Originally Posted by lurch
This one would be of interest to anyone with school aged kids. My mom and girlfriend are both elementary school teachers. I know it's kinda long, but if you have kids in school, you should really read it..
The special ed lobby is very powerful, because what legislator wants to vote against special ed? They bring a few severely handicapped kids to the capitol, and get anything they want passed. The problem is that most kids that are under the "special ed" umbrella are not handicapped at all. They have been diagnosed "SED" (severely emotionally disturbed). Now, you are thinking, "well, ok, so the kids schizophrenic or something, he should get some help" but that's not what I'm talking about, either. Child psychs hand out that SED crap like they hand out ADD. Basically, we are talking about bad kids. Kids who are bullies, or who have anger problems, etc. There are TONS of them. Also, when a lot of us were in school (I'm 30) special ed kids were segregated, they had their own classroom, etc. One of the spec. ed lobby's biggest triumphs was "mainstreaming." This means that these crazy, badass kids are sitting right by YOUR kid. These kids take up half of the teachers time. While the teacher is correcting them, or trying to get them to focus, she's not teaching the OTHER kids.
"But wait"- you say. "That's what principals and discipline are for!" Wrong again. If a kid has been diagnosed SED, they have regulations that prohibit schools from discpilining them too much. There is actually a cap on how many days an SED kid can be suspended. There was a situation where an SED kid had gotten suspended his full allotment for the year, and he bullied another kid and beat him up. They couldn't suspend him anymore, so they just had to make him miss recesses. Parents of the bullied kid were (understandably) pissed- why wasn't this kid being punished? The school couldn't even tell them why- it's a privacy violation to tell them the kid's SED, so they just had to look completely ineffective. They also don't have to do as much work as normal kids, they have "modified work loads."
Parents expect schools to keep their kids safe and away from these type of kids, and the schools hands are completely tied. My mom once said that she believed that if the parents of "normal" kids knew what their kids saw and dealt with every day that they would freak.
The problem is that SED kids have lobbyists fighting for their rights. No one is fighting for the rights of the normal kids that have to deal with this stuff, and most parents don't even know it's a problem..
Couple other examples:
Remember how you always had those crappy plastic scissors, but the teacher had the long pointy, sharp ones? A teacher friend of my mom's had a kid in her class come up to her desk and ask that the teacher put the pointy scissors that were on her desk away. When the teacher asked why, the boy said "because there's a voice telling me to get those scissors and hurt people, so if they were locked in your desk, I couldn't get them."
My GF told me about a fight between 8-9 year olds the other day. The winner was a crazy kid. I don't know about you, but elementary school fights when I was in school were pretty tame. Shove, shove, punch, roll around on the ground, someone end up crying, done. This fight ended with the crazy kid stomping the face of the other kid repeatedly. When a teacher ran up to break it up, this 3rd grader started swinging at the teacher and calling her a motherfucker.
btw- teachers can't defend themselves, either. If a kid is punching you in the face, and you push him away and he is scraped, bruised, or injured- you just abused a child. You will definately get sued, maybe lose your job, possibly have criminal charges filed. If the kid is a "special ed" kid, it's even worse. They teach teachers to cover up, and they have one "approved" move that is basically a bear hug, it's called CAPE, and you just hug the kid to you where he can't do anymore damage to you, and hold him until he calms down, or until the police get there. But even if you do that move and there is no injury to the kid, you'll
probably still get sued. My GF knows a lady who is getting sued for holding a kid that was kicking/biting her. I guess she just should have let the kid beat the shit out of her. After all, it's not his fault... Poor kid is SED....
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