australia Day.
You see, she's just spent a couple of years teaching in a special education facility. The experience has literally sent her grey.
I think there are some people out there who think of special-needs kids as these plucky little blighters, either in wheelchairs, or who just happen to be a tiny bit thick. Sadly, that's not the case. In reality, a lot of them are complete handfuls. They can be incredibly disobedient; some of them talk uncontrollably; some of them scream uncontrollably; some of them can't keep their hands to themselves; some of them are quite violent; some of them self-harm; some of them regularly piss and shit themselves; some of them play with themselves constantly; and some of them will just spontaneously get up and run away.
Anyway, over the course of the Christmas holidays, her school decided to demolish its special-ed facility and start integrating the kids into regular classes. You see, segregating special-needs kids is apparently discriminatory, and creates a stigma around disability that harms not only them, but the rest of the students as well.
My sis said that, while she knew it was happening, arriving at the school on the first day of the year, and seeing all of the facilities and equipment gone, was almost enough to make her cry.
I can still remember my mother, decades ago, ranting about the education department, when they first started pushing this line of thinking. Every minute that a teacher spends dealing with a kid who's done a runner, or is rolling on the floor screaming, or has stabbed the kid next to them with a pencil, or has hitched up their skirt and started fingering themselves; that's a minute less they have to spend on teaching the rest of the class. Put three or four of these kids into a single classroom, and you can imagine the results. And when you consider the fact that most of these kids struggle to learn anything in a regular classroom environment anyway, it makes you wonder how far removed from reality the people who push this rubbish actually are.
Of course, there's always the possibility that it's just a load of compassionate rhetoric, used to disguise some rather cynical cost-cutting measures. Either way, I struggle to see this as being a net positive for the public education system. I'm open to other opinions though.
2 comments :
When I was 9-10, we lived in a shitty mining town in the middle of nowhere. Population 2000, so big enough to have a school, but not big enough to have a special ed facility.
Cue the arrival of a family with a special needs kid (back then, he was called retarded). Luckily for us, he was a quiet kid and didn't need much, but he was put in our class because of his age, not his ability, poor thing. Add to that, they were Arab Muslims, and he generally just sat in class, not understanding much, except during Ramadan, where he fell asleep most of the time from lack of sustenance. He was no real trouble in class and we didn't mind his presence - though looking back it was a bit unfair of the headmaster to fob him off on the most inexperienced teacher there. Mind you, kids being kids, he did get teased, resulting in his older brother getting into fights defending him, and the headmaster having to give us all a lesson in tolerance at a full assembly one day. But generally, it was okay for all of us, I'm not sure it was for him.
However, my aunt is a teacher's aid and she spends all her days with special needs kids and she regularly tells us horror stories about the children she works with. And how some of them really should be in the special ed school but the parents are in denial about their needs and the insane disruption they cause. (the latest one, for example, won't do anything, and goes from perfectly fine to Exorcist - complete with voice - with no warning whatsoever, relieves herself wherever and also climbs up to the top of the climbing equipment and screams until someone climbs up and rescues her, an outrageous OHS situation). Some of her kids are fine, do well in school, and she's had ongoing relationships with them after they leave her care, but others just shouldn't be in a mainstream school. And it really shouldn't be up to the parents to decide that.
Agreed.
Also, I keep hearing about how the public schools don't provide enough aid time to deal with these kids appropriately.
And the private schools have the luxury of just saying "no" to them, making them almost entirely the problem of the public system.
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