<p>Re Post 907:</p>
<p>Indeed, speech therapy is one of the few areas (apparently) that is actually directly acknowledged, addressed, and remedied within the school system. (i.e. there are avenues for that, within the <em>public</em> system – at least in my state & apparently in the poster’s state). Incredibly to me, it is virtually the only such aberration that is corrected, and early on. Whoever brought up the (different) Cho issue is correct: it wouldn’t exactly be in the same category, if he was manifesting as “mute”/reticent & other features of actual autism: the latter do not belong in the speech therapy department.</p>
<p>So, let’s see: the schools understand that one cannot fully participate in education without correct speech patterns (we’re not talking about accents here, of course). They also do understand that one cannot fully participate in education on an empty stomach. (Hence, free breakfast/lunch programs.)But they don’t understand that one cannot fully participate in education with a major mental deficit, untreated or undertreated emotional problem or complex; or with an inability to understand, speak & write in the language (not Cho here, but ELL students where the school merely denies that an immigrant is not learning because of language barriers & the barriers are not being rectified). No, those would not be impediments to learning. Nor would major, diagnosable (& diagnosed!)psychoabnormalities be impediments to the rest of the classroom functioning, would they?</p>
<p>I most certainly empathize with those who correctly report the difficulty of navigating the special education pathways – even for those who are native speakers, born here, educated themselves, and aggressive about self-help.
This is the product and the result of my fellow educators substituting one form of denial for another. Society used to deny by “putting away” children & adults who were not physically & emotionally & intellectually “perfect” (i.e., standard). “Can’t see those people in wheelchairs; makes us too uncomfortable, or them too uncomfortable, etc.” So now the schools merely refuse to acknowledge that anyone has a wheelchair of any kind, because we must “mainstream” everybody. Cho had a wheelchair, Major. And there are thousands of Chos in our school systems today. Shame on the education systems, plural, for looking-the-other-way at wheelchairs.</p>
<p>Additionally, the school systems plural deny by pretending they can somehow mainstream everybody while addressing all the above complex needs within limited dollars. Whom are they fooling? </p>
<p>It is not loving, and not a promotion of self-esteem, to lie to someone about a condition that will cripple them for life if not revealed & corrected. Given the Cho family’s recent statements of confusion & helplessness, it is not believable to me that anyone in authority in the school system ever sat down with them, looked them in the eye, and said the difficult words, “Your child is severely emotionally disturbed & needs treatment: the sooner the better. Here are some treatment options; here are some resources, referrals, both public & private.” That would have been a loving thing to do, not to mention a professional thing to do. And don’t tell me that his manifestations were vague or confusing. Even with the little I have picked up from relatives’ statements, etc., I as a teacher would have picked up on the probable autism early on, & would have persisted with my supervisors & other professionals until I got answers & results.</p>
<p>But the second, follow-up aspect to that – for Cho and for the rest of the students, not to mention the now deceased VTech students & profs – would have been for the school system(s) to have had the courage to say: “And until we see both a regular treatment routine, have received a psychiatric report that your son can function healthily & happily within a classroom, and can sustain that, we cannot allow him --for his sake and the sake of others in the classroom – to return to a mainstreamed classroom.” </p>
<p>Please don’t give me the song and dance about how the schools “must” take such students. They “must” because they haven’t put up a fight. They’ve gone like sheep to the slaughter. (Allusion intended.) A surgeon would never agree to be a dentist on a regular basis just because there might not be enough dentists in town, or because the surgeon’s patient didn’t have additional funds to go see a dentist. Nor, if the surgeon is ethical, would he or she fail to notice that rotting teeth could affect other aspects of the patient’s health such as the bloodstream, etc. The surgeon would be probably brutal & have a sense of urgency about informing the patient or patient’s family. Nor, in the unlikely event that the surgeon was additionally trained & licensed as a dentist, would he or she do the dental work for free. Either the surgeon would be reimbursed by a public health system or by an insurance company or directly by the patient for separate dental services. Nor would the surgeon jeopardize his or her scheduled or urgent surgeries of contracted patients to attend to ancillary dentistry of one or several other patients.</p>
<p>The previous era(s) of denial at least gave non-mainstreamable students options for an education. There were public and private special ed schools, classrooms, institutions – not all of them enlightened, many of them including inappropriately placed students, some aspects of them inhumane, marginalizing & which indeed left many of its students with low self-esteem. (!) However, the one positive aspect of them is that this was an acknowledgment of FUNDING needs, separate (ie…, additional, specialized) funding.</p>
<p>Now we simply deny these students the funds and the (full!) services. Society needs to decide how it is going to fund the needs of the mentally ill, or the public is going to continue to face the (violent) consequences of not funding that, in childhood (via separate services) and in adulthood (via public agencies & health insurance options). Educationally speaking, there are several options: separate schools (part or full day, clustered near, partly combined with mainstream schools when appropriate); separate rooms within a school (I taught in one: it worked out PERFECTLY, for the entire school, and those separated students were <em>not</em> marginalized socially; they were respected & loved by the whole school); for students with milder cases, on-site psychiatric services WITH SEPARATE (extra)GOVERNMENTAL FUNDING.</p>
<p>(P.S. I hope posters understand that I am not equating Special Ed students with the mentally ill; merely acknowledging that they are similarly underserved & that the schools are being internally dishonest about the limitations of treating every Special Ed need within a mainstreamed environment. Not realistic.)</p>