I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; the Purpose and Promise of Special Education

Our government expects all children in public schools to achieve an arbitrary level of expertise in a select number of academic subjects. This expectation extends to children facing any and all physical, mental and emotional challenges. Special Education may have performed great deeds in the past, but it would be a mistake to waste the time and effort of Special Education students and personnel on this wild ride.

I entered Special Education about the time the first Federal Special Education Law, Public Law 94.142, (In it's current form called IDEA) had to be implemented. Public Schools had provided services for the disabled previous to the law’s implementation, but now it was mandatory across the country to provide a Free, Appropriate, Public Education to students with disabilities.

Special Education teachers were considered akin to Florence Nightingale.
We were willing to go in and work with the students that no one else wanted. Our job was to provide these children with an education. No one thought that we would cure retardation or learning disabilities. No one expected us to make the blind to see or the deaf hear. We were teachers. We were to teach the blind to read, write, and do arithmetic. We were to teach the retarded to take care of themselves, hold down a job, and live in the world. We were to assist the learning disabled in overcoming their weaknesses by using their strengths.

Over the years, we became experts in our fields. We developed new techniques and methodologies. We developed a deeper understanding of the variations in brain functioning associated with various disabilities. We found that many children were indeed “differently abled.”

Now children who were were considered “Trainable” as opposed to “Educable” (TMH and EMH respectively), were learning to read and write. Children who might have been diagnosed as retarded in the past could now be understood as learning disabled. Early Intervention and Early Childhood Education were helping children overcome developmental delays and speech problems that could have turned into learning disabilities. Parents were grateful for what we did.

Over the years the expectation of rehabilitation has become the norm for Special Educators.

At the same time that educators were improving the academic outcomes for children with disabilities, medical science was discovering ways to save people who previously would have died. Premature babies were surviving at smaller and smaller birth weights. Traumatic Brain Injuries were no longer fatal. With enough medical intervention many lives could be saved, with no consideration of the quality of life. So after all the progress we have made in improving the outcomes for children with disabilities, we are now faced with new challenges created by medical science.

In my 30 year career I have worked with two children each of whom did not have a brain. One child contracted a herpes virus at birth which destroyed his brain. He required a roomful of machines to live, but he did live for eight years. The other child was anacephalic, born without a brain. When she passed away at the age of two the doctors said no one had ever lived that long with that condition.

There is a lot we can do to overcome problems while the brain is developing. We can do a little to overcome a bad home situation. There is nothing we can do to change genetics. We can’t cure a learning disability. Children going through emotional trauma cannot be made to learn. We can’t reverse brain damage.

If you lose your arm we can teach you to do things with your other arm. We can show you how to compensate for your lost arm. We cannot give you your arm back.

If you have a learning problem, we can teach you in different ways. We can help you use your strengths to compensate for your weaknesses. We can provide a supportive environment. But we cannot make you a different person. Frankly, I think that is a good thing.

It takes all kinds of people to make a world. We need farmers and scientists, artists and mathematicians, musicians and inventors.

I cannot walk in a parent’s shoes. I see the pain, I see the grief, I see the denial, and I see the anger. What I want to see is the love.

When I see the anxiety of the parents of a child with Autism, I know what they are really thinking is, “Will these professionals with all their book knowledge, be able to see beyond the label to the wonderful child I know and love.” When a parent loves a child with all the child’s problems, when they can accept the child even if nothing gets better, then living can begin.

I have heard and experienced many poignant stories in my career. One of them is the story of a young couple expecting a second child. The child is born with the entire back of his head open. There is no bone protecting his brain and the skin is open as well. The parents are told the child will soon die and they are left to be with the child alone. Four hours later the child is still alive and the parents are unsure what to do. The doctors recommend that they care for the child and see what happens. The head is left to heal on its own. I met the child as he was approaching his third birthday. He was able to move around his environment by rolling. He could hold objects and act on them. He was considered blind but I saw him fuss and cry when he saw a favorite toy while visiting a new school. Several years later I talked to his mother. He was attending a special school and making progress. His mother was not planning for college, but she loved him just the way he was every day of his life.

Schools cannot promise you a perfect child. Schools can see each child as an individual. Children are not test scores. Children are human beings with all the success and failure that being human entails. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Special Education. So I am looking to the Special Educators of this nation to stand up and speak for the children. When it comes to standardized testing of Special Education students, just say "No."