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Vincent Precht
Burbank, CA
Recent Activity
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Vincent signed the petition | -
Vincent signed the petition | -
Vincent signed the petition | -
Vincent commented on the article |Your blog has always been a guide and comfort to me as I struggle through the first year of what it means to be the father of an autistic child. I thank you for your wisdom and generosity and look forward to reading your new blog. Best of luck, Vincent
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Vincent commented on the article |Thank you for this poignant post. We too hope that our son has a rich and happy life. Unfortunately, he started getting services much later than Charlie, at four and a half years-old. We are now finding that certain agencies favor children younger than our boy when it comes to providing services, perhaps because they assume that older kids can get they need through school. Our son does receive certain services at his public pre-school, but not everything he needs. Too bad he may not get what he needs because at the age of four he's considered too old.
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Vincent commented on the article |Hello, Regina. Even with IDEA revamped or blown out of the water public schools will still be forced to deal with everyone thanks to compulsory education. When students with special needs prove "challenging" the impulse is to warehouse them. Thank God the warehouses have evolved, taking the form of NPS's, shadow aids, and other mandated programs, some of them very effective. So long as we still have compulsory attendance, the schools will have to deal with our kids. If the kids threaten test scores administrators will find them a place, to be sure. The debate isn't over whether there will still be services, but the form that those services by law will take. Hopefully, as you suggest, that decision-making will include those who have the most to lose or gain.
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Vincent commented on the article |
Kristine,
Thank you for the post.
According to Margaret A. Winzers fascinating book The History of Special Education, school districts, at the beginning of the 20th century, “under pressure to manage if not to educate increasing numbers of unruly, disabled, low-functioning, and immigrant children, could no longer ignore the needs of these pupils and were challenged to find solutions to their problems within the system. Teachers were generally unwilling to handle these students in regular classes, and officials, seeking to maintain order, discipline, and high standards in the schools, were adverse to placing them in regular classrooms. To satisfy the requirements of compulsory education laws and the wishes of the schools, school districts created the community equivalent of institutions—special segregated classes. Exceptional students were not isolated in institutions, but they were very much separated in special classes, which were given many different names: ungraded classes, opportunity classes, auxiliary classes, and classes for particular conditions. Problem children, thus removed from the mainstream, could not contaminate the learning of normal children or lower the standards of the school.”
The fact that children such as your son and mine are being educated in a public school seems to say not so much that society thinks it worth teaching them but that laws and their consequences force it to take responsibility for children it would normally shun. So Columbia’s Gil Eyal can call for public debates all he wants. It doesn’t matter how willing we are to help autistic individuals “have a meaningful level of membership in society.” We are bound to do so by law. -
Vincent commented on the article |So. You are teaching your resource students when you notice that of one them (a seven-year-old boy, SLD) is lying on two chairs, sofa-style.
-S, do your work, you say. Nothing. -S, please do your work. Nothing again. -S, come over here and sit by me. Why aren't you doing your work? No answer. You do the work with him. When you ask him to write down the numbers he holds the pencil improperly (intentionally; you've seen him grip the pencil properly before) and scribble the answer. -S, do we need to talk to your classroom teacher? S, I know you can do this work. S, if there's something bothering you, you can tell me. His head on the desk, he looks ready to cry. -My cousin took my skateboard, he says. -Well, did you tell your mom? -She knows. -Did she do anything about it? -No. -Look, we gotta do this work. Here. I'll help you. He looks inconsolable, he scribbles some more. -Okay, S. Let's go talk to your teacher (she has asked you to inform her if there are problems like this; they've happened before.) You go to the classroom and the teacher informs you that S has had an exemplary day. She yells at him when he tells her about the skateboard. I'm not your mother and I don't care about your skateboard. It's my job to teach you and it's his (your) job, too. She tells you that when S is in her room he does his work. You come out of the classroom, feeling like an idiot, feeling soft, but convinced also that behavior is communication, that S's near-tears were real. Are you being too nice? Should you be more mean? -
Vincent commented on the article |Apparently, Texas is a rough place to live if you're disabled. I just read a story about kids being forced into a Fight Club in Corpus Christi.
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