everlastingstorm
Member
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2014
- Messages
- 82
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I really am not taking it personally, or even trying to defend my specific class. I am trying to show how cruel and hurtful your words are to kids in special Ed. You guys do realize when you say "dumping ground" that it implies all the other kids in the program are trash? And maybe no one said "retard," but someone did say "rejects." No, special Ed is not the place for 99.9% of Deaf kids, but your words in these posts dehumanize every child that those programs are designed for, even though I know it is not intentional. Those kids are not trash or rejects, they are human beings with abilities a little different from yours or mine who learn in a different way.
How would you feel if they put a hearing person in a deaf class and then that person went out and told everyone he had been stuck in the dumping grounds with the rejects? Not very good, I bet. On fact, I bet you would be furious, with good cause. That is exactly how my kids feel when they hear stuff like you are saying. It may not be purposely ill-intentioned, but people aren't usually purposely ill-intentioned toward the Deaf when they say hurtful things, either. It is only fair we give to others the same thoughtfulness and dignity we expect for ourselves.
I understand that many of you were placed in special Ed and did not belong there--a horrible flaw in the system and the main reason I am learning ASL. The bureaucracy is a mess, the school districts are a mess, and most people have no clue when it comes to anyone different from them in even the slightest way. I feel your pain, I feel it even more so for the actual kids who come into my classroom years behind due to some physical difference that has nothing to do with intellect, but all I ask is that you make an attempt to aim your words at the people who deserve it--the legislation, the district, the diagnostician, and even me-- the teacher. But use words to say what fools THEY were, not words that imply that kids who are not on the same level as you intellectually are somehow the trash no one wants . Honestly, my special needs kids give me hope in life as they overcome every obstacle some idiot doctor has placed in front of them, living long beyond their expected years and leading happy, healthy lives.
Special ed classrooms should not be, in practice, a "dumping ground" but in reality that is what they are becoming. In theory, they are places for specialized instruction that are appropriate to the needs of each child, no better and no worse. They should be like that in practice too. Special education things are often one of the first to get cut, because those things have no benefit for the majority of students. Special ed classrooms by their own nature have become "dumping grounds" unless the teacher is extraordinarily creative and uses that creativity to individualize teaching. Not all teachers can attain that quality of teaching in their practice. Some school districts are even hiring people who do not hold specific credentials in special ed to teach special ed, because they do not value what those kids can learn as opposed to what their limitations are. This was the case in one K-2 special ed class I had some experience in as a prerequisite to graduate school. I don't like the terminology either, but that "dumping ground" has become the reality in many special ed classrooms on both the teaching end and on the bureaucratic end.
For us it is only natural to perceive special ed classrooms as that, no matter how appropriate or good they are for the students actually appropriate for those settings. We are limited by what exists in our language and it is difficult to put a positive spin on those learning environments when one does not experience it as a positive learning environment for them.
The system is indeed broken.