Klarinet Archive - Posting 001093.txt from 2004/03

From: Karl Krelove <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: re: no one left behind
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 16:57:17 -0500

Most of the people on your list lived in different times and were
educated in different educational environments. None (I don't think)
were schooled in the U.S. since IDEA or NCLB were even thought of. I'm
not familiar enough with the biographies of any of your examples to know
whether or or not they were educated in anything like what we'd consider
to be a "regular" classroom in the U.S.. And many children with learning
disabilities, physical challenges or other characteristics that make
learning more difficult find ways to accommodate the environment and
succeed despite their problems.

Not every child who is learning disabled is able to compensate for his
own problems and overcome them without help. It is not a child's
"quirks" or lack of social skills that make it hard in some cases for
him to learn at the rate or in the way that "most" children do. And the
idea of segregating the kids who need special help, attention and
accommodation was, before IDEA or NLCB, meant by its proponents as a way
of providing that help in a setting that allowed closer contact between
teacher and pupil and more flexibility in dealing with individual
problems. That it may have degenerated into some other kind of
warehousing in some cost-conscious systems shouldn't have been a reason
to gut the approach.

Teachers need to deal with "quirks" and "annoying traits" all the time.
If they only need to deal with the "normal" (whatever that is) child in
the general population toward whom their schools are targeted, they will
still have a range of styles and rates to deal with. The chaos (and the
ultimate breakdown of instruction that results) comes from trying to use
too many teaching strategies at once to connect to too many learning
styles with too widely varied content, so that nobody can keep track of
who is accomplishing what.

Or, the bright kids get tired of marking time, the slower ones get
frustrated with content they can't manage and parents get mad at the
teacher because she/he doesn't understand their children's problems.

Karl Krelove

>Somehow, it works for my son. His IQ is not 90. However, 90 Is the low
>side of the average IQ range. Here's a list of famous people who were
>believed to have Asperger's syndrome or another form of autism.....they
>would not have been allowed to be included in class, were it up to you,
>Dave....
>
>Jane Austen
>Bela Bartok
>Ludwig vanBeethoven
>Alexander Graham Bell
>Anton Bruckner
>Henry Cavendish
>Emily Dickinson
>Thomas Edison
>Albert Einstein
>Henry Ford
>Kaspar Hauser
>Oliver Heaviside
>Thomas Jefferson
>Carl Jung
>Franz Kafka
>Gustav Mahler
>Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
>Isaac Newton
>Friedrich Nietzsche
>Bertrand Russell
>George Bernard Shaw
>Richard Strauss
>Nikola Tesla
>Henry Thoreau
>Mark Twain
>Vincent Van Gogh
>
>There are more........
>
>Isaac Asimov
>John Denver
>Glenn Gould
>Jim Henson
>Alfred Hitchcock
>Howard Hughes
>Andy Kaufman
>Charles Schulz
>Andy Warhol
>
>Anyway.....notice that these people are all creative/mathematical/musical.
>They say Bill Gates also has Aspie traits. These are people with "quirks"
>or annoying traits. People who had problems communicating with the rest of
>the world. Social skills was not their forte. What if they were all
>shoved in the dumping ground with the other people who weren't like all the
>rest?
>
>
>
>>>In a band situation - let em all play together as that's what 2nd and 3rd
>>>
>>>
>parts are for. And of course IQ isn't musical talent.
>
>2nd and 3rd parts are for the so-called "normal" kids in our band. Not for
>my kid. ;) Blows that theory, LOL. Do you want to be the one who tells
>little Ludwig or Gustav they gotta sit in the back?
>
>BTW Didn't Abraham Lincoln go to school in a 1 room school house? What did
>they do back then? I am sure the geniuses of their day didn't suffer.
>
>Lynn
>
>
>
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