Actually the kids with autism tend to be the victims of the sort of out of control children being described. My brother works with such children and he says putting them together creates serious problems; “kids who like pushing buttons put together with kids who are nothing but buttons” is the way he put it.
I’m sorry for everyone in Madison who is dealing with the aftermath of this. It’s hard, and the fact that school shootings are so common doesn’t make it easier.
One of the local politicians has been pushing back against “thoughts and prayers”.
On his personal X account, Pocan said to “be ready for the lack of action on guns by this Congress. Sad.” He responded to several Wisconsin Republicans on X, criticizing them for sending “thoughts and prayers” instead of taking “action.”
“‘Thoughts and prayers’ offer comfort to the families and communities affected but have not changed our unique reality as Americans. It’s time for action," Pocan said in a later statement. “It’s time for my Republican colleagues to grow a backbone and put our children above the gun lobby by passing commonsense gun safety laws that will save countless lives.”
And now there is a Special Report on NBC about the CEO assassin’s possible extra charges. Way to go in making him an effing hero, but yeah, the school shooting in Madison has taken a back seat. Frickin-A.
There are some kids for whom “education” doesn’t make sense to me - those with profound mental disabilities being at the top of that list - but any educator is going to know that kids with certain last names in small towns, or from certain neighborhoods in big cities, probably aren’t going to benefit from going to school either, nor will their peers from associating with them. However, on that off chance that they might, they have to “go.”
The behavioral problems are a much bigger problem than the “wrong side of tracks” crew that @nearwildheaven seems to cite.
The combo of demanding clueless parents and act-out kids precludes the education of everyone else in class.
Two of my extended family left teaching over this: the wholesale destruction of public education in the name of including the un-includable. And their asshat parents.
A bunch of us were in a Madison bar watching the press conference, when the police chief slipped in a ‘not sure what else could’ve been done…’ I said “We could make guns less accessible to troubled shooters!”
By the way, a couple of us had close connections to teachers and students at the school… one of which is still in critical condition.
As for “wrong side of the tracks”, my dad was a substitute teacher from 1961 until the early 00s, and he always said that the wealthiest schools had the biggest problems, because they covered them up better.
Dad’s degree was in history education, and he left full-time education after a semester because he so drastically disagreed with a lot of what he was called upon to teach, and yep, that was in 1960! He joined the fire department and worked there for 36 years. Miss you, Daddy!
One other thing. The last few years, they would put him in with the behavioral disorder classes because in addition to being one of the few people who would do it, they knew he wouldn’t take any crap from those kids. This was actually the only environment where he never at any time experienced any kind of acute fear, even though he encountered some really scary kids there. We did know that they’d probably had even scarier things done TO them in far too many cases.
I suspect it’s a reference to “separate but equal” that was in practice anything but “equal”.
IOW, the only way to ensure anything approaching a decent education for minorities or the poor is to force the problem white kids in with the normal white kids. Which will drag the minorities and poor in with them.
Which as risible as it sounds actually has a decent basis in historical truth in our benighted racist shithole of a country.
For small towns, it’s probably more the family. For larger towns/cities, it’s the neighborhood.
I don’t agree with it, by the way. Just explaining.
I actually do agree that automatically mainstreaming all kids is probably not the ideal solution. The problem is that any attempt to create alternative programs for higher risk kids has, so far, seemed to rapidly fall afoul of racial/economic stereotyping/profiling and cause more harm than good.
“there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” - H.L. Mencken
As with health care, a main reason people leave education is because decisions are being made by people who have never worked in the field, let alone the trenches.