Recipe for an ordinary mind (my favorite books)

  • Riding Lessons
  • Anansi Boys
  • Out of This Furnace
  • The Gathering
  • The Kite Runner
  • Water for Elephants
  • The Last Town on Earth
  • My Side of the Mountain
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany

Friday, February 24, 2012

The Education Blame Game

In a few weeks, I will make a formal effort to get my currently "special needs" kid booted from the system. In a sea of parents trying to get help for their kids, this may come as a surprise. What came as a surprise to me was learning that, because my child was deemed in need of OT for his poor fine motor skills (specifically handwriting, from an educational perspective), he was only attending a minority of his math lessons. To me, pulling a child from something as basic as math because his handwriting sucks - especially given that he will write nearly all of his academic work from middle school onward - is bass-ackwards.

So, color me skeptical, but I tend to assume that behind every beaurocratic bass-ackwards choice, there is someone playing a game. Most of the upper level beaurocrats I've met are not actually stupid. So I went looking for an answer... why would an intelligent white kid from an involved, educated middle class household be classified as special ed for seemingly silly reasons?
The resounding answer: it's my fault. Every place I looked, I saw articles about how involved, middle class white parents are gaming the system, getting their kids classified in order to obtain better service. The process was blamed on parents who know how to "advocate for" their kids. Excuse me?? First of all, since when did "advocating" for your kid become a bad thing? Last I check, schools were bemoaning parental lack of involvement. Their job was impossible until parents took a role. Oh, but wait... it's now equally bad to get involved! Second, and more importantly, the schools' response to "advocating" is on them... not me.

I did advocate for my kid. He was alternating between being tormented on the playground, and languishing in the principal's office, mainly because he lacks his peers' keen power of manipulation. They know when to poke and when to kiss up, and he never gets it. Also, in the classroom, his fine motor skills did impact his ability to handwrite answers, so he was constantly getting docked points for things he knew, in every subject. Within a single year, his self-image was in the toilet. So, yeah, we "advocated." The school's answer, their only answer, was to label my son disabled. I never, never advocated for that. I advocated for them to a) get control of their playgrounds, and that meant the sneaky, cruel ones as well as the clueless, clumsy ones. I advocated for them to come up with a way for him to show what he knows, despite his handwriting, so that he might have some shred of self-confidence with which to try to tackle elementary school. I did not then, nor do I now, advocate for him being classified as "disabled."

Want my opinion? Sorry, it's my blog, so you have no choice. I know the budget's tight. I know it is a matter of white privilege that I can and do advocate for my kid. But I refuse to hold the whole bag, here. When we first walked into that meeting 4 years ago, knowing very little about the educational system, it was clearly spelled out to us that the only way the school would do anything different, anything potentially difficult, was if we signed on the line to have him classified. We asked - directly - if the principal could make the para's who "supervise" recess do something crazy like, say, leave the wall they lean against and circulate. We asked if  we went out and bought a cheap laptop, could he type his assignments. We asked to brainstorm solutions. The answer, with big smiles, was Suuuure!!!!... if we have him classified.

So we can totally have this conversation about "gaming the system," but I'm not drinking that Kool Aide. This school system works for tips, and it gets them through classifying kids.

So here's the new plan. We're declassifying him, so that he can go to fucking math class. And you know I'm still going to be there, "advocating for" my kid. I'm just not going to sign the papers this time. This time, you have to educate you, you have to find a valid and effective way to teach him and assess him, and you have to manage the behavior of all your charges, and you have to do it for only the price I already paid for his education in my taxes. Because I'm no longer going to sell his self-identity as a whole and intelligent boy in order to make your job easier.