Wampum

During the driveby on a Salon (social pages) writer and former blogger, who wrote about her children and their (and her) primary school experience and the "game" of dodgeball, I was too busy to write, and besides, it happend in another blog, and besides, the wench is read.

But I did think about it, and decided that dodgeball contains no internal lesson worth finite teaching time, and that ragging on a parent for looking at dodgeball critically was ... a big step down the slippery slope towards NCLB worship and rejecting parental involvement, critical involvement, in pedagogy, theory and practice.

But this week a Federal Magistrate ruled that School Administrative District 55 (Western York Co., Maine) has no duty to provide services to a sixth grader with Asperger's -- because her disability "does not interfere with her ability to learn."

As Phelan's parent (step-father, the role usually cast for Bella Legosi) I went to her schools (numerous social crash-and-burns), in particular, her last school before her diagnosis, and her flight from diagnosis and the wicked step-'rent and poxy sibs narratives. I recall going to Sister Edward Mary Kelleher at Catherine McCally High School, and to the Sister who taught math, and explaining that I'd no concerns about Phelan's academic abilities, only her social abilities. I recall doing just about the same at Troy Howard Middle School when we lived in Belfast, and the same at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School when we lived in Pepperell. Phelan's time at Pepperell's unremarkable K-6, and again at Portland's equally unremarkable Lincoln Middle School, was profoundly painful for her, and not something to repeat for want of thought.

As the parent of a bright, really bright social non-adapt, not yet diagnosed, or understood to be on the spectrum -- we were struggling to understand a deaf-or-autistic two-year-old -- schools existed only for social development, for peer modeling and interaction. Everything else was wasted, or simply irrelevant. On our walks Phelan reasoned through the standard diagnalization argument for the equivalent cardinality of the integers and the rationals, and discovered first and second countability -- the non-equivalence of, and vastly greater size of, the irrationals. She read Shakespeare. She sang like a lark. I hope she still does. We lost sight of Phelan two months into her 10th grade year.

As a parent of an Aspie, I don't think public schools exist for the purposes of running up good NCLB, or Maine Learning Results numbers. I don't think public schools exist to deliver content to kids who read encylopedias. I think public schools exist to deliver critical thinking skills, which isn't contained in encylopedias and a heck of a lot of adults and pre-adults, and one of the really important applications of critical thinking, right up there with gravity, sharp objects, moving bodies and consequences is thinking critically about social interactions.

David Cohen, employed as a Magistrate Judge by the U.S., isn't an Aspie 'rent, and he ruled that SAD 55 can watch without duty, other than offer a slot in their Gifted and Talented program, a student take her own life.

Maine's highest court takes up the case of a Falmouth Aspie who only sought access to the playground and socialization from that school district, which banned him for ... basically not being normal.

Do Aspies even have a right to try and figure out social dodgeball? Apparently not.

Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.