I read that article this morning and it creeped me out. Once a kid is labeled, he's treated differently by everyone, perhaps especially in a public school setting. Still, it beats ghettoizing these kids. Kids with psych labels are forcibily intoxicated with major tranquilizers, amphetimines, ssri's and goodness knows what else. When I was in school kids got in trouble for coming to school intoxicated, now kids are forcibily intoxicated, what has happened is not explained to them and they are punished if they intoxicated. As for autism, it's so grossly overdiagnosed and kids with that label get their own grotesque treatment. Kids with non standard intellectual functioning and physical differences have always been treated badly by the mainstream, just like their adult counterparts.

And there's the societal problems, parents of young kids are second or third generation television junkies who don't have any idea how to raise children, as are the teachers.

So here's a solution, lower student to teacher ratios, increase teacher salaries, provide daycare in the workplace, bash the idea of doping children, put pe back in the schools. Also, the idea that teachers should have degrees in nonsense like education is absurd. Make teachers get real degrees and math and literature and such, and reward the intelligent kids that do so, with tuition reimbursement programs for years of teaching - there's already a limited program out there that does this.
These changes would produce a more well rounded human and would do more for "homeland security" than any military "war on terror."

I'm a former special ed teacher with an M.Ed. You hit it right on the button, Sally, with your comment about degrees in education. I've never seen a sorrier, more inept group or less academically content than what I encountered in my M.Ed. program. In our house we refer to M. Ed.s and "real" masters. I wish I'd gotten a real one, but it sure was an eye opener to get the M.Ed. I lost any respect for the field in that experience.

a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2004359685_aides19e.html">Students who turn violent are core of Issaquah(Seattle) labor dispute.

"The district and the Issaquah Educational Assistants created a job in 2004 called "unique-needs specialist," a person who would be assigned to hard-to-manage students on a one-on-one basis. The contract said the educational assistants would substitute for a specialist only "based on ability and willingness."

The current dispute began in the fall of 2006 when the district was unable to find a specialist to work one-on-one with the autistic boy, and a classroom aide agreed to fill in. But after the attack left the teacher with neck and back injuries, both aides who were in the room notified the district that they couldn't control the student and would no longer substitute for the specialist.

The district directed the aides to take additional training to work with the boy or face possible discipline or termination. The aides said no amount of training would make them physically able to deal with the boy's outbursts, and they filed a grievance with the district.

One of the two aides, Jill Nichols-Hicks, herself the mother of two autistic children, said her job in the special-needs classroom is difficult every day.

"There are hits, scratches, bites, kicks, toileting, lifting from wheelchairs, diapering, feeding," she said. "It's very tough work, but we gladly do it. We love our job. There's no greater reward than working with a population that needs us."

I wonder what sort of education and/or training these "workers" are given. I wonder what is taught in the child psychology textbooks at the college level, in the pamphlet that the "unique needs specialist" is given if they get any information at all.

Is the same fake research that is being sold to and doctored up by big pharma being put in textbooks? I suspect all college students that have to take in psychology classes are taught that the biopsych model is a forgone conclusion, that not believing in it is like not believing in evolution, I bet that's what high school kids are taught, and I know that's how it's explained to parents of toddlers with the dx. So we have to wonder, what are the people in these schools being taught about what these kids are? What are their parents being taught? What are the socio-economic factors operating? When a teacher gets bitten and scratched every day, sounds like a communication problem at the very least. When a child is incontinent to the point s/he needs a diaper changed, there's a lot to consider, but then my experience would be with MR junior high high school kids, people who generally aren't spontaneously violent but are mirroring or exhibiting primal self defense.

I have a M.Ed. It's not worth the paper it's printed on.

I went into it with the purest of reasons, I was working on a MA in Victorian/Edwardian Lit and the head of the English Dept at that time, a former HS inner city school teacher convinced me to work on 2 degrees at the same time since I was on full scholarship, it was no big deal. The courses I was teaching at the school, Fresh Lit, Intro to Lit were waiting list only and I was a popular teacher. I also, I might add, not that it has anything to do with this story, was manic the entire time I was in Grad school, racking up 70 some credits full time and working 3 jobs at the same time as well.

The education courses were a complete bore, and did nothing to address the problems facing students the philosophy was dated back to the 50s when the student body was composed of Beaver and Wally Cleaver. None of the profs I had actually read our papers they automatically stamped A's on them, and exams were graded by an over worked TA.

My first attempt at student teaching sent me to Trenton High to teach English to Freshman. Here I am, 5 0", 110 lbs soaking wet, looking like the All American Ivory Girl and no help from the professors. The first day there I had a gun pulled out by a student on me. I went into the first class where I was supposed to teach "Scarlet Letter". The kids were literally taking carving pen marks in the desks til their 16th birthday and they could drop out. Half the girls ( I am not exaggerating) could barely fit behind their desks, their bellies were so swollen. I had one girl come into the class with a baby in her arms and said she needed to take it downstairs to the makeshift nursery.

Considering my audience, I played up the fact that Hester Prynne was raising a child out of wedlock, no husband, and the audience ate it up. I made something that normally would have been boring to these students, tangible and they were ACTUALLY reading! Even better several of them told me they ENJOYED reading it.

When that student teaching experience was over, the cooperating teacher, who normally was quite kind to me, had nothing but scathing words to me. How DARE me get the kids to like me! How dare me get the kids to learn something! We weren't supposed to TEACH, we were supposed to BABY SIT.

The second student teaching should have been better. It was at (at that time) the second best public school in the state. I had a cooperating teacher, a lesbian who clearly became infatuated with me and made several passes at me. The books we had to cover in those 6 weeks were
Ethan Frome and To Kill A Mockingbird. The second day there, the coop teacher looked at my lesson plans and said it was too good, teach straight down the middle to the C students and forget about the students who get A's and B's and D's and F's.

I told her the A's and B's will be bored and tune out. She said that's why they go for enrichment classes at the university and don't worry they still end up at Ivy. As for the D's and the F's, forget about them, all they will grow up to be are housewives and gas pumpers.

(I'm sorry but isn't a housewife the hardest job in the universe?)

The kids kept journals and because they trusted me, and would confide in me about drug use, sexuality, family molestation. One student wrote about a suicide attempt. I kept bringing these things up with the coop teacher and she said words to the effect like ignore it these kids parents drive Beemers and Porsches, and they all go to private therapists. Notify the guidance counselor and go on.

What ever ideals I had about teaching died. It didn't matter about the students really learning. At least not at the high school level. I wanted to drop the degree, but by then, I had done all the paperwork/coursework and just needed to take the oral and written final exams. I never used it.

I vowed if I was ever blessed with children, they would be so loved and I would home school them, making what ever sacrifices I needed to so they would never be exposed to teachers like that.

Not all teachers are bad. I just had the misfortune to meet them.

Sorry for my rant. I had to get this off my chest. It's been years and I have never had the chance to rail about it.

oops! here's the link to the Seattle area school district article.

Students who turn violent are core of Issaquah(Seattle) labor dispute.

btw, I forgot to add my personal comment re: this story.

This is an outrageous and horrible thing, and as a teacher who works in these classroom settings, I can safely say not once have I witnessed any harm or restraint done to a child. If anything, I've come home with bruises or bites, and that's just part of the day sometimes. These kids are to be treasured.

Sally, the time I was bit by a severely disabled student, was when the parent put the child on Risperal.

I had noticed a behavior change (increased and unexplained aggression) and inquired if there was a medication added?

Yes, it was Risperdal.

Also, there are often a wide spectrum of disabilities in one classroom, and some children that will never walk, or be able to toilet train, very disabled, and some autistic, etc.

Also, there are behaviors learned at home that the teachers have no control over when receiving the child at school.

Susun, Yours sounds like an accurate description of the problems with both teacher education and teaching. It's not that it's all of all of the teachers faults, or all of the students. It's the massively screwed up system. I assume that like my experience with "ld, special and ec" kids, yours was before drugging got to be so common, or at least before I knew it was. I could go on forever about the problems I have with education both related and unrelated to "mental health" issues, but luckily I never witnessed any teacher or aide physically restrain anyone.

Thank you Sally. This came to me this afternoon while I was running some errands. One of the part time jobs I had in grad school was teaching sunday school. It paid 50 a week, which meant a lot to me, cause I was a poor grad student existing on a lot of Ramen Noodles.

I taught 7 and 8th grade and the kids would come in on Sunday morning. You could tell which kids came from divorced homes and which didn't. The ones that had divorced dads would come in all manicky and it took me a while to settle them down. The Rabbi told me these couple of kids were on Ritalin because they were ADDI had never heard of Ritalin and investigated it I recall telling the Rabbi a week later the kids didn't need Ritalin, they didn't have ADD.They needed not to eat Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops and Pop Tarts for breakfast. The kids in question told me that was what their fathers fed them because their mothers wouldn't allow that stuff in the house.

Ironicallly, the Rabbi mentioned this to the several fathers, who had the kids for weekends, and guess what. Each and every kid was calmer. Not because of the Ritalin. Because they got rid of the sugar buzz first thing in the am.

Sometimes the most obvious situation is the one that is the easiest and less harmful. I wish it was this easy for every child.

Susan,

I remember when I volunteered at a battered woman's shelter. I'd see mothers feeding their kids Frosted Flakes and coca cola and then the kids would begin to fight with each other as the sugar buzz kicked in and the mother would become rageful like her mother before her who had left her abusive parents to be abused by a man whose parents were just as abusive and, had I not been there, she'd have chilled out with a beer or 8, as would I, but no beer at the shelter, in retrospect, a pretty good policy though a little nannyish.

Intergenerational biological defects, I think not, instead a combination of the exhaustion of poverty, the poor diet of poverty and of course back then, kids were taught in school about the old fashioned FDA food pyramid, a way of eating that in and of itself is dangerous.

Just getting the families to eat whole grain bread and fresh fruit for a few days, and hamburger instead of luncheon meat, made a bit of a difference, but if I was poor back then, these folks were poorer and couldn't afford to eat healthy food, frosted flakes and spam being cheaper, and the shelter was so poor, that it's only paid employee, the executive director, couldn't even afford to rent an apartment.

And yet, the mother got her ged, a job, and rented a little house and these days her grandkids are on a gluten free diet and eat way healthier than me;) and her ex has been sober for several years. Not all stories have happy endings but some do.

I remember when I volunteered at a battered woman's shelter. I'd see mothers feeding their kids Frosted Flakes and coca cola and then the kids would begin to fight with each other as the sugar buzz kicked in and the mother would become rageful like her mother before her who had left her abusive parents to be abused by a man whose parents were just as abusive and, had I not been there, she'd have chilled out with a beer or 8, as would I, but no beer at the shelter, in retrospect, a pretty good policy though a little nannyish.

Julia, I find it quite interesting that you are going from blog to blog, copying part of a post or comment and linking up to your site via no words of your own.