5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

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5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby DamianaRaven » Fri Mar 06, 2015 2:51 pm

Nice try this time, Title Dude.

Number One is NOT a "program," but I could go on quite the rant about how the Irving School District fucked Sonja out of a decent education by refusing to work with her autism, even in the simplest of ways. She's been home schooled for the past few years because the alternative was to watch her get thrown in summer school year after year with the threat of being flunked, despite being on the damn honor roll all year. The reason... standardized testing forced on someone who has atypical reading comprehension skills combined with the No Child Left Behind policies. "Even though your teachers gave you straight A's all year, we might have to fail you because you can't wrap your crazy little brain around abstract shit like symbolism." That kind of bullshit, combined with the singularly vicious bullying that kids like to administer to weirdos, was stressing Sonja to the point of affecting her physical and mental health. I'll start setting schools on fire before I watch my kid get ground up in a system that seemingly hates her. For now, I'm teaching her what I know until the end of this month, when North Lake College will take over some of the academic burden. It's a good thing I can afford to pay for these classes until we can sort out what kind of financial aid she can get at the age of 16. (SPOILER ALERT: it's very fucking little beyond the suggestion to "go back to public school.") Unfortunately, I cannot afford to enroll her in one of the many awesome private schools that DFW has to offer. Could be worse, I guess...
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby LegionofShrooms » Fri Mar 06, 2015 3:21 pm

Was it at all worth reading? I honestly glanced at the titles (which apparently, ya know, hold no relevance to whether I click on the articles or not) and closed the window with Cracked on it from lack of interest today.

Also, my condolences regarding your child becoming just another cog in the system. The No Child Left Behind act legitimately pisses me off with the stupidity of its premise.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby DamianaRaven » Fri Mar 06, 2015 3:23 pm

I enjoyed it enough to wager a few minutes of your time on it.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby sunglasses » Fri Mar 06, 2015 4:44 pm

My friend has an autistic son who is non-verbal and is not potty trained. He is very internally fixated. He's only finally figured out how to use a spoon.

He's 8, I think. Maybe 9. But the school district didn't think he warranted an education aide and wanted to slap him into a regular classroom.

So let's review this again. Non-verbal, hard to keep clothes on, rocks back and forth, and wears diapers.

"What the fuck where they thinking?," I said. It wasn't fair to my friend's child, the teacher, or any other students to have him in a regular classroom (with no aide).

What I found was that the school didn't want to have to pay for it. They tried to argue that he wasn't autistic. I can't quite remember what they attempted to say he had but a different class of disorder that they wouldn't have to provide an aide for. I cannot remember what exactly he ended up being classified as having, but I do remember my friend feeling relieved as he wouldn't have to fight for his child to get an aide anymore.

That being said, the last time I saw the little scamp I thought he was doing better. He kept touching me on the knee only you sick people where previously he wouldn't touch anyone so progress?
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Last edited by sunglasses on Fri Mar 06, 2015 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby Australia » Fri Mar 06, 2015 6:14 pm

sunglasses wrote:He kept touching me where previously he wouldn't touch anyone so progress?

He really shouldn't be doing that until his teen years.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby DamianaRaven » Fri Mar 06, 2015 6:16 pm

Australia wrote:He really shouldn't be doing that until his teen years.


You're a degenerate crazy person. Where the hell did they keep you when you were in school?
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby sunglasses » Fri Mar 06, 2015 6:29 pm

Australia wrote:
sunglasses wrote:He kept touching me where previously he wouldn't touch anyone so progress?

He really shouldn't be doing that until his teen years.


I have edited my comment. Hopefully that helps you sick bastards.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby Sheogorath » Fri Mar 06, 2015 6:30 pm

they kept him in the closet

they kept him in the kangaroo pouch too long

what Australians don't have schools, they have dingo hunting groups
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby cmsellers » Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:41 pm

Number 1 makes the way my school handled kids with autism seem relatively reasonable.

Admittedly, it was still pretty awful for the following reasons:

  1. We weren't allowed to take a foreign language in middle school, because they put is in "success skills" instead. Since I was literally the only person in that class without a learning disability (included one other autistic kid), success skills was mix of academic support and watching movies. Eighth grade, they dropped all pretense of helping me and dubbed it "academic support."
    -
  2. I was taken out of advanced math despite being one of the best students in the class, for reasons that were never clear. I heard three different explanations: I flunked the final test (unlikely, I kick the asses of standardized tests), I was punishment for my propensity to tantrums, and they didn't want to stress me out. Based on the Cracked article, I'm now guessing that it was probably the school worried that my tantrums (which I almost never had in math; I loved math) would hold back the other students.
    -
  3. I was required to take two study halls a term in ninth grade, and one a term every term for the rest of high school. Not because my scores were bad, but because I'd had "success skills/academic support" in middle school and they were worried they would be bad without them.
    -
  4. They tried to make me take five years to finish high school. Somehow, despite losing a year of Spanish and a year of social skills, as well as more than 1/5 of my courses to study halls, I still fulfilled the graduation requirements and insisted on graduating on time. But they really wanted to make me take two study halls a semester so that I wouldn't be stressed out. Treating me like a retard stressed me out far worse.

On the other hand, my school did one thing very well: they let me take normal classes. Considering that from seventh through ninth grade I was prone to meltdowns (due to either group work or ambiguous instructions), they might very well have decided to put me in the special room with the Downs and severely autistic kid. Instead, they hired a paraprofessional to watch me full time. They told me that it was for my benefit, though I always thought it was for the benefit of the teachers. But I realize now that not having the teachers threaten to quit if they couldn't kick me out of their class was to my benefit.

Of course it still pisses me off that my school couldn't tell the difference between "learning disability" and "autism." (Many autistic kids do have learning disabilities, but that's a separate issue. My problems could all be described as social skills, motor skills, and sensory integration.)
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri Mar 06, 2015 11:19 pm

I have a theory about all this in that it's due to either one of 3 things:

1. All of this is due to America's seemingly cultural inability to deal with negativity. I already discussed this at length in the Cracked comment section, so I'm just going to spoiler it:
Spoiler: show
A lot of this can be explained by this sort of cultural disconnect Americans have with the concept of negativity. It's basically similar to how in the collective consciousness of America, prison is for purposes of revenge rather than rehabilitation, and all stuff involving victim blaming. So, according to this way of thinking:

Of course kids should be arrested for breaking minor school rules. Breaking rules is bad, which is negative, so obviously they should be punished. Which is also why kids should be arrested for absence, dropping out, and truancy. Who cares if it's due to family issues or whatever, those things aren't positive! Bad!

Of course we should shame the fat kids, too much fat can be a bad thing. Bad things are negative, therefore bad! Fatso!

AP course are more advanced, therefore cover more things. AP History would cover more things, which might put America in a bad light! Also, the existence of more advanced courses might hurt another student's self esteem, which would be bad!

Of course, we hide away and mistreat the special ed kids! Being mentally challenged or physical disabled doesn't have positive connotations! Haven't you seen the movies My Left Foot, The Theory of Everything, and Temple Grandin? That shit's depressing, which is negative, therefore bad!


2. They suffer from PWoT Syndrome (Basically they resent that they have to work or teach in order to work or teach and resent that they can't just be making money off of binge watching netflix and eating cheetohs in their underwear all day, because , quite frankly, they either just no longer give a shit, or just never gave a shit in the first place).

3. They just can't deal with stress in a reasonable manner.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat Mar 07, 2015 1:36 am

I read the article and not one of the programs were feel-good programs, at all! Shame Cracked, shame on you.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby DomaDoma » Sat Mar 07, 2015 3:27 am

So, regarding the AP courses: what, exactly, is the distinction between that and "accelerated"? Because accelerated was always open to all comers, and the whole class did pretty well at it to my recollection. Is the difference that accelerated starts from something relatively bare-bones before going to the stuff that's more advanced than the standard class?
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby Andropov4 » Sat Mar 07, 2015 3:30 am

AP courses (and exams, which you don't actually have to have taken the course to attempt) are administered by the College Board and will get you college credit at virtually any American college or university. Accelerated courses can mean any number of things, including getting dual credit that may or may not transfer from a partner college or university.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby DomaDoma » Sat Mar 07, 2015 3:49 am

I just meant in terms of what you actually learn in the class, not what certificate you get from it.

While we're there: if there's any feel-good school program with horrifying consequences, it's this insistence that absolutely everyone goes to college, particularly when prioritized over their learning things in the previous twelve years. If you don't want to be a lawyer, an engineer, or any other specialist who actually needs years of formal study, you're probably getting an hourly job with or without the BA; might as well study anthropology on your own time and from a decently-priced bookstore.
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Re: 5 Feel-Good School Programs With Horrifying...

Postby cmsellers » Sat Mar 07, 2015 3:50 am

DomaDoma wrote:So, regarding the AP courses: what, exactly, is the distinction between that and "accelerated"? Because accelerated was always open to all comers, and the whole class did pretty well at it to my recollection. Is the difference that accelerated starts from something relatively bare-bones before going to the stuff that's more advanced than the standard class?

AP has a curriculum which is set by the College Board to be equivalent to a college course.
I assume that "accelerated" at your school was like "honors" at my school. Each honors course would add .5 to the grade for that course, while each AP course would add 1, making it possible to get a GPA in excess of 4.0.

Regular courses were called "college prep" but it was understood that if you wanted to go to college you would take at least the honors courses whenever available. This lead to honors courses being filled with students who were there because their parents made them take those courses, and were thus usually designed around the lowest common denominator. Nowhere was this clearer than in honors Spanish, which was full of kids who took Spanish because it was supposed to be easy, and honors because their parents wouldn't let them take college prep.

I only took one AP course: AP Environmental Science, and it was a mess. Though the College Board sets the curriculum, they don't spoon feed it to teachers. My teacher thus had only designed the curriculum for half the course, and was waiting until he got funding to design the second half. Thus the first half of the course was moderately hard, while the second half was ridiculously easy, as he basically just went over the book. The test only mattered if you were going to use the course as college credit, and since I didn't plan to and I think there was a fee, I'm pretty sure I didn't take it.

The only other AP courses my school offered were languages, calculus, biology, and European History. I was ineligible for Spanish and calculus (only possible if you started Spanish in middle school and were on the accelerated math track), I didn't want to take another biology course, and the woman who taught AP Euro was an idiot (I'd had American History with her and that's a story of its own), so I didn't take any other AP courses, which might have been a good thing, if AP Enviro was anything to go by.

Amusingly, I did take an actual college course in high school, over the summer, and it was easier than several of my (non-AP) high school courses, as were several courses when I actually got to college.
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