Story of the Day 1/ 6/2010

This is yesterday’s story, but my son summed it so beautifully, in the car, this morning:
“Separate, but equal.”

You see, Aaron is deaf, but not dumb.

Sarah’s school has decided that it is best to be very conservative. They have decided that some of these modern changes just don’t’ fit in with what they are trying to accomplish. Like Brown vs. the Board of Education. Just too difficult to deal with.
So, they have decided to revive the Separate but Equal statute and apply it to Sarah.
She isn’t’ black, but she is deaf, and that is “bad” enough..

The teacher- the Geography teacher- will be showing a film for class. He has shown it every year for the past 6 years. It is wonderful. It perfectly fits in with what the students are learning. The history channel produced it. And it is not captioned.
So, he asked the interpreter what to do and the interpreter suggested that Sarah will leave the classroom and go to the resource room every day for a week. Because the film requires a week of classes to be shown in it’s entirety.
And she will sit in the other room without a geography teacher, and with a different film. He is looking for something on a similar topic, something that has captions. And she can take some notes. The students are supposed to do an assignment and write an essay about the film. Of course, her film won’t cover the same information, so he will change the topic of the essay for her.
After the week is over, they will allow her to return to the classroom.
He was pleased and told the interpreter that this was a good idea..
This film is very good and he doesn’t’ want the other students to not receive the benefit of viewing it as part of the curriculum. Certainly, some sort of film on a similar topic can be found that will be good enough for the deaf kid to view in that other room, somewhere else, with some teacher who is not a geography teacher. And, of course, she can take her own notes for her essay, while she is watching the film. That will be fine. This same teacher as given her a grade of zero on the occasion the students were required to take notes during another film. That is because she can’t write while she is reading the captions, or she misses the content of the film. And, to heck with where it says that note taking will be provided in her IEP. She will do just fine. Right?
And the important thing is that those other students will not need to miss this film, which is a very important part of the curriculum. And at the same time, they won’t have to be worried about making this accessible for that deaf kid which certainly isn’t a priority since she isn’t quite a person in the same sense that the other students are.

You know, they could probably let her stay in that other classroom for the rest of the year. Then they won’t have to be bothered by having her in the room, at all.

I am being mean. They are not quite as conservative as I have implied.
If she were black and not deaf, they would probably allow her to stay in the room.