Klarinet Archive - Posting 001171.txt from 2004/03

From: Karl Krelove <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: no one left behind
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 20:14:00 -0500


> When you have children
>with too many different disabilities, you can't dump them in one room, they
>don't learn the same way and it does not serve any of them. Most school
>districts or counties have some option for the severely retarded that do not
>involve inclusion.
>
>
I wouldn't call a class of seven or eight with an aide and a teacher
"dumping," but even under those conditions, children should be separated
depending on the severity of their difficulties. That they are
warehoused in some districts without limit on class size or type of
learning difficulty doesn't make that the only alternative to including
them all in a general class of 30 kids with one teacher.

>Here's another way to look at it - do you, as a taxpayer, want to support
>our children on the public dole for the rest of their lives? Because if you
>do, then dump them in one of these rooms where they don't learn anything
>except to misbehave.
>
>
Of course not - that's why I don't like the way inclusion is being used.
I don't think it serves any child anywhere in the bell curve as well as
other ways could.

>
>
>>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.
>>
>>
>
>In the case of Autism and Asperger's, yes, most of the time it is. It is
>the majority of the issue. The problem with this disorder is that these
>kids have neurological impairments that prevent them from prompt retrieval,
>which is a major problem when you are testing. It's also the same
>impairments (we parents of these children call them "quirks", I personally
>don't give a crap about PC because this is not a PC world we have to live
>in) that make them unable to understand social cues, respond appropriately
>to others (i.e. in answering verbal questions), and appear "stupid" to other
>children.
>
I would argue simply that the problem these children have goes deeper
than "quirky" behavior. Depending on the severity of the problem, it can
lead them to behave in disruptive ways that are beyond the teacher's
reasonable control. And sometimes the behavior is dangerous either to
the child or to other children - certainly not out of intent, but
nonetheless requiring a great deal of attention and vigilance (not to
mention active intervention from time to time) on the teacher's part.
What are the other children doing while the teacher is trying to keep an
autistic child from climbing up a staircase along the outside of the
railing (it happened with an autistic boy my wife taught recently).

>
>
>
>>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.
>>
>>
>
>Social skills are a MAJOR issue with children with autism. They Need to
>socialize with NT children (neurotypical, aka "normal") because they imitate
>who they are with. If they are dumped in with the emotionally disturbed,
>then they will act like them. Period. Autistic children who have been in
>with NT children all their lives will regress when put in the dumping room.
>And they are easily led by those who like to be in power (i.e. bullies).
>Just because they don't learn the same way does not mean they need to be in
>the SpEd room.
>
>
If they are not disruptive in the regular classroom setting, they belong
there. If their behavior can be controlled with reasonable effort by a
teacher who still needs to pay attention (is responsible for) 29 other
children, there may be no argument for segregating them. The trouble is
these children (who are not the ones in the post I was originally
responding to) are characterized by a wide range of behavioral and
learning deficits that make each case individual. That your child may
have been better off in one environment or another doesn't mean that
other children who fall under any of the umbrella groupings you've cited
will necessarily thrive in the same environment. And if your child was
not a severe distraction in class, it doesn't follow that all children
who fall within those umbrella labels will work out as well in any
particular setting. Every child is different.

>
>
>>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.
>>
>>
>
>Problem is, 90% of teaching is verbal - lectures and the like.
>
Well, I'm not sure that's so, especially if you equate verbal to
"lectures and the like." Good teaching includes hands-on experiential
activity, active illustration/demonstration, association through other
media (music being one of the favorites), game-playing, role-playing...
teaching strategies have evolved a great deal from the lecturing teacher
that many of us learned from. Trouble is, you can't use all of them at
once at too many levels in the content spiral. Everyone gets confused.

>There is a very good book out called "Right-Brained Children in a
>Left-Brained World" by Jeffrey Freed. ADD children are not the only
>children the book applies to. It also applies to children on the spectrum.
>Actually, many doctors feel that ADD may very well be on the autistic
>spectrum.
>
One umbrella label subsumed by another! Seems like, whether true or not,
this is going in the wrong direction.

>
>
>>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.
>>
>>
>
>I learned to read when I was 3, and was reading 5th grade level books in
>Kindergarten. We did not have any of the gifted programs, either, and this
>was 30 years ago, not back in the 1800s. And yes, I was bored to tears at
>times, but teachers would let me do independent study like they did with
>Donna. One year they couldn't schedule me in the top English class because
>of band, so they put me in the lowest class. The teacher said, "here's the
>book for the other class, do your thing." And that was fine with me, I
>also like working on my own.
>
>
>
That this was "fine with you" doesn't make it defensible public school
policy, Teachers are expected to teach, not leave children to their own
devices. A structured "independent learning" exercise can be a useful
tool. Giving a child a book and inviting him/her to self-teach abrogates
a teacher's responsibility.

>The list of people I posted was a list of people who have been thought to
>have had some form of autism. Dead or not, whatever situation they learned
>in, it still remains that Einstein didn't speak a word until he was 3 years
>old. This is a Major sign of autism.
>
>Here's a list of Live people thought to be on the spectrum. I took this off
>an Asperger's website.
>
>Woody Allen
>
>Tony Benn
>Bob Dylan
>Joseph Erber (young English composer/musician who has Asperger's Syndrome,
>subject of a BBC TV documentary)
>Bobby Fischer
>Bill Gates
>Genie
>Crispin Glover
>Jeff Greenfield
>David Helfgott (Australian pianist)
>Michael Jackson
>Garrison Keillor
>Kevin Mitnick
>John Motson
>John Nash (US mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind,
>USA 2001)
>Keith Olbermann
>Michael Palin
>Keanu Reeves
>Oliver Sacks (UK/US neurologist, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for
>a Hat and Awakenings)
>James Taylor
>
>That all these people are creative, or mathematical, or musical, does not
>surprise me. There is an author, Thomas Sowell, who has written several
>books on "The Einstein Syndrome" and "Late Talking Children". He talks
>about the genetic relationship learning and language have, and how verbal
>teaching is not the way to go. Yet why do we still do this????
>
>Lynn
>
I wasn't questioning any of those people's accomplishments, just
pointing out that they weren't necessarily educated in "regular"
classrooms. In fact, they probably weren't. Whether or not they would be
put in special placements or "included" in today's American public
system isn't a useful argument and, without knowing how they *were*
educated, it's hard to make any statements about how if at all their
situations illustrate any benefits of inclusion. In fact, who knows if
they would have been as successful.

Karl

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