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Children can teach us a thing or two about `special education'
By Ann Bauer
Published September 12, 2005
Last spring, a friend called me to complain about what she saw as inequity at her child's school.
"Five of the students in Emma's class are pulled out for help in reading, three for math," she said. "Meanwhile, my child is bored. Next fall, I'm going to go in and demand equal time for the smart kids. It's only fair."
I paused, took a deep breath, and struggled not to say something I would regret.
I am the mother of a child who receives special education services; another who is at the top of his class every year, enrolled in both advanced placement and international baccalaureate courses; and a third who toes a straight line down the middle of the academic road, equally gifted in athletics, academics and the arts. Were you to ask me today which of my children is the "smartest," I'd be hard-pressed to say.
I am not naive.
Clearly my middle child--the one who has been singled out for praise and academic honors each year--is the most skilled at traditional learning.
Back when he was in the 1st grade, a group of parents in our community formed a task force to create a gifted-and-talented program. My son's teacher asked me to participate, reminding me that I was active in special-education circles, making certain my oldest child, who had been diagnosed with autism, received the services he was due. This was no different, the teacher said. My younger son needed more stimulation and individualized lesson plans.
Her argument was convincing, and I attended the first parent meeting with a feeling of righteousness. But almost immediately upon walking into the school library, I was suspicious. Everyone there was poised and impeccably dressed. When I scanned the room, I saw only white faces, though we were in a school district just outside Minneapolis where diversity was at a healthy 35 percent.
Then a woman stood to introduce herself, to define the mission of the group and give a brief statement.
"We know, of course, that raising a truly gifted child is the most difficult challenge any parent can face," she began.
And I walked out the door.
What she said was simply false and full of an indefensible pride. I am the mother of what she would define as a "truly" gifted child; raising him and teaching him is so easy, a herd of bison could do it. As long as they kept him warm and gave him enough milk to drink, he would thrive and learn, soaking in every sight and sound and experience and turning it, with something like an alchemist's touch, into a valuable nugget of information.
"Everything was a branching sort of learning experience for my daughter," another friend, the mother of a high-achieving now-adult child, confirmed. "If I took her to Children's Theatre, she'd spend the next two weeks writing her own play, designing costumes, casting roles, printing out tickets. ... All on her own, she'd turn that two hours into a mini-workshop."
My older son--math wizard, chess champion, speaker of three languages--would never do such a thing. Brilliant as he is, he struggles when it comes to transferring "data" from one area to another (applying math concepts to a construction process, for instance, or using his expansive vocabulary to write a poem).
I imagine his brain as a storage unit, like those old-fashioned desks that have dozens of tiny, individual drawers. It is his nature to keep each byte of learning in its own compartment, rendering them all but useless.
Lucky for him, and for us, there are people in our public schools who can help him loosen his mind and allow the thoughts to mingle.
Never mind the social good, the payoff that comes of helping people with autism conform to our society's arbitrary and often nonsensical ways. There is value, too, for the talented or typical child.
I do worry about the plight of accelerated students. Everything comes so easily; they are in danger of becoming careless with their gifts and filled with hubris, like those parents on whose meeting I walked out. But I believe this is less likely in the case of my gifted child, because he has had the benefit of loving his brother.
When my boys were 6 and 4, and I was hugely pregnant with their sister, I became determined to teach my older son, newly diagnosed with autism, to tie his shoes.
It was a summer day, wet and warm. I was hunched over him, on the steps of the mudroom at the back of our house. He held the laces and made perfect loops, but each time he tried to cross them they fell long and limp in his hands.
After an hour, we were both in tears. It had started to rain, a sheet of solid gray that made noon into night. Finally, I wrenched the door open and threw the shoes into the back yard.
Then I looked up and saw my younger son standing in the kitchen, holding onto a book, wire-rimmed glasses glinting in the overhead light. He set his book down, squeezed past us on the stairs and slipped outside. A moment later, he came back and handed me the shoes. "He'll need these," he said simply. "They shouldn't get wet."
It is a sense of humanity that cannot be taught, and surely his greatest gift.
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Ann Bauer is the author of the novel "A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards."
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
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