Miseducation

When you graduate from college with a teaching certificate you have hopes, dreams, ideals, and passion. Apparently it is the purpose and structure of the public education system to strip all of these from you and create a willing and obedient participant in the system. All sarcasm aside, I never expected to become so cynical and jaded to the school system so fast. In less than two years I have discovered that in terms of educating children with special needs we may have brought them into the buildings with children who are typically developing but we have done little else. Inclusion is treated as a noun, not a verb, and according to the portion of the training video I made it through this week before having to leave early inclusion is not guaranteed to any child with special needs under federal law. Children basically earn the right to be with their peers, it is not assumed that because they are children they deserve this right. Services are offered at a bare minimum and things are kept silent unless a parent directly asks, and even then you are to talk around it. The two top goals are to avoid lawsuits and to make sure you can win lawsuits. That is all I have heard about at my last trainings and required meetings. Why take data? To be able to prove your side in a lawsuit. Oh, and while you have data you can use it to make decisions too. Why write a new and improved IEP? To avoid lawsuits and make it easier to win them of course! And to avoid spending more money on "services not federally required". Don't sneak in any services that may benefit a child but are not required under federal law, that would be incomprehensible and unforgivable! In this framework I have committed what is most likely akin to educational treason by supporting a parent with honest information in order to assist in the child receiving the best educational outcome for the future. Nothing I did had been explicitly forbidden, but I do think was covered in one of the general "do not do or say anything stupid that could ever be used against us in a lawsuit" speeches and the "do not give any more information that is required" speeches. I have no clue when it became wrong to do what is so obviously right, but I would rather hang for doing what is right than be heralded for doing what I know to be wrong. I always dreamed of being a teacher, of making a difference, of being able to do what would benefit a child. I never dreamed of being in a position where I felt I was being asked to lie to families, either through direct commission of a lie or omission of information, where I would be asked to focus not on maximum educational benefit but minimal federal requirements, and where the children are almost an afterthought. So I am rebelling in my own way, refusing to lie, refusing to become a silent player in the miseducation of children and the deception of families, refusing to sell my soul in order to have a paycheck. Perhaps I care too much, but these are children we are talking about not animals or shipments of furniture and no one seems to remember that as we discuss data, federal law, services, paperwork, and lawsuits. We are educating children who deserve every opportunity to learn, to grow, to develop, and to impact their own tomorrow. How can we forget that? I refuse to forget that.