Sometimes, It Makes You Want to Cry

I decided to take a little while to surf the homeschooling web for a while this morning for the first time in many days. I thought a little fun was in order before buckling down to preparing for tomorrows IRD classes in Santa Fe. The best laid plans....


Instead of enjoying lighthearted talk about summer plans, I can upon this story: Teacher Lets Morningside Students Vote Out Classmate, 5.

Apparently, a little boy in a Florida school who was in the process of being diagnosed with AS was made to stand in the front of the kindergarten (!) class by his teacher, who proceeded to make the other students--also small children--say nasty things about him. She then had the children vote to "take Alex off the island." The teacher did this because she was tired of dealing with Alex's strange behavior.

I had to stop reading at this point and reach for the tissue.

What was worse to read were the comments that supported this state-sanctioned bullying in the name of imposing discipline in school.


Unfortunately, although some of those who commented think otherwise, this kind of story is not rare. Rather, such stories rarely reach the newspapers. Go and sit among parents of children with learning disabilities, ASD, food allergies, and any disability that is not obvious from the appearance of the child, and listen. If you have any compassion or plain old good will towards people, you will need a whole box of tissues.

Every family of a child with disabilities has a story the Teacher from Hell or the School from Hell.

We have ours. And that is part of the reason that we chose homeschooling.

We had the Third Grade Teacher From Hell at a well-regarded school in the Northeast Heights of Albuquerque. Despite numerous requests to have N. removed from her classroom, we were refused until I said the magic words: "We are consulting with a lawyer..." It was amazing how fast the principal determined that the "policy" of never moving a child could be set aside.

And it is ridiculous that parents must threaten legal action to get their children's educational needs met in schools that are funded with their own money taken from them by force. Since that moment when those fateful words came out of my mouth, I have never met a school funding proposal that I liked enough to vote for.

But back to this not-so-unusual story.

The one in which an adult who should have known better not only bullied a child in front of his peers, but taught those peers that bullying is right action. Back to the idea that such behavior is appropriate discipline.

Discipline? The Greek root of this word means "teaching."

So, when confronted with the idea, we should ask ourselves what was this woman teaching?

First, consider what Alex learned.

He learned that teachers are not to be trusted.

He learned that the classroom is not a safe place.

He learned that adults will not help him with the extreme anxiety that comes with being unable to recognize and understand social interactions on an intuitive level.

He learned that his differences make him unworthy of being treated like a human being.

Now consider what the 14 children who voted Alex out of the classroom learned.

They learned that if an authority sanctions an action, it must be right. No matter how nasty the action is, might makes right.

They learned that bullying someone who is smaller, weaker, or different is appropriate action.

They learned that certain differences put another person outside the pale of human regard.


That teacher not only broke the heart of a child who has only walked on this earth for five years, she also taught barbarism to the the other children in her care.
This was teaching of the very worst kind.

Teaching like this happens every day in the public schools across the land.
The schools that children are forced to attend by law.

I think the teacher's unions need to stop worrying about how to control the miniscule percentage of people who homeschool their kids, and address this much greater problem of barbarian education.

This teaching of educational conformity of thought makes me even more proud to call myself an Educational Anarchist.

What We Do Matters Part 1

Last week, as some you know, I was the lawyer for a Mock Trial for Special Education Law 510. It was a difficult case. The parents of a child with AS had taken him out of school because there was disagreement between the school people and the parents about his special education needs. Because the boy was academically gifted, the school people thought he should be in the general education classroom with no special education component. The parents differed because they were concerned about how being in the general education classroom environment would affect the child's ability to learn. Large classrooms are noisy, confusing places and the sensory over-stimulation can affect an Aspie's ability to focus. The parents also had concerns that the child was marginalized and being bullied. So they took him out of school, but for reasons involving the child's socialization, they brought him to the municipal park to play and sometimes he was in the park while the school children were also playing in the park. Nearly two years later, the principal of the school and some teachers tried to ban the child from the park, saying that his behavior was a problem. They insisted that they should have the right to have the school psychologist re-evaluate the child before he could play in the park.

When we first got the case, my group spent a good deal of time mucking around with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), because we were focused on the park issue. And we were a little angry because, we are not lawyers, and after all, in class we had studied the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and we did not see how the case we were given fit. Here is a homeschooled child being deprived of the right to play on a public playground. I even contacted Judy Aron over at Consent of the Governed because she is a researcher working with National Home Education Legal Defense. However, because I was swamped with my other course, I was unable to take Judy's gracious offer to help.

At one of our rather hilarious group meetings--we coped with the stress with humor--a change of perspective took place. We began to wonder about why the parents were bringing such a case two years after taking their child out of school. And we realized that the real violation took place when the parents' concerns were ignored at the child's IEP meeting two years ago. Not only that, the school people compounded the problem by asserting their power against the family two years later. The parents were most likely bringing the case in order to get the school off their backs and to stop what they perceived to be harassment by a powerful institution. With this change in our perspective, we were able to find our case in IDEA--because Congress found that one problem (among many) with special education was that parents are not included in the IEP process effectively. (And this is very true as any parent who has dealt with the special education process can tell you). And Congress wrote into the law ways to correct that. I don't know if we won or not yet. In the original case, the school won on procedural grounds--in our public institutions you can behave very badly, but if you cross all your "T's" and dot all of your "i's" you can get away with it.

In my closing statement I said, in part:

"...But in our concept of law, (justice) is not in some pure realm. Justice is not justice if it does not reach into the sometimes messy conflicts of ordinary lives. A great scholar and legalist once said: “Justice delayed and justice denied will bring the sword.”
I think what he meant was that what we do here now matters. How we respond to the need of one person for justice matters. How an individual is treated in our public institutions matters. If a child is bullied, if his parents are harassed, if a student does not receive needed services, all of this affects all of us. We have learned this only too well this past week as the details of the Virginia Tech shooting have been revealed."

This shows that government schools, and the people who operate them, don't know winning for losing. When a lawyer came to talk to our class about the IDEA and due process hearings, I saw this clearly. He kept talking about the how the schools can "win." What he did not appear to get is that if a parent is frustrated to the point of bringing a due process hearing, there is a problem that the school has not dealt with in some way. When a school comes off as asserting its considerable power over individual citizens--taxpayers all--then the school loses the public relations battle even if they win the case. This is so, because schools are not generally perceived as friendly places by the people who were and are compelled to go to them, and school people are not held in great respect in our communities. The root of that issue is twofold: the compulsory nature of school attendance in a free society and the virtual monopoly school people have over education process in this country. School people are not required to listen to the people they require to attend, and to pay for their services. Further, the institutional power school people have, which is derived from compulsion, has created in many of them an unbearable officiousness and know-it-all attitude. On top of it all, public schools have not shown great success in teaching their clients to read and write and figure, let alone educating them to think critically for themselves about the issues of our day. This is painfully obvious to anyone who has taught at the university level in the United States. And the name-calling and sound-byte-repeating-nature of what passes for public discourse is another indicator of the failure of schools to educate. For all these reasons, even if the school people have the letter of the law on their side, in any tangle with the public, they lose good-will.

I believe that one problem common to much of our institutional life in the United States is that at our core we have forgotten how to treat one another as unique, irreplacible human beings. When, as in the case above, the needs of the child are eclipsed by the need of an institution to deny responsibility for mistakes it has made, for unthinking power asserted over children as if they were interchangable parts, we all lose. As I said further in my closing argument:

"...(my clients) ask that the ... Public Schools recognize that this is not about power. It is not about money. It is about the future of one child. And if justice means anything at all—if it is to have a reality beyond abstraction, then what we decide here in the midst of a real and messy conflict matters."

Ultimately, it all comes down to this: What we do to one another matters. What we say to one another matters. How we treat one another matters. It matters in communities where we are acting as individuals, and it matters even more in institutional settings where the institutional power of what we represent can become oppressive to our brothers and sisters.

If we are honest with ourselves, we all know we make mistakes in our dealings with others. And when we do, we are obligated to make things right. To admit that we are, all of us, fallible human beings.

I think that when we insist that events like the VT shootings are about gun-control, or about surveillance, or about the evil in one individual, we are missing a critical point. And by this I do NOT mean that we do not need need to have a conversation about gun-control, or about surveillance, or about the fact that people can do evil. What I mean is that all behavior has causes--whether the behavior itself is rational or not. And if we are really honest with ourselves, we can see where a fragile mind and heart can be broken when cornered and bullied in an institution that does not care to stop it. An institution in which those with power turn a blind eye to the responsibility that power entails. And in many cases, that institution is the local public school.

Were the Virginia Tech teachers and students who were murdered in cold blood killed randomly? Yes. They were innocents who reaped the whirlwind sown by others; those who, when given power, chose to turn a blind-eye to the consequences of that power. It is wrong to start pointing fingers at the administration at VT, and blame the victims who were killed because they did not to fight back. The shooter made certain choices and is responsible for them--that is true. But it is also true that those choices were influenced by a broken mind and heart. And that mind and heart were damaged, in part, by terrible emotional pain inflicted by other children who were allowed to bully someone in a public institution that compelled his attendance. Bullied by children who were not taught what it means to be civil, to be compassionate, to be able to put themselves in the place of another person.

And in our case, we began to understand that we were seeing the same thing. A situation in which a public school refused to solve a problem with parents and a little boy by talking to them, treating their concerns as important, stopping the bullying.

In The Uncertainty Principle, a masterful episode of his PBS series, The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski takes us to Auschwitz. There he discusses the importance of the the spiritual component in our dealing with each other as human beings. He says that ultimately, we must remember when making judgements that we are fallible, that we cannot know everything with certainty. In making choices about how we deal with one another, Bronowski says, we must "touch people." And he plunges his hand into the pond--into the ashes of those who were murdered because an institution, the Nazi party, was certain of their unworthiness to live. That scene has stayed forever etched in my mind. And I wonder, can a compulsory institution--one that is given absolute power over the lives of students, one that regularly passes judgement on the worthiness of students by standardized test, one that refuses to be questioned or reformed--can such an instition ever really "touch people?"

Perhaps the spiritual shallowness of the institution is no accident of law or custom. Perhaps the lack of spiritual depth comes from the very nature of the beast. After all, we know that many of the people who make up the system, start out with the best intentions in the world. And yet, when stripped of their own spiritual nature, forced by the nature of the institution into a mold that insists that no one is responsible and that all values are relative, when acting not as individuals, but at the behest of the system, they behave without regard to the sacredness of the individual.

This is something to think more about.

Residual Anger

A rant!



I have been meaning to write on this topic for some time, but life has gotten in the way.



A few weeks ago, the lawyer for special education at our local school district gave a presentation in my Special Education law class. He talked about how to have your ducks in a row as a teacher so that parent due process hearings are decided in the district's favor. What he did not talk about was what happens to the child when parents lose the due process hearing, or the extremity of the difficulties that would lead a parent to actually go to court with the school district in the first place.



Background:

Our local school district is not particularly respected in our area. It is too big and does not handle money well. The latest issue is that money that was supposed to go to teachers and classrooms went to remodel a fairly new building the district bought--in order to provide posh executive bathrooms. (In the school I taught at, the teachers sometimes had to provide toilet paper for the staff and kids). Somehow, they could never get one of the john's working, so that many teachers had to go well past 4 hours without a chance to use the bathroom.



Another problem with the size is that the middle management does not listen to parents and the tax-paying public very well. One community activist in an area where the children were not learning to read finally told me that she was giving up. She said the middle-management would have to die off before effective change could be made. She ended up starting a charter school when the charter school bill was passed.



This is not to say that there are not good and caring teachers and principals--and even staff at the district office. But the problem with a system like this, is that the needs of the system become paramount over the original purpose for it, so that the good done by well-intentioned people is overshadowed.

End of Background



Anyway, back to the lawyer guy.

I asked a simple question. I asked if the district actually has a policy that says that a child may not be moved from one classroom to another for any reason. This is what I had been told when my son was in third grade. We had just moved into this school district from another, smaller and more responsive district. My son was an identified child with a disability, qualifying under IDEA for Speech Language Impairment. (we had recently learned that my son has AS, but in discussing eligibility with his neurologist, we all determined that SLI was a good eligibility for him until he was up for review in another year). I hand carried a copy of the IEP since I didn't want to risk waiting for the slow-turning of the beauracratic wheels. The head teacher duly called an IEP meeting. I went rather casually, because in the former district the goal was to work together to meet the needs of the child and I was regarded as another professional. At this first meeting, I was told by his teacher ( called Miss Snip to protect the guilty) that I really did not know my child, that she could do everything he needed and that the goal was to exit him from special education as soon as possible. (Miss Snip had known my son all of three weeks). I was not impressed. I provided the diagnostic information from N.'s neurologist, as well as the recommendations for his education. At the other school district he had been provided with Speech and Language services to deal with language pragmatics as well as with Occupational Therapy to deal with the physical difficulties he had with writing and with his extreme sensory integration dysfunction.



This teacher claimed he could write (true--but he was very slow and his hand tired easily) and that his sensitivities were due to poor parenting. The meeting became very adversarial--after all who was this little snippy girl who had known my son for three weeks to make these outrageous claims? Naturally, I was more diplomatic in my vocal response, but that's what I was thinking. We hammered out an IEP, finally, that included the clause that N. was not to be deprived of recess if he did not complete written work or for disciplinary reasons. Miss Snip did not like that at all! But she got her way on the matter of testing--he was to be tested in a large group instead of the small group that his previous teachers and therapists recommended. (Later, when he doodled a pattern into the bubbles of his answer sheet in the NCLB mandated testing she had reason to be sorry. After all, those tests were not about N,--they were about her (in)competence).



When I got home, I shared with N. what the accomodations on his IEP were so that he could advocate for himself. (I have always had an honesty policy with my kids about anything related to health or school). About two weeks later, I got a call from N.'s teacher. (I was teaching at a private school at the time, and my principal courteously took my class so I could respond. She thought the person on the other end sounded a wee bit upset). I picked up the phone to hear Miss Snip yell: HOW DARE YOU TELL N. WHAT IS ON HIS IEP! (Note: Actually, according to the federal IDEA legislation, the child is supposed to be a member of the IEP team unless there is an educational reason why that should not be so). She went on to say that she kept him in for recess because he had not finished a worksheet and a writing assignment and that he told her she couldn't do that because it was on his IEP. She accused me of damaging my child by even telling him that he had an IEP and that it embarrassed him in front of the other kids. (I guess she didn't read the material I gave her about AS). I mentioned that the IEP is a legal document that must be followed according to federal law and state regulations and that an excuse such as "I just can't do this" is highly unlikely to hold up in court.



After this encounter, I spoke with the Sp. Ed. teacher about moving him from her class. I was told that it was not their policy to do so because "then all the parents would want to move their kids." (I was thinking wow, this teacher must be really incompetent if all the parents want to move their kids). This started a year long struggle, during which my child was punished daily for his disability--a violation of federal law--while we had several IEP meetings and had to get advocates and finally had to threaten a lawsuit in order to get N. moved out of the Ditto Queen's room. (At one point, when N. did not finish a written assignment, she actually had him take it out to do at recess and put him on a bench to do it. It was a windy day and when N. dropped his pencil, he set the paper down to retrieve it, and the wind blew the paper away. My adult daughter went to pick him up and found him in the isolation corner. I really don't know how she thought that sending N. out into the wind to write when writing is difficult for him at a desk in a quiet classroom would improve his skills).

I was accused several times of being a bad parent, of not knowing my child, of using poor discipline (after all, I was actually on his side), of allowing N. to "use" his disability to get out of work, etc. etc. All of this from someone who was far less educated in any formal sense than I, clearly knew far less about efficacious interventions, and who had no idea of our home life or anything else about us. The parent advocate said it was one of the more difficult negotiations she had ever seen. I finally asked the principal, in the presence of the parent advocate, if I could see a written copy of the policy they kept refering to. Of course there was no such policy, as it would violate federal law to have such a policy. If a child with a disability is not meeting IEP goals, the school must find a way for them to be met. My son not only lost a year of education, he also became terrified of tests and began a several-year long writing strike. He is only now becoming confident of his abilities--this in a child who has tested in the extreme high range for cognitive ability.



Only now, after several years on damage control at school and the choice to remove him from school completely, am I really seeing the wonderful, smart, curious, goofy kid who is my son.



I explained (more briefly than here) to the lawyer at our class, that with all due respect--(which is not much)-- that a parent's concern is not with "winning" but rather with the soul and spirit of a child. I explained that parents do not want to sue--they only go to due process when no other solution can be worked out. After all, a suit can last for years, and the parents concern is that their child get an education. The district may have chance after chance to obstruct parents, but parents only have one chance with their child. I explained to this guy that I put up with accusations and name calling that could only be considered slander in order to try to advocate for my child. I ended by saying that I finally took him out of school in order to ensure that he reached his potential.



By the way, school does not exist to aid a child to reach his or her potential--you can read this for yourself in the Supreme Court Decision Board of Education v. Rowley. "Free Appropriate Public Education" does not mean what most of the tax-paying public thinks it means.



What is interesting in all of this is two-fold. One, I was amazed at the residual anger I felt about what had happened to us. It is really quite amazing that competent adults can be reduced to tears and anger by a school teacher with far less skill and education. I have still not recovered, despite the fact that I am a licensed teacher, and further I have graduate degrees in biology and in special education. (I have a small inkling from this of what it must be like to be poor, to not speak English well, to be a single parent, etc). And I am still very angry! (I know, it's not good for my blood pressure! Om! Om!).



Secondly, I learned something else when I said all of this to the lawyer guy. I got a round of applause from my classmates, most of whom teach special education in this district. Since I taught special education in that district for two years, I know what it was about. It was about all of the IEP meetings, teacher's lounge encounters and other unpleasant experiences that Special Ed teachers tend to deal with when they try to get the needs of their students met and meet contempt and resistance from general education teachers. It was about all of the times that Special Ed teachers are told by the general education staff that "you aren't a real teacher," "you have it easy" and "please get this child out of my classroom and out of my hair." It was about being part time at three different schools and being upbraided by a general education teacher because you "left early." I understood that round of applause when I heard it, but I was still surprised.



And I thought: We need to have a revolution in the schools--it is clear that these teachers know what is happening to kids and parents.



Unfortunately, the revolution will never come from classroom teachers. After all, how can a person who is not even allowed to go to the bathroom when s/he needs it going to make a break for freedom?



I think one reason so many good teachers leave the field after only a few years is that they come to realize that school systems are the bastions of petty empires and little power plays by people who have no power and get damn little respect. And they find themselves losing empathy for their students and they feel unable to do what they passionately wanted to do--spend time learning with kids. But some stay because they feel stuck, or they are close to retirement and have few options, or they don't know anything better--and some of these take it out on the kids.



There--got that off my chest.

Tomorrow I will get back to the wonderful life we have now--as N. takes more and more charge of his learning, and I have the distinct honor and great joy of really taking the time to know him for the wonderful, unique, smart, and spirited child he has become since being freed from the tutelage of the Miss Snips of the world.



Pictures tomorrow--I promise!



Oh, well--here's one for the road.

With a view like that up the road to feed the soul, why would you want to go back to school?