Moo the Magic Cow, you are being as fucking stupid as fucking stupid gets. You’re acting like the school rounded up the developmentally disabled kids to do shit work around the school so that it can save on hiring janitors or something, when what actually happened was that some kids (25 out the 100 in the Work Experience Program) did janitorial work as part of a class to teach the kids how to work.
If some of you other folks didn’t read the article before you replied with an attaboy for the OP, then go read it now and come back with a retraction. All will be forgiven.
Fuck me. Moo, maybe you should haul your magic cow ass to a psychiatrist to talk about your need to take offense at the tiniest of provocations.
Is there someone special in your life (kid, brother, friend) who is developmentally disabled and who has been picked on at school? If so, then that sucks and it ain’t right, but that doesn’t mean you need to get all huffy over every tiny thing that you find a way to interpret as an offense against developmentally disabled kids.
All this outrage seems to grow out of the assumption that there is something inherently demeaning about janitorial work. Why? There is dignity in all work.
Whoever told you to use the desk instead of a stepladder is an idiot. And you should’ve refused to do the task until you had safer equipment. But I digress.
The link in the OP wasn’t talking about bright kids who need something to do because they’re finished with their work early. It talked about kids in special education who are going to spend their lives doing this kind of work, or similar work. They’re probably not going to go on to college like you or me.
That said, I think that, to some extent, the school should have realized that these kids were going to be teased, and to arrange for them to do the work when the other kids are in class.
Otherwise, I think it’s great that their school is enabling them to be employable. And I bet that the same people who are bitching about having kids do cleanup work would also bitch when these people grow up and cost taxpayers a bundle in disability and other services.
Actually, no. One doesn’t need to be related to a handicapped person to take issue on something regarding them. For example, I don’t have to have a gay brother or uncle to think that killing gay people because they’re gay is wrong.
I take offense at your ad hominem attack, and feel that if you disagree with me, you should state it as such and make points against mine and support them. Saying I’m a fucking fuckity fuck fuck doesn’t really mean that much to me or anyone. Grow up.
From what I can tell, this is what occurred. From the article it seems that the Special Ed students were put into the Work Experience program… otherwise I doubt that they would choose to participate in a program that allows them to be further ridiculed by their classmates. I don’t think anyone would bring the issue to the attention of the media if the students deliberately chose to do demeaning janitorial work. If this is the case, perhaps you’re right.
Just be prepared for the people you are defending to possibly have a different viewpoint on the subject than the one you have. A common example here would be the “they’re so COURAGEOUS” shit. Please, do not say that. If you must think it, keep it to yourself. It may be well-meant but it is damned annoying when somebody thinks you’re just WONDERFUL for doing something perfectly normal, especially when it’s not even something you have to do differently.
At least you don’t seem to go in for cutesy PC labels. Bless you.
[end possible hiijack]
That being said, I still think that learning janitorial work, and other sorts of manual work is a great idea for mentally disabled students who are capable. What I can’t tell from rereading the OP is whether your problem is with their learning the work at all, or just the location of said learning. It’s certainly a whole lot more practical then stuffing them with whatever classwork they can handle, which may or may not be enough for them to even be partially independent.
But I’d be pissed if my kid were in a program that set them up as a target for ridicule, like the one under discussion seems to be. There’s GOT to be someplace around town that could use these students. Imagine how crappy everything would be if we had no janitors.
My sister has Down’s Syndrome. When she was in HS, her class was in charge of the recycling cans set around the school. (Side note: I was in the Environmental Studies focus group in jr. and sr. years, and we collected plastic bottles, cans, and paper recycling to make money for cool field trips. I don’t see what’s so horrible about picking through recycling.) They would also fold pizza boxes and clean tables at one of the pizza parlors in town. Now, she works at Yardbirds though a special program, where she cleans displays, waters the garden area, and does other stuff like that. She earns far less than minimum wage, under $2/hr, not that this matters because she supports herself with Social Security. She’s very happy with her life and situation.
The article seems to be trying to paint this kind of work as exploitive, and harmful for the students in the program. If it’s like the program my sister went through, I doubt very much it is. If they’re being teased, then they should adjust the program so the kids aren’t out during regular recess/lunch times, and/or work with the regular ed. students about being respectful of people’s differences.
Agreed, Libetarian, but in my little world that’s mostly a pipe dream. Teenagers as a group are SO worried about social position and placing people in a hierarchy that it’s just nuts. And one way to reinforce your place in said hierarchy is to make fun of other people who you want below you.
Picking up recycling from classrooms is one thing but from what I remember of high school, if there had been students on regular janitor duty (cleaning floors, walls, etc.) on campus, that’d be a huge double whammy – they’re “retards” who are only good for shit-sweeping, after all.
I saw this in action, having been at the bottom of a whole damn school.
Okay. But if I were one of the janitor trainees, and I was of a mind for revenge, I’d visit a McDonald’s one evening and order a hamburger from one of those worred-about-social-position teens. And I’d be plumb damn demanding about the service.
All of the special education kids in the school district take part in the Work Experience Program.
One school in the school district had kids do janitorial work as part of that program because (a) the school couldn’t find enough outside work opportunities that year and (b) many of the special ed kids actually do go on to become janitors.
Only 25 out of the 100 kids in the school district did janitorial work as part of the Work Experience Program.
The article does not indicate that the kids were replacing janitors in the school, and it seems that the nature of the program would make that highly unlikely.
Kids are mean little people and will make fun of anyone that’s different than them. It doesn’t mean that anything the school does to provide an opportunity for kids to get made fun of is a bad thing. Would you say that it’s terrible that the school makes the band members march around in dumb looking uniforms, which makes the other kids make fun of them? In other words, you can’t simply apply the rubric of “Will it make other kids make fun of a group of kids more” to test the merit of all school policies.
And you’re a real fucking moron.
I am rather forcefully asserting my opinions in this thread, and the reason is that I’m sick of people who seem to look around for shit to get outraged about.
Well, as the parent of a special needs student who performs tasks around the school to prepare for work experience, the article gave me no reason to challenge the school administration’s position.
We have one outraged parent with no testimony that his son was actually subjected to harrassment. His complaint is simply that his son will not be “picking through trash” when he graduates. I am not sure what his son will do, but I have had several jobs with tasks rather worse than “picking through trash”–which is the father’s description of sorting recyclables–and I have never been a participant in a special needs program.
We have one other parent claiming that his daughter was called ‘“Stinky” on days when she had to pick up trash’. On the other hand, we have no testimony that she was not called “Stinky” on other days. Given that each of my kids have had periods during which they were not maintaining their personal hygiene once they got out of the house, we do not know where the nickname originated or that it was applied only while she was acting as janitor.
It is entirely possible that the situation lent itself to harrassment or humiliation. However, no evidence of that was presented in the (quite brief) story.
An earlier, and more nuanced story on the same subject appeared five days earlier in The Oregonian.
Now, this even earlier Seattle Times article makes the claim that the tasks were handed out as punishment, but that claim has not been repeated in later stories.
I am quite willing to accept that certain programs in certain schools have permitted abuse of the kids (either by using them to defray custodial costs without compensation or by subjecting them to abuse from their peers), but the articles I have found on the subject rgarding this incident are long on parental hostility and short on evidence of abuse.
I also have a problem with Mr. Finder’s claim that he was not told what his son was doing. I am pretty specific regarding the questions I ask at the IEP meetings, as well as at teacher conferences and open houses. When I was told that part of my daughter’s program included tasks around the school, I specifically asked what each of those tasks would be and when she would be doing them. It is part of understanding what she can do, what current rewards and sanctions she is encountering at school (so that I can reinforce them at home or raise an objection if I find them inappropriate), and how her ongoing development in socialization is proceeding.
If Mr. Finders only “discovered” his son’s activities after the fact, then I would say that he has not been paying attention.
Count me among the confused - although some of the stories use an alarming tone, the fact seem to be that this school has some programs for the special needs kids and in those programs they do menial labor. As long as they are properly supervised, I don’t have a problem with that.
Kids pick on them? Why do I think the other kids would pick on them in the restrooms and art class, too. Kids are punks.
And what’s wrong with “picking through trash” - , as Paula Poundstone says, we’d all be in pretty bad shape if there was no one to do those jobs.
