Special Education is for retards
Yes, I know, I am not supposed to use the word “retard.” I don’t prescribe to that prohibition, but in general I don’t use it. I did in the title to get your ire up. And while it is up, I want to talk about the phrase “special education.”
This post is not so much about Pearlsky. I have a lot to share, it’s just getting harder to. I have to change that. But right now, let’s talk about our kids, the education system, and YOU.
As you may or may not know, I have changed careers and have become an educational advocate, full time. Some people would say a “Special Education Advocate,” which I do say, but I am also dealing with bullying issues and other stuff. An argument can be made that I am in my 18th year of this career, and that is true, but as a paid position, a bit less. During those 18 years, whenever I interacted with the school, I had one basic rule, I made sure I was right. In that I mean I would check the law, check with doctors, whoever was involved, and before starting “shit” with the school, I knew I was right. Or I did not start. That did earn me a lot of respect from the “opposing” view. I take great pride in the fact that most of my emails safely ended with “… and please tell me where I am wrong.” Yeah, I can be a dick, but I was right on the facts. I made sure.
If you are going to talk about education, about “special education,” at least know what you are talking about. What it is, what it means, where it comes from. Be right.
There are vocal bloggers, among them Ph.D.’s and educators, who give a bad name to good things.
If I were to say to you, “I need to fix the whatchamacallit thingy, but I need a special screwdriver,” the definition of “special” is fairly obvious, right? It pretty much means “atypical” or “different.” That is the most common definition.
So when one bloviates:
Students that are atypical are quickly shunted into “special education”–a term I despise. Atypical students and adults with a disability are not “special” but rather merely different. Special implies an unfair advantage is being given to those who are atypical. (link)
I have to shake my head and scream. I don’t really care if the blogger despises the term, that is fine, but let us understand the term. Let’s see what “special” means in this case, not what he claims it implies.
As early as 1965 the concept of special education is mentioned in law …
… to expand and improve their educational programs by various means (including preschool programs) which contribute particularly to meeting the special educational needs of educationally deprived children …
… other specially designed educational programs which meet the purposes of this title. …
(PUBLIC LAW 89-10-APR. 11, 1965, “Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965” … “To strengthen and improve educational quality and educational opportunities in the Nation’s elementary and secondary schools.”)
And then it was formally defined in 1975 …
The term ‘special education’ means specially designed instruction, at no cost to parents or guardians, to meet the unique needs of a handicapped child, including classroom instruction, instruction in physical education, home instruction, and instruction in hospitals and institutions.
(PUBLIC LAW 94-142—NOV. 29, 1975, “Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975”)
And to claim that special education ” implies an unfair advantage” shows a complete lack of understanding of FAPE and more. There is no implication, there is law, there are definitions.
The blogger continues …
I am deeply pessimistic about the future because secondary schools teach children all the wrong lessons about disability. The term “special education” surely does not help the perception of disability. Nor does the continued use of segregated schools and school transportation industry. Too often students with a disability are shunted off to resource rooms. (link)
Shunting off to resource rooms? If the student is in a “resource room” inappropriately, then that is contrary to the law and is a much the fault of the individual school as it is of the parents approving the placement. The law guarantees the “least restrictive environment” (LRE).
To the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.
And he continues …
Lip service is paid to “mainstreaming”. … Children by the time they are in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade have learned a basic fact as it relates to disability: segregation is the norm. Worse, it is socially acceptable. “Special education” buses are routinely referred to in secondary schools as the “retard bus”. The consequences of a segregated system are profound. (link)
If putting children in the LRE means a classroom that is physically separate from the “mainstream” classroom, then yes, you can call that a form of segregation I guess. What is the alternative, the MOST restrictive environment? If the mainstream bus does not have wheelchair access, should the child be forced not to go? The fact (?) that the accessible bus is “routinely referred to” as the “retard bus” is something I would like to hear more about. In our high school, I have heard it referred to as “Pearlsky’s bus,” and yes, she is a retard. The consequences of a segregated system may be profound, but if not an LRE then what? And if the LRE is not being implemented, then that is the problem, not your perceptions. And it is a matter of law. Is the law sometimes violated? Sure, and if it is, fix it.
Mothers routinely tell children when they see a person using a wheelchair “to watch out”. I have heard this line for 37 years. Bipedal people routinely leap out of my way as though I am a locomotive going 75mph and am out of control. The fact I am 20 0r 300 feet away form them does not matter.[sic] A wheelchair is to be feared. Disability is be avoided at all costs. My wheelchair is thus akin to a portable social isolation device. (link)
My mother is guilty as charged. Yes, she has told me to “watch out” when a person in a wheelchair was nearby and our paths were to cross. And my horrible, prejudiced, uneducated mother would also say “watch out” if a bicyclist was riding down the sidewalk towards us. Or someone on roller skates. And, my god, I hate to even admit this, mom even utters those dreaded words, “watch out” when my grandmother was trying to get past us with her walker. And you allude to it being the wheelchair that is feared. Or the disability. Maybe you are wrong there as well. Maybe it is something else.
Educators simply do not want to deal with students who do not learn at the prescribed rate. Worse, educators simply lack any imagination when it comes to educating a student that learns differently. Educators teach students to take and pass tests. Tests in secondary education define success. The business model of education reigns supreme. (link)
Words of projection from an educator? I hope you don’t teach special ed …
Just have to throw this out there, I WISH people would watch out when I’m pushing my 15year old daughters wheelchair it’d be much preferred than them walking carelessly close to her or when they climb over her feet!!!!
I agree. I know my daughter did much better in a segregated classroom because of her disabilities. One of the big problems is that physically disabled and mentally disabled individuals get lumped together. My daughter’s body works just fine, it’s her mind that is disabled. Bad cripple’s body is disabled, his mind works just fine. I could go on but I have to get ready for work. Maybe later.
Your last point is debatable .. 😉 The vast majority of students who have physical disabilities and not mental disabilities do not need Special Education, maybe a 504 plan for some basic accomodations, but not an IEP. That just shows how little some know about what Special Education actually is.
Back when I was only diagnosed with incredibly mild ataxic CP, I had an IEP, but mind you, I was in elementary school, and you also have to acknowledge that I had signs of “something more” going on.
But yeah, in some school districts, kids with only physical disabilities will have IEPs. This is particularly true if it the diagnosis might be severe enough to even possibly warrant an accessible bus, or adaptive PE, etc., even if the specific kid who has the IEP doesn’t need those services.
Growing up we had a couple kids in our school who were paralyzed and in wheelchairs. I went to school with both these people all the way through high school. Both were bright and people and disliked the stigma that their disabilities caused the girl was a b***h though who turned any comment to her into an insult about her disability. And yes, a person with a disability can be an ass. In elementary school they were both in the learning resource center for most of the day. They both had PT and OT services as well as some daily living needs. I assume now after being in the field that their ADLs could not be handled in the “mainstream” setting at our school. By high school though both of them had a staff that was available from the special ed department if needed for their physical needs and other then that they were mainstreamed. All this to say it may depend on the school itself and what they are able to accommodate. There has been a big shift though away from separating all people with disabilities into special setting.
That being said it always bugged me both when I was in school and now as an adult when individuals with behavioral or health issues as well as an I/DD are mainstreamed for “socialization”. This story may get me flack, but we had a young man in my high school English class who was there every day. Not required to participate or complete any of the required work. He would just come to the class with worksheets from the DLC class to work on. Most of the time it wasn’t a problem but if he had a seizure or outburst we had to leave the class. It annoyed/s me because if the IEP goal is to promote socialization or then you need to have interaction, not just veg time in a classroom. Why disrupt everyone else for an IEP goal of questionable benefit in the name of “mainstreaming”?
Also there were people at my high school who talked in a derogatory manner about the “short bus” even though it wasn’t always disabled people who were on them. Just sayin it happens
There are legitimate reasons people feel the way they do about the term “special ed” and how education is delivered to people with disabilities. Alot of it seems to be rooted in past negative experiences though and not based on whats going on with them or their child here and now.
Sorry for my rambling
Second. My 6 year old has seizures and violent outbursts in class, and gets incredibly overstimulated in a classroom with 28 other 3-4-5-6 year olds (all kindergartens in Ontario are JK/SK splits) to the point that it affects his ability to do anything, but still the school insists that he stay in the “integrated” class all day, because that’s the LRE.
Which, obvi, doesn’t really work for him. At least they built a resource room this year, but he has to share it with a bunch of other kids, and the room was built in a closet, so its too small to go more than 1-2 at a time.
So yeah, that should bug you. It bugs me, as that kid’s parent, because its a waste of everyone’s time, and my kid’s life, to pretend that putting someone in an environment that they can’t cope with is helpful, and that just “transferring” him up through the grades because he’s on IEP is schooling.
Cass: That goes very much against the definition of LRE (in the US at least) as shown in case law. Sacramento City Unified School District, BOE v. Rachel for example showed this test, in part, for a valid LRE …
I should really push a little more, then. I have no idea, honestly, what we’re allowed to have or not. This past school year was better, because my son always had 1:1 support, so the EAs/ECEs/CYCW could at least keep him and the other kids safe from each other (he melted down in class very regularly), and he had an amazingly awesome teacher, but our spec ed said due to budget issues this coming September the only time they could guarantee him 1:1 is during recess, on the playground because it’s not fully fenced to the road and parking lot and he’s a flight risk. But not in the classroom, because they think a grade 1 class will be calm and quiet enough for him.
I have no idea what to do about that. I’ve been told by the school that the board doesn’t endorse separate classrooms because that’s “against integration”, and that there isn’t even a special classroom to send him to. At one point they offered to do a “lunch time course” with him and two severely autistic boys, but it would have been over lunch recess, which is the time he integrates best (he had friends who didn’t want to play with him if he wasn’t there for recess), and they also said he would be at the top of the class and would help the other boys more than him.
What would you recommend? They won’t let us know our accommodations for September until the last week of August.
Also in Ontario! Does your boy have an IEP, or been identified as meeting the provincial exceptionality criteria? For the latter (and these are hoops through which I have jumped), you can require that the IPRC meet, if the school board themselves are less than helpful. Exceptionality is, I’ve found, a very useful weapon to have!
Personally, I think the entire IEP system needs a giant overhaul and reform. I imagine that it was initially well-intended and a vast improvement over the nothing that existed before, but as the great Romantic poet William Blake said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I have no idea how this reform could happen and how it should be done, but I’m grateful to those who stick their necks out, even from the radical side to get on people’s nerves. The extremes on both ends push us toward something better, I think. As for your provocative use of the word “retard,” — well — I think you should reform as well and think more creatively on how to describe our children. You’d be far more persuasive.
I do not believe SD was referring to our children as retards….I believe SD was referring to the people in charge of the education system.
Yikes. I not only misquoted Blake but didn’t give proper attribution to that oft-used proverb! I guess i need to reform, too.
I have typed and re-typed my comment, left it overnight in an open Firefox window, edited it again this morning. Finally I just bailed. Can’t figure out how to phrase what I wanna say. Major suckage I.
I do have one question though. You linked to this same blog a while ago as inspiration, now you are dissecting it. Is it a good blog or a bad blog? I can’t think for myself, you KNOW that. Well, other than the fact that there is a glaring typo in the blog’s header and the blogger says he is authoring a book. Kinda strange. Guess I can think for myself.
Ken, just say it! Spit it out, man … what were you going to say?
As for the other blog … the author has a Ph.D., is a professor at a good institution, and is a very vocal advocate. He is physically disabled so he has every “right” to speak on behalf of those who are physically disabled. But he has spoken about parents like us and spoken for the mentally disabled as well. And, in my humble opinion, he has really messed up there. His writing appears to show a complete and total lack of empathy. He has stated that when parents of kids like ours want a cure, or want to “fix” certain aspects of our children, we are rejecting our children and wish they were not ours (or worse). He speaks about “special education” as if he knows what he is talking about. I beg to differ.
His words:
He does not get that being a bright, articulate man in a wheelchair has absolutely nothing to do with us and our children. His disability has nothing in common with Pearlsky’s other than neither can walk. His disability, his world, has nothing to do with special education. And when he talks about these subjects, well, I typically strongly disagree. I should mention that I totally agree with his stance on growth attenuation (the Ashley Treatment), and have quoted him on such, but that is not because he speaks from a position that truly “gets it.” That would be someone like me or Claire or Elizabeth or Rachel, no, he happens to be someone far from Ashley and far from her parents, who has an opinion I happen to agree with.
Is it a good blog or a bad blog? Like most blogs, it is one person and one person’s voice, opinions, and views. Neither good nor bad. But I will say this … it’s not as good as yours!
Single Dad, I like this comment far better than your original post. It’s clear, passionate and packs a punch. It also doesn’t resort to provocative language or reactionary impulse.
While we are on the subject…is it OK to use the phrase ‘The Short Bus?’ If it is not, what do you call it? And who regulates that speech? The government? At what point does it stop? Is it not a slippery slope that we find ourselves on when the suggested elimination of words starts becoming such a regular topic? I have a point here, but it’s me, remember, I take a while to get there.
As a parent of someone with a severe disability (and you don’t to BE this to HAVE this opinion certainly), but my God, do I appreciate your reaction to the word? You can bet I do. But what I do not understand is this…as an author, and one who very recently has spoken up about wanting to be taken seriously on a literary level, why would you be in opposition to someone making a decision, creatively, to use a word that, by his own statement, was chosen by design to elicit an emotional response? It is a form of attempted censorship that i don’t follow the logic behind, but would very much like to. It doesn’t matter to me what the word is, because the word itself is irrelevant to the act itself. It is the act itself that scares me. Always does. I’d be very interested in an elaboration on this.
I don’t advocate officially banning a word. I think if you want to sound like an asshole, then use it. Ultimately — no matter the purpose — comedy, provocation, etc. — it’s lazy and boring to me. Plus, you have something in common with Ann Colter when you use it, and there are few more vile provocateurs than her.
“He does not get that being a bright, articulate man in a wheelchair has absolutely nothing to do with us and our children. His disability has nothing in common with Pearlsky’s other than neither can walk.” In facing discrimination, social alienation and battles for accommodation, he has everything in common with “our children”. “His disability, his world, has nothing to do with special education.” Perhaps, but I think you are incredibly naive to imagine that individuals in wheelchairs, intellectually competent as they may be, do not face stigma and assumptions about their intellectual abilities in school. What is the law and what is actually happening in schools is another affair also. Not all can afford an advocate, not all represent themselves or their child’s interests very well. Furthermore, many wheelchair users do ride “the short bus” which is usually also called the “retard bus” because few (are there any even?) regular buses that carry the other children that go to school have lifts on them. I imagine only the adults around you call it “Pearlsky’s bus”. Hang around the other high school kids for a while. Short bus = stigma.
Everyone faces stigmas about their intellectual capabilities or just capabilities in general based on their social standing, race, gender, family, etc… Not trying to lessen what people with disabilities go through but I spent my whole childhood having educators trying to shuffle me into groups or classes for people with difficulty learning. At one point I was even put in a segregated program for at risk kids without my or my parents knowledge and had a special segregated class. This was all because people felt my “behavior was odd”. I wasn’t super social, ignored rules I felt were stupid, worked at my own pace (often ahead of the class), daydreamed in class instead of paying attention, didn’t complete assignments, was overweight and bullied…. The list of reasons I was assigned special classes was a mile long. I still did well in testing and scored at and often above my grade level but I had a stigma that followed me my entire education. So it does happen to “normal people” too. To claim it as a disability problem bugs me as it’s a human nature problem. There will always be “others”, disabled or not. It is our choice to allow it to bother us when we’re labeled and it’s our choice to allow others to get away with it.
Good points. Of note, though, In my county in Florida the buses used for w/c transport are full size with lifts. There aren’t any short buses around here anymore. I’m curious about the rest of the state/country. Who still uses short buses for w/c’s?
You explained it very very well. Enough to where I need not spit it out.
And I happen to agree, go figure. It doesn’t appear as if there is an understanding of the difference of parenting a child with a disability and having the disability yourself, or even of what the disability actually is.
Did you ever actually write about the process of becoming an advocate? What you went through to get there? If you did, point, if not, one day it would make for a cool tale. You may have said it in your interview but interviews are like TV…I forget shit really easy. If its in there just tell me which episode and I’ll rewatch it.
Hate when people use the word retard to get attention.