Yet now, the ‘cuts’ are biting, and there’s fewer such staff to go around in mainstream education:
But in a mainstream school, a child is going to feel the full brunt of the downturn when a teacher they already only see every couple of weeks for half an hour leaves and is not replaced. Who will they turn to when they struggle in school? Who can their parents, grappling in the dark, turn to for reassurance and guidance? Who will tell their everyday teachers how to include them in lessons and how to tackle bullying?Who indeed?
Those new teachers entering my school had a lot to learn before they could do their job, but they were surrounded by experienced staff. And being bait in a school full of cruel teenagers is surely an impetus to quickly acquire new skills.Wait, what..?
You’re worried about bullying by other children of deaf children, but apparently the same thing directed at the non-deaf teachers is ‘character building’?
Hmm….
It is a time when parents might very well whisk their children out of mainstream schools and enroll them in the safe harbour specialist schools might provide. Except this option is no longer available for many children. Since education policy changed in favour of integration in the 1970s, deaf schools have slowly but surely closed down all over the UK, leaving just a handful still open.Perhaps it’s time that expensive, idealogical, failed policy of mainstream inclusion was scrapped, then?
You are forgetting Julia that to the 'Progressive' specialist schools are bad because they are encouraging segregation and treating some children as if they were different. It is the same ideology that closed down much of our grammar schools and leads to outrage (or worse) at the thought of private education and home schooling.
ReplyDelete'Perhaps it’s time that expensive, idealogical, failed policy of mainstream inclusion was scrapped, then?'
ReplyDeleteJulia, you're so spot on! This 'inclusive' baloney came from the Lefties in the first place, now they and their fellow-travellers are whingeing about it.
We've gone through this sequence of events so many times in so many areas, yet still these idiots want to call the tune.
But dozy bints apart, it does beg the question why it's taken for granted that so many teenagers (sorry, Dude, I meant Young People)
will be sadistic bullies.
Could this be the result of another Leftie sacrament: 'thou shalt not punish the wrong-doer'?
If deaf people can manage with support in mainstream schools, their shouldn't be any specialist deaf schools. People shouldn't be segregated or socially excluded just because they're deaf.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it is possible to maintain the specialist staff, by cutting the jobs of selfish greedy high earners.
None of this baloney has much to do with decent education for anyone. A good quarter are 'disabled' from what's on offer, probably by it. We'd do better with less school - but the sods have to be locked up somewhere for our peace of mind.
ReplyDelete"You are forgetting Julia that to the 'Progressive' specialist schools are bad because they are encouraging segregation and treating some children as if they were different."
ReplyDeleteThey are different.
In some ways, we are all 'different'. Perhaps if the progressives weren't so busy trying to blind themselves and everyone else to that, we could move forward.
Assuming that 'forward' is the direction they want to take...
"We've gone through this sequence of events so many times in so many areas, yet still these idiots want to call the tune."
Reinventing the wheel, over and over and over...
" People shouldn't be segregated or socially excluded just because they're deaf."
There's still only so much technology can do, and the cost (and disruption to others) needs to be factored in. In an ideal world, we'd have no problems, but we don't have one of those.
"None of this baloney has much to do with decent education for anyone"
Agreed. Perhaps fixing education itself would do more good in the long run?