Are Public Schools Good Enough For Our Kids?

In article "Donna Metler" writes:

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"jingojones" wrote in message
. ..
Oops... sorry about the extra post. I'm trying a new news client and my
hand clicked where it was used to clicking instead of where it should have
clicked.

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:28:08 -0600, "jingojones"
wrote:

As far as I know, Herman, autism wasn't around when I went through K12.
I
know that learning disabled included such things as down's and such. I
also
know that it seemed that most in my classes were capable of producing
passing work. There were certainly no students that would be considered
"mainstreamed."

Autistic children were classified as mentally retarded and
institutionalized back when you were in school.

Autism has been around for a long time. Just because you didn't see
it, does not mean it did not exist.


I'm not stupid, Dorothy. My point is that insofar as the school system was
concerned, autism wasn't around. Nor were the ?DDs. As I recall, it
wasn't until perhaps the mid-80s that the local schools even started to
handle students that previously would have been "schooled" in dedicated
facilities. My overall point is that those that remember how schools were
so much better in the good ol'days often conveniently forget that not
everyone was served by the public schools system.

Not only that, but many, many children who Herman would consider worthy,
myself included, would have been excluded in pre-PL 94-142 schools. I have
cerebral palsy. I also certainly qualify as gifted, and ended up either
entering college 2 years early or 3 years late, depending, since I had
several years where I was classified as dual enrollment, including 3 years
where I took NO high school coursework, so that I could continue to be
classified as a special ed student and get speech and physical therapy.
Fortunately, my state was, at the time, really working on transition plans
and, for a very short time, did a wonderful job of working with different
agencies to provide wrap-around services as students finished public
education.

Even as late as the early 90's, though, I had a college professor, in a
class on special populations, claim that children with CP were mentally
retarded. Gee...guess she hadn't bothered to read my 504 plan, or it hadn't
registered that the reason I was in the front row with my portable computer
and tape recorder, and had testing accommodations on file WAS CP, or, for
that matter, that there were at least 4 other students with various forms of
cerebral palsy enrolled at the university, most more affected than I was-the
university I attended had a very good physical campus for students with
physical disabilities, and had a good support system for such students-and,
in the early days of mainstreaming, we were the students who were
mainstreamed first, so there were a fairly large number of us all hitting
college at about the same time, and mostly going to a small number of
schools which were able and willing to work with us. I don't think there's
the same degree of clustering now that there was in the late 80's/early
90's. Somewhere, along the way, the rules had changed and she hadn't changed
with them.

Both in undergrad and grad school, I had faculty members express concern
that I'd be able to keep up, and warn me that they wouldn't slow the class
down for me. And most of them sounded a lot like Herman. I took great pride
in making sure I had a PERFECT average in those classes. Not just a good
one, not just an A average, a PERFECT one. And I still occasionally get such
statements. I will be teaching an Orff music class this Spring in the same
college demonstration classroom where, about a decade ago, one of the top
professors in the field told me that she didn't believe I was physically
capable of teaching Orff. Now, I'm not only teaching Orff, but teaching Orff
TEACHERS-in the same top program that I was supposedly incapable of
managing.



Had I been born with my combination of disablilities and skills, even 10
years earlier, the outcome would have been MUCH different. And I know this,
because I had a family member, 10 years older than I, with a very similar
profile. He was pretty much shuffled through whatever school program wanted
to get rid of him, got little or no therapy, and eventually managed to make
it through a community college degree, but was extremely limited in his work
prospects because his speech was so greatly affected. (He died in his late
20s). I suspect it took him more effort to make it through 2 years of CC
than it did for me to make it through graduate school.

A lovely post; thanks for writing it.


-- cary



--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits