annoyinglittletwerp on May 29, 2008 at 8:34 AM

Sir, wasn’t talking about you or your son or anybody else excet the roommate Damian G. wrote about.

We send our children to public school for 5 days a week, 6 hours a day; and go to church for 1 hour a week. They learn a history of the country that excludes God, and secular relative morality. True scientific questioning is not part of the curriculum …

Hope he gets where he needs to be and has fun.

Damian G. on May 28, 2008 at 9:37 PM

As you may have noticed, I have Asperger’s/Aspie’s too. Mind telling your roommate for me that I said to play the Asperger’s card very, very rarely so that when he actually needed it on a jobsite or down the road with you, he had it. The more he can overcome the disability now in college, the better for him.

Checking out tonight. Will come back tomorrow.

The principal of that school should seriously question whether that teacher should be teaching young kids. I can only suspect that the teacher put on that display out of frustration over the kid’s behavior. However, that was not a good way to handle the autistic kid.

He is utterly awful to live with: Stubborn, messy and completely oblivious to basic social norms, such as when he left a used condom in my rubbish bin.

He uses his Asperger’s as an excuse to be a jerk, and I know that he is the exception to the rule. But there ARE cases where people use their very real problems to create very avoidable ones.

Back in the day children that had “special needs” & kids that could not speak English were not placed in the “gen pop” – I guess it’s more PC to throw them all together – then single them out for ridicule now and again.

Disgusting.

rjwest21 on May 28, 2008 at 8:38 PM

I like your analogies. Very apt.

Well, I’m officially checking out of the thread. It’s bath time.

and since the doctor thinks nothing is wrong, well, you see where I’m going

MDs are slightly less clueless about autism than Andrew Sullivan is about conservatism. My wife & I (mainly her) are very active in our county’s autism group and the number of instances where children who at age 3 or 4 were diagnosed with autism – some with severe cases – but who at age 1 & 2 were told “nothing’s wrong” by their medical doctor has been staggering. It’s not really their fault as it’s not their specialty. But, seriously, a MDs opinion on behavioral stuff is akin to a NYT reporter’s advice on how to initiate an air strike on a terrorist cell.

bridgetown on May 28, 2008 at 8:22 PM

Very good point.

yep…..taught jr. high. “Mainstreaming” is a disaster for the disabled and the normal kids. And it tears the teachers up. One teacher can’t be academic instructor, counselor, nurse, and physical restrainor…..but that is what public schools tell teachers they have to be.

One can occasionally find parents of special needs kids who are very eager to do whatever they can to help make sure that their kids get what they need and get the kid to grasp classroom expectations for behavior. As a teacher, those parents are like gold…..but usually the parents are either in total denial or are experts in playing the system to maintain their free babysitting service at any and all costs.

funky chicken on May 28, 2008 at 2:09 PM

Also comments made by Lily….im in the same field and these have been my experiences also…not taking sides, cuz case is unique…but generally speaking, there are unavoidable issues that people dont seem to want to face…

Also, thanks Josef!

Also that teacher should be fired and not allowed around little children, and have her license taken so she cant just move on to another school and start over. Her behavior is completely unacceptable.

She knew there were behavioral problems, but apparantly decides that it’s okay for son to have the problems and put the burden on others to ‘educate’ him.
bridgetown on May 28, 2008 at 7:18 PM

That’s not entirely accurate, as he was undergoing testing for Asperger’s only since February.
True, he’d had disciplinary problems in the past, but that’s no reason to disallow him from school.

If public schools were strictly about acquiring social skills, students would be group according to behavioral traits and drilled in proper behavior until they can exhibit such.

But since schools are trying to do both at the same time we, for some reason, have students grouped by chronological age which has little bearing on the student’s ability or their behavior levels. This ensures that any given classroom will have students that run the gamut of abilities and behaviors. Toss a student with severe behavioral difficulties into the mix and chaos ensues. Those who merely have learning difficulties but are quiet are no less screwed than the rest of the class, they just don’t call attention to the fact that the classroom is failing them.