Special-ed students' tasks anger parents

Washington Times ^ | Saturday, October 11, 2003

[JohnHuang2]

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Special-education students were told to pick through recyclables and haul trash without pay as part of a Washington high school's "Work Experience Program," much to the outrage of some of their parents.

"It seems rather demeaning," said John Finders, whose son participated in the program. "The thought of him doing that in front of the normal students just drove me nuts."

[JohnHuang2]

Saturday, October 11, 2003

Quote of the Day by Malia

[Support Free Republic]

Got a minute?

I'd really like you to rub my ears,
or help out FR.

[Patangeles]

The dumb kids should be elevated to governance. Anything less than pretending dumb kids really aren't rocket scientists is discriminatory.

[roadcat]

I really don't see anything wrong with getting your fingers dirty and working hard. No one is too high and mighty to learn how to handle menial tasks. When I was in high school I took odd jobs sweeping and cleaning. It made me stronger and I had pride in earning my own money. Later on when I started working white collar jobs, I got disgusted with desk jockeys complaining about how hard their work was - obviously they were pampered.

[BlackbirdSST]

The dumb kids should be elevated to governance. Anything less than pretending dumb kids really aren't rocket scientists is discriminatory.

My "dumb" kid, Autism, is smarter than everyone in his class. In fact, he brings home the very work his "smart" sister brings home, and she is 2 grades ahead of him. Thanks for the knee jerk bigoted exposure for yourself.

That said, I wouldn't find this demeaning work, but rather would insist, the "smart" kids might well benefit from the same exposure to the same task. Trust me, it would do us all the better if the "smart" kids knew something practical, it's they who get coddled!

I pray to GOD, no one else has to endure what my family has to endure by raising a child with a disability, even people I despise (if you can get a clue, that's people like you). I further thank GOD for this child every day. See if you can come up with another group to slime. Blackbird.

[patton]

My son's high-school football coach is the school janitor.

He says nobody on the team litters anymore. And they don't let anyone else litter, either.

What a great school.

[netmilsmom]

God Bless you and your family. You have endured so much. However, I think that your son would have gotten work outside of the school. This school tried to get these kids jobs. They are trying to teach them responsibility. In our local schools work programs, if one does not like the job assigned, one can find another and bring it to the administration who change the assignment. The parents of these children may not have taken that option.
I do agree that if any child (not just special ed) cannot find a job on this program, that child should be doing the same grunge work as the special ed kids. If they made it all equal, there would be no problem.
My neighbor's daughter has Angelman's Syndrome She is five and has just begun to walk. By the grace of God, she might be able to do this work one day.

[BlackbirdSST]

Thanks for the kind and logical response to my pre caffiene rant this morning. No matter how bad one think's one has it, there is alway's someone else worse off. These kid's are Special, but it's not a choice of their own making. Trust me, I draw on my Son's strength every single day! He's changed my life for the better, trust me again.

I'm not familiar with Angelman's Syndrome. I will be by the end of the day. Prayer's for your neighbor's and their Daughter. Blackbird.

[vharlow]

Agreed. I sort recyclables all the time...but the kids haven't been forced to do this terrible task, so they just use and toss them without thinking. Duh. Most kids need this training, long before they get to high school. It's demeaning? Really. This parent should be doing this stuff.

[NYer]

The Evergreen School District's "Work Experience Program" is aimed at teaching special-education students work skills that would help them get jobs and live independently after school.

A little education here is required. Most of the kids in special ed have above average IQs. The major difference between these kids and their "normal" counterparts is in their learning style which does not match the "one size fits all" approach instituted by the NEA.

This school district's approach is consistent with others that lower expectations for kids who oftentimes are far brighter than their peers but can't demonstrate it through standardized classroom techniques. It has now been definitively demonstrated that, in the case of dyslexics, their brains function at twice the activity level of "normal" students. My child often began her day with Tums or Rolaids to ease the stomach pain associated with another day of "mental" torture. It is not uncommon for some of these kids to develop full blown migraines as they make their way through courses taught for "left brain" thinkers. Oftentimes, LD kids are viewed as lazy and stupid by faculty and peers.

Anything less than pretending dumb kids really aren't rocket scientists is discriminatory.

You're right, though, many of these kids will never be rocket scientists. They ususally achieve greater accomplishments. The following, were LD students in their day.

 Albert Einstein , Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson , Charles Schwab, Wright Brothers, Winston Churchill, Walt Disney, Ted Turner, Pablo Picasso, LouisPasteur, Beethoven, Alexander Graham Bell, Leonardo daVinci, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Nolan Ryan ... to name just a few.

 “My teachers say I’m addled…my father thought I was stupid, and I almost decided I must be a dunce.”  -Thomas Edison

 “I was one of the ‘puzzle children’ myself—a dyslexic… And I still have a hard time reading today.    Accept the fact you have a problem. Refuse to feel sorry for yourself. You have a challenge;  never quit!”   - Nelson Rockefeller

[macrahanish #1]

This is quite the genaralization.
Most(but certainly not all)of the special education
students in our school are dumber than a bag of rocks.

[Patangeles]

My "dumb" kid, Autism, is smarter than everyone in his class. In fact, he brings home the very work his "smart" sister brings home, and she is 2 grades ahead of him.

Then I wasn't talking about kids like yours, was I? My comment was meant as more of a critiscism of the school systems than to pick on the students.

I pray to GOD, no one else has to endure what my family has to endure by raising a child with a disability, even people I despise (if you can get a clue, that's people like you).

By "dumb kids" I meant normal kids who just aren't so smart. No offence meant. Please excuse.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Our school has the same program as this one, and the only kids who do the janitorial work are the severely mentally handicapped (Down's Syndrome and worse). Sorry to burst your bubble, but the "average" SpecED kid varies from school to school (ours has a much larger percentage of severely retarded kids than the other schools in our district because we have much better facilities to handle them). Nowhere in the article did I see that every kid with a 504 or an IEP was being made to do this work.

Oh, and your crap about the "above average IQ" is just that. Many dishonest parents do use SpecEd classifications to help their child get ahead, but they aren't really special education students (technically they are misdiagnosed... through the sleazy manipulation of their parents and a compliant doctor). The average SpecEd kid does have a serious learning problem and does learn much slower (and if you'd ever spent a year with ten to fifteen of them trying to teach them grammar, you'd know that).

[DeFault User]

For some years my son's Boy Scout troop has cleaned the garbage off a state highway leading into town. A local doctor made donations to the troop to do the job. The state puts his name on signs as the one responsible for the cleanup. The scouts do the job in uniform with the appropriate orange vests to alert drivers. I never heard any of the scouts or their parents complain that the work was demeaning. In fact there is pride in doing something for the community.

Frankly I don't see why or how any honest manual labor is demeaning.

[netmilsmom]

Moms of children (or adults for that matter) with special needs are special people. You have it tough yet you can see the reward God has given you. Some of the sweetest, most non-judgemental people I have known are those who the world see as "different". One must look past the
"different" and see the "special!"

And my girls are blessed to have learned a lesson about life from our special neighbor. They see her as no different from anyone else. They hug her and they yell at her, just like any other kid in the neighborhood. To them, at 5 and 3, she is just who she is, not different, jujst Alex!

[NYer]

Oh, and your crap about the "above average IQ" is just that. Many dishonest parents do use SpecEd classifications to help their child get ahead, but they aren't really special education students (technically they are misdiagnosed... through the sleazy manipulation of their parents and a compliant doctor).

You are a classical example of the teachers who belittle LD students, destroy their morale, and then wonder why kids bring guns to school. You are improperly educated and your comments reflect that.. I have heard about parents who try to manipulate doctors into diagnosing their kids as LD. The parents I know have kids who were misdiagnosed by the school district or, as in my daughter's case, left to flounder through school until I requested that she be tested. By then, the damage was done. She had bought "big time" into the same nonsensical comments you made above. Thanks to an excellent LRA team, her decoding skills were raised 7 grade levels over the span of 3 years.

The average SpecEd kid does have a serious learning problem and does learn much slower (and if you'd ever spent a year with ten to fifteen of them trying to teach them grammar, you'd know that).

I have spent 17 years with one child who learns differently. In 9th grade, only 1 month into the school year, her biology teacher called to say she was failing the class and could not keep up with the other "normal" students. When placed with a tutor who teaches to her learning style, she mastered a week's worth of biology in only one hour. She passed not only the class, but also the state mandated Regents exam. Her biology teacher called me, shocked and amazed at her test scores. So much for teacher training in the public schools! Her 11th grade English teacher convened an end of the year conference, asserting that she would fail as well. Surprise! She passed the class and state mandated Regents exam. She too was surprised.

If you were truly concerned about your students, you would make a sincere attempt to evaluate their learning styles and implement some changes into your curriculum that would benefit them. Oh wait, you're protected by the teacher's union, no need to extend yourself more than is required. There are a wealth of resources available to those who are sincerely interested in making a difference. Some teachers refer to this site: LD ONLINE

Here's a thought. Why not sit in your students' chairs for one hour. After all, How Difficult Can This Be?

This unique program allows viewers to experience the same frustration, anxiety and tension that children with learning disabilities face in their daily lives. Teachers, social workers, psychologists, parents and friends who have participated in Richard Lavoie's workshop reflect upon their experience and the way it changed their approach to L.D. children.

It can be rented, free of charge, through any library. Of course, this video might challenge your pre-conceived notions.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

You are extrapolating your own child into a much larger population... a frequent problem with parents. Simply because your child (who we both know MUST be above average) might have responded to different methods or have been misdiagnosed does not mean every child is the same way. As for your statements (based on your own ignorance) about my success with SpecEd kids, I'll put my record up against ANYONE (including you). But the fiction that somehow all (or even most) Spec Ed kids are simply "different" learners is parental wishful thinking.

Oh, and I don't belong to any union, nor do I have to hide behind anything. I have many years of successful teaching experience and hundreds of SpecEd kids to back up my assertions (as opposed to YOUR "preconceived notions"). How many SpecED kids have you taught? How many have you moved up 3-5 grade levels in their reading in one year? How many have you help successfully pass state-mandated exit exams that not even their parents or case managers believed they could ever pass? Until the number cracks three digits, don't even bother me with your uninformed babbling.

The easiest way to make a problem worse is to pretend that the problem is what you want it to be, rather than what it is. Your "above-average" wishful thinking is a perfect example of that. And you will be perfectly happy to drag down many other children just so you can maintain your delusions...