Voted Out Of Kindergarten: The Solution Is Vouchers

A five year old, probably with Asperger’s Syndrome but as yet undiagnosed, boy stays home after being voted out of his class by his classmates at the behest of his unapologetic teacher. Like the case of the woman harassing her daughter’s depressive friend via MySpace, this case is unfathomable. In fact, when I read about this last night, I didn’t blog about it. I just didn’t know how to respond to an example of such callous disregard and stupidity.

My son has Asperger’s Syndrome and he is indeed a challenge in the classroom–not because he’s a behavior problem but because he just requires extra help to stay on task, understand the assignment and decide what to do next. For a young child with Asperger’s Syndrome, the classroom is an overload of stimuli. So, depending on the school’s philosophy, the child might end up in Special Education with the mentally retarded and behavior problem children. The only problem is that the children with Asperger’s Syndrome have normal I.Q.s. and are often underestimated.

Teachers are frustrated because they have other children in the classroom that need to be taught. A lazy or immature or stupid teacher takes it out on the child when the problem can only be resolved with the school administration and parents. A good teacher manages and some dedicated teachers give extra time and view the special child as a challenge to be helped.

Parents are frustrated. If they get their child diagnosed, it often means medication and lowered academic expectations causing the child to fall behind. The average Asperger’s child graduates High School with a second grade education. In fact, around sixth grade, many of these children fall irreparably behind but not for lack of intelligence. This is a towering educational failure with life-long implications for the child.

What many of these children need, but rarely get, is one-on-one intensive intervention in the early educational years gradually phasing it out as the child grows. This is expensive, true. But it is far cheaper than having a child on life-long disability because he hasn’t been taught the skills to work and get through the day.

The Barton’s, like many families, didn’t get their child diagnosed until the child is in school and they’re still working on it. The infant and toddler and pre-school development of the child is uneven but normal enough to not raise flags with parents and pediatricians. Stick the child in an over-stimulating environment where constant demands are made and suddenly, everyone knows something is wrong. This is a traumatic time for parents. It is an upsetting one for teachers. No one likes to bear this news.

Another thing to consider: many five year olds are emotionally immature or developmentally uneven. Some can read. Some can’t. Some can count. Some can’t. Some can sit still. Some can’t. Kindergarten isn’t about heavy duty academics, so how is this child “disrupting” the education of others as some have suggested?

Wendy Portillo, the child’s teacher, put Alex Barton a five year old, in front of his classmates and asked each child to say something that annoyed them about the child. They then voted whether or not to keep him in the class. Only two out of the fourteen children voted to keep him in the room, but the children are five and hardly have an understanding of what they were being asked. Imagine, for a moment, a teacher doing this to your child. It is cruel beyond all comprehension.

Melissa Barton, Alex’s mom, was just lucky that her son is verbal enough that he could tell her what happened. Many children with Asperger’s and Autism, including my son, have great difficulty with expressive language. Something like this could happen to an Autistic child and his parents would never know.

The challenge of educating bright, but developmentally different children, is not going away. For whatever reason, the numbers of these children are still increasing. Parents, teachers and school districts need to stop living in denial.

I saw one teacher comment saying that parents should “take their own medicine” and be responsible for teaching their own child. Well, I did that this last year with my son. The modifications made for him here at home helped him learn, but I still had to pay my taxes so the “normal” kids can go to school. Implement vouchers. Now. I would gladly pull my child out of public school for the rest of his education, but the way it stands now, my only choice is to educate my son on my own dime while paying taxes so teachers can teach the “easy” kids. The teacher needs to decide whether she supports her own union. Vouchers and educational reform would be a solution to this. Choice. Parents could vote with their money. No doubt, schools and teachers that catered to special kids would pop up. Now, this is a way to put democracy in action, teachers. Voting is great when the person being voted on isn’t the teacher. That’s just a little too uncomfortable.

Bottom line, I hope Ms. Barton sues the teacher and the school. This outrage is just the most extreme version of a system that teaches to the mean and is inept at educating those who fall outside of a very narrow normal.

More at Joanne Jacobs via Instapundit. The comments are illuminating. As are the comments at the link above to the local newspaper.

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Goin’ Shoppin’ But Not At Kroger

When I’m not living the glamorous blogging life, I’m doing things that Hollywood stars do–like grocery shopping. Remember in December of 2005, holy mother of peanut butter I cannot believe that I’ve been blogging for that long (what the hell is wrong with me?) when Kroger lost me as a customer? The straw was a smile, or rather the lack of one, but it was hardly the only thing.

Yes, I’m still an H.E.B. Central Market shopper. It’s been two and half years now. Produce. Good. Meat. Good. Prices. Slit-my-throat-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me-bad. But it’s my own damn fault. I spend money on organic strawberries and indulge in unnecessary items like European, high-density butter.

Kim duToit talks about his Kroger experience. He’s a former grocery store consultant. His advice is good, but it makes sense, so I doubt anyone will listen. How is Kroger still in business?

Kim links to James Lileks who’s peeved with Chairman Bob. A thought occurs to me: One of the first rules of marketing is that if you’re ugly, don’t use your image. There is a corollary: If you’re boring or borderline scary, don’t use your image either. In the case Lileks highlights, the picture serves no useful purpose except maybe to make Chairman Bob’s mother proud. Otherwise, why are we looking at this dude’s mug?

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Women and Farting

Over at FoxNews there’s a very funny article titled “15 Reasons Why She’s Not In The Mood“. Here’s #2:

She’s feels gassy.

That’s right. Women toot too. And whether she sounds like a trumpet or is being held hostage by a battle of bad gas, she’s feeling like a walking fart pillow. Even when she wants your touch, if her cherry bomb self feels more like a bloated whale than babe, nobody is seeing any action. This is definitely one of those proceed-at-your-own-risk situations.

Women and gas. It’s an unmentionable. And yet, and I know this is shocking, women fart. Most women, though, would prefer that you didn’t know this.

I’ll use me as an example as embarrassing as this will be. When I was pregnant with the twins, after a night hanging out with our best friends, I bent over to tie my shoes and accidentally tooted. It was audible. The room was silent. Everyone heard it and reflexively turned my direction. It was like time slowed down. My friend Jay crashed in with conversation like nothing had happened, but it had happened and there was no turning back and if it hadn’t been me, I would have been laughing and they probably did as soon as I left the house. Now, I know for a fact that had one of the guys farted either silently or audibly, everyone would have been howling in protest and laughter both and he wouldn’t be embarrassed at all.

Would being gassy stop a man from sex? Um, I don’t think so. Would the fear of being squished, lest a fart escape interfere with a man’s sex drive? I can’t imagine it. It does with women. And face it men, you don’t really like your woman farting, either. It isn’t ladylike.

The biological differences start early: my baby daughter burst into tears at two weeks old when she heard her father burp for the first time. My baby son, at about 8 months, bugged out his eyes in surprise and then laughed uproariously the first time he connected his farting with his body. At three, he already tries to burp as many times in a row as possible–cheered on by his older siblings, of course.

I guess we aren’t really equal, after all. We will know women have equal status when they can fart with impunity. Or maybe, women will be equal when men are just as embarrassed about farting as women are. Gender unfairness marches on.*

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

*Yes, I’m joking.

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Scott McClellan’s Loyalty In Doubt

Scott McClellan joins Dick Morris as a disloyal, self-serving former staffer. Who ever likes a “snitch” as Drudge says? He better enjoy his moment in the sun. Wait, what am I saying? The MSM loves a turncoat. He’ll probably get his own TV show.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

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On Karma

In my last post I asked, “how am I going to sleep with my blood pressure this high?” The answer: I’m not. So what to do but come up with more spleen venting for my beloved readers. Now, we’ve already established that I’m thoroughly pissed off and it’s probably a truism that one should not drive while intoxicated nor blog while infuriated, but hey, I live on the edge, baby. So here goes….

Rachel Lucas discusses Karma–you know, what goes around comes around–and flaming fucknozzles. Go read for yourself, but she makes an interesting point:

I’m sure the 80,000 dead people got their just desserts for personally not being nice to the Dalai Lama. He’s a friend of Sharon’s! You be NICE, peasants! Or karma will destroy you and everything you own.

Technically, Karma’s force follows you into the next life, according to Webster, thus Al Gore will be coming back as a bloated dung beetle next time around (what could be better energetically speaking?):

the force generated by a person’s actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence

Anyway, what most dillweeds use as Karma they usually meld with the biblical parable of reaping and sowing ala Galatians 6:7 and they get both wrong:

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature^[a]will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

And still, this is ultimate judgment. As in, a scumbag can prance through life pretty much unscathed and still get it in the afterlife. In this life, shit happens to everyone. (Matthew 5:45) Ecclesiastes 9:11 says it best:

I saw something else under the sun. The race isn’t [won] by fast runners, or the battle by heroes. Wise people don’t necessarily have food. Intelligent people don’t necessarily have riches, and skilled people don’t necessarily receive special treatment. But time and unpredictable events overtake all of them.

Shit. Happens. Deal. With. It.

Now some people (my friend’s ex-husband) are such assholes that their actions repeatedly reap asshole consequences (getting fired over and over and over). Is that Karma? Is that God’s hand? I think it’s just being an asshole and people hating you.

This idea causes people discomfort. Christians often say “God willing” as some sort of mantra. Muslims say “insh’allah” (if Allah wills). Mexicans say “manana”. Oh wait, that means tomorrow. Bottom line, too many people wait around as an excuse to not take responsibility for where their life is now. They wait so they came blame God if things don’t go right.

And at the other end of the spectrum, New Agers believe that everything in the universe, big “U”, is a function of the person’s beliefs. Reality itself bends to our own personal will. So, the Chinese people, on some level wanted or believed they deserved this earthquake and the earthquake manifested. Ditto the people of Myanmar. And in that case, the people believed bad Karmic actions happened and were manifested.

I’m rereading a book by Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your Life which is a precurser to The Secret. A mentor suggested I read it when I was in college and I did and I thought it was unmitigated crap. Well, age and life experiences can moderate our perspective and a friend suggested I read it again. Here’s the essence of the book, summed up in the first sentence of the first chapter:

And by all, Ms. Hay means all. Even the abuse you took as a kid, on some level, you’re responsible for. The earthquake in China, the people are responsible for. The cyclone in Myanmar, the people are responsible for. The Holocaust, the Jewish people are responsible for. The ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, the people are responsible for. And on and on… This seems patently absurd. Shit doesn’t just happen, people want shit to happen so it happens.

This thought process misses a tiny distinction: rather than responsibility for all experiences, after a certain age, we are responsible for our reaction to all our experiences. That is, how we interpret and respond to our experiences is our responsibility, but owning every experience takes away the free will of all the other people around. It makes no sense. And this warped thinking has infected the brains of far too many people and it has real world consequences. Ironically, the philosophy of God micromanaging isn’t so far from the individual (we are all God) micromanaging life–we are under no obligation to do anything because nothing is in our control on the one hand or we only control our own experience on the other. Either way, everyone else is on their own–either God will take care of it or the poor sufferer will. And in the Western world, where many don’t suffer much at all, the all-consuming god-self-complex means taking everything on because the world will fall apart if my caring action isn’t taken right now!

Dumbasses like Sharon Stone contemplate the un-niceness of leaders rather than dip into their significant pile of dough when people are dying of misery because they are morally obtuse and hide their selfishness in psychobabble religion. It seems self-evident that you reach out and help people who need help whether you like their leaders’ political positions or not. The people have nothing, absolutely zip, to say about Mother Nature’s wrath. And the Chinese people have nearly zip to say about their communist government. They do what they are told which is why they’re so pissed about their one-child policy. Scores of thousands of people are childless now, because of the earthquake and because of their government’s policies. Part of this is time and chance; part of this is stupid.

Louise Hay is right about one thing: we create beliefs and live our lives based on these beliefs. So now, people make decisions based on some swirling mix of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Global Warming and psychology with little understanding of any of these religions and no understanding of science. The end result is do-nothing, feel-good, Selfism. Yes, I believe that’s a new word and even if it’s not, here’s my definition: Selfism has one tenet–I am right because I care.

If Selfism sounds a lot like liberalism, you’ve hit the jackpot. It’s not about actions. It’s not about measurable outcomes. It’s not about results. It’s not about facts. It’s not about objective reality. It’s not about truth. It’s about feelings. It’s about intent. It’s about words. It’s about subjective experience. It’s about my truth.

Karma in Sanskrit means action. It is what a person does that results in their placement for the next life. It’s not how good-intentioned a person was. And this is a very Christian concept, too. Matthew 25:35-46 is well-worth reading. In fact, the whole chapter isn’t about sitting on your butt waiting, but getting out there and doing. A Christian is known by his fruits…what he does–mostly what he does for others and what he does with what he is given.

Nature abhors a vacuum. And in the vacuum that has become the Western world’s secular soil all sorts of peculiar ideologies are sprouting up and the unifying theme is narcissism. Selfism is a very popular religion.

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FLDS’s Culture of Depravity and CPS’ Culture of Duplicity And I’m Sick of Kids Being Harmed By Those Who are Supposed To Help

Fox News shares these absolutely disgusting pictures of FLDS “spiritual leader” Warren Jeffs spiritually sticking his tongue down the child-wife of his “spiritual marriage”. No, he and his followers aren’t pedophiles. No way.

Now, I know that Texas social workers can behave badly. In fact, any agent of the state I suspect almost as a matter of course. I’m just saying that it’s possible that funky stuff is going down in that compound and that sending girls back there will be endangering them. The fact that Texas CPS acts above the law and family courts in general have no constraints engenders doubt even in legitimate cases.

Children will be harmed because of this mess and if f*cking pisses me off. Man, I’m in a bad mood and this kind of shit makes me even more irritated. Oh, and in case American kids are not sexed up enough, LL Cool J is here to help. I thought that guy was supposedly a Christian. Oh, and here’s more irritation: imagine being forced to have only one kid and the kid being crushed in a substandard government-built building. Some days I just want to smash some stupid skulls. This is one of those days. Damn. How am I going to sleep with my BP this high?

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Rotten kid?

Get the rotten kid’s blood checked for lead levels. I’m serious. I wonder how effective chelation therapy is for this problem and if there are any long-term studies correlating reduced violent crime and lead removal. One thing that can be done at home is to give the lead something to compete with (this is called competitive inhibition)–for example calcium or iron. (Many lead poisoned kids are deficient in iron.)

I do know that William Walsh, PhD. has made his life’s work biochemical imbalances and his studies have included the prison population. He also works with schizophrenics and autistic children.

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Consumer mood low

Depressed consumer mood makes no sense considering Barack Obama sits on the threshold of saving us. I don’t get it.

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Another Obama advisor speaks his truth

Anti-semitism is all around Obama and yet even his aura is untouched by the evil.

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"Don’t take this the wrong way…."

Don’t you love the conversations that include phrases like this: “Don’t take this the wrong way” or:

“Why are you being so defensive?”

or

“I was just kidding. Man, can’t you take a joke?”

or

“I’m sorry if you were offended.“

or

“That’s a distraction.”

or

“You misunderstood.”

or

“Sweetie…….”

Any one of these phrases comes at you and you just know you’re in for it. Politicians are particularly adept at wielding these verbal swords. The point of the slicing and dicing is to end the discussion, circumvent argument and keep control of the dialogue.

Let’s just examine the phrase, “don’t take this the wrong way” as an example. What, exactly, is the wrong way? The way where the person on the receiving end thinks the person spouting the bilge is a jerk? The way in which the person venting hides behind the phrase because he is saying something hurtful and means it to be hurtful but doesn’t want the inconvenience of the recipient actually acting hurt? The way being that the person sharing his perspective is actually avoiding saying what he truly feels and says something shitty but qualifies it so he can attempt to make the other person look weak and lame instead of himself? Is that the way that’s “wrong”? This little phrase is verbal Jujitsu that gives the communicator carte blanche to say whatever is rolling around his head. Any response other than, “You’re absolutely right and furthermore your rightness is so right that it just highlights my wrongness”, is deemed “the wrong way” to take what has been said. How convenient!

It is called passive aggression. It is called controlling. It is bullshit.

Some people, politicians in particular, believe they can say whatever they like. They seem shocked when people actually question them and work very hard employing phrases like those cited above to ensure that the challenging never happens.

So Barack Obama can, with a straight face, claim that any unwanted question is “a distraction”. He can bully the press because he doesn’t want them questioning his wife’s public statements. He wants her to be able to use the press to get her message out, but he doesn’t want the press to question her statements so he hides behind the “leave my wife alone” defense.

Hillary and Bill have taken this modus operandi to an art form. This election cycle they are shocked and offended because, well, this questioning is just so new. Back in the day, their magnificence wasn’t ever questioned. They received blind adoration. Times have changed. And much to their chagrin, the press isn’t in their hip pocket. In fact, the press is in someone else’s hip pocket and the only thing standing in the way of what the press wants is Hillary Clinton. So the love fest is over. It’ so unfair when unfairness is pointed at her. It’s sexism!

Word to the wise: When those phrases are used on you, it feels so shitty because it is shitty. You’re being manipulated. And Americans are being manipulated by Obama and the media and would be manipulated by Clinton, too, if anyone was paying attention to her, but of course, they’re not.

It’s okay, sweetie. You’ll get used the manipulation. By the end of Obama’s term, you’ll come to love it.

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