I really am amazed how inadequate our support systems are, especially for our “troubled” students. The guidance counselor would “fit my students” into their schedule. Sometimes that was just a few times a month. And these are children who needed professional help. We can spend money on tests, but people like Bloomberg are threatening to fire guidance counselors when most schools need more than one. Currently many GC and psychologists are working on split sessions in more than one school. That is just so wrong.
I see what my own niece is going through with her son, and despite all her pleas, all he ever got was out-patient services. It wasn’t until he was 17 that he was hospitalized, but it was too late. They let him out after a few months and nothing changed. It was also my niece who fought the high school administrators and district to get teachers trained on his condition. They were finally trained, and many teachers told her it helped. Now he is 18 and considered an adult. And my niece has very little recourse. He now has more rights due to his age than his condition. He feels hopeless and considers himself a loser. It’s really sad. And I pray he never, ever feels so hopeless or angry that he will take his frustration out on others.
btw, not all states have laws where people have to be vetted before they can buy a gun. In many states you can pick up a gun at the same place you just bought household appliances and toys.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Better support systems for troubled students and adults.
You can make a pretty good case that the more we focus on test scores and academic “achievement” over everything else, the more the system churns out alienated individuals who sometimes act in horrific ways.
True education reform would mean teaching to the whole child, not just the part that takes tests.
That means teaching to the heart as well as the mind. That means social and emotional learning. That means community-building. That means helping kids and adults to see their inter-connectedness and interdependence with each other rather than the current notion that we’re in a Darwinian “race to the top” with a few winners and lots of losers.
That we are seeing more and more of these kinds of horrific acts from individuals is a sign that something is seriously wrong with our society, our culture, our values, our nation – with us.
Thomas Merton said the following:
“We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.”
I truly believe that the more we give our political, economic and education systems over to people who value nothing more than sleek efficiency, utility and material wealth and power, we will continue to see horrific acts such as what we saw yesterday.
Guns are part of the problem, yes – but they’re just the last piece of the problem.
The rot of the sickness goes much, much deeper than that.
Individuals who shoot six year olds in a school or movie goers at a Batman movie don’t just drop down from space.
They’re created by society – our society.
We have the ability and the tools to heal many of these kinds of people before they act in such horrific ways, but we do not provide the resources to do so.
We do not make social and emotional learning a priority.
Not all emotional problems are created by society. My nephew suffered from seizures as a young child. As a teacher, I noticed his behavior was inappropriate when he was 4. The family thought he would grow out of it. When he was in elementary school, I told my niece to have him evaluated. The school found “nothing” and of
course my niece had hope he would grow out of it again. But he didn’t. Then at 14 he started having tics and was diagnosed with Tourettes and a few other disorders. The bullies at school made fun of him, and the administrators did nothing to help him. My niece had to fight and he finally got a one-on-one aid to help him, but that only put another target on his back. When he threatened suicide and was hospitalized, he was always released. He had in-home therapy once a week, but then that service ran its course and was not renewed. He got art therapy which seemed to help until that wasn’t renewed either. He was very good at sports, but the basketball coach took the “connected” kids over him. Yet studies prove that kids with Tourettes do well when given an extra curricular activity like sports. The teachers didn’t understand him, so my niece fought for staff development through the Tourettes organization and finally got it. But that was like pulling teeth,
His senior year was spent at home and for a few months in a hospital. He lasted less than a week when he finally returned to school. And even with an IEP, he was suspended for outbursts. So they gave him homework to complete and the credit to graduate. I believe that was the district’s way of getting rid of him.
His problems weren’t caused by society, but they were sure escalated by society. Not only by soulless principals and a superintendent , but also by his state (New Jersey) where both hospitals and judges looked to save money rather than invest in his mental future.
They ban CDs with pictures they consider harmful, yet they sell semi-automatic rifles? Guess they don’t consider machines that can fire off deadly projectile into masses of people in mere seconds as harmful as an album cover by Prince or Kanye West.
Music doesn’t kill people, people obviously kill people…with music.
http://www.walmart.com/cp/Guns-Rifles-Ammunition/1088608
http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/34728.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2010/10/18/wal-mart-bans-new-kanye-album.html
As a music educator/music therapist, I am currently in my 5th year working in a day treatment facility for emotionally troubled kids. This is my first year at a new placement, before that I was working in mainstream settings from 2004-2012. I am much happier working in Special Ed because over the past 8 years I have come to realize that the DOE cares not to address students emotional needs in relation to how they do in the mainstream classroom. If a student acts out because they are living with (either diagnosed or undiagnosed) ODD, ADHD, OCD, or PDD, well that’s the teacher’s fault for not addressing the needs of the student in relation to the 25-30 students in the classroom. The elementary school classroom, has become a high octane pressure cooker where every administrator, teacher, and child is examined under a microscope against the abundance, or lack thereof, of high test scores, which translates to $$. Sure, if a student acts out in school, the teacher can send him/her to the counselor/psychologist/social worker who will have various levels of expertise in play/talk therapy- so it is a crapshoot if the child returns to the class with less or more disruptive behavior than when he left. I believe we need to have a discussion on gun control – academic gun control. High stakes testing is the gun and its aimed at wounding society as a whole. Let’s go back to the idea that we are teaching children, not widgets to fill in bubbles on a test. We cannot reverse this tragedy but we should examine it for any clues that indicate how we might prevent it from ever happening again.
Thank you so much for publishing this Diane. I was reading your reflections backwards, not forwards and responded to another reflection that was similar to mine. This means so much to me, and to all those comments above. My grand nephew lives in New Jersey and did not get the services he deserved. And as a NYC teacher, I had to fight with the guidance counselor to try to get my students outside services because her 10-minute sessions every other week weren’t helping. And my principal would find excuses not to follow up on many referrals, especially if they came from a graduating 5th grade class. She left that up to the middle school. In NYC parents can turn down the evaluation process unless a principal fights it. Not many do.
If you fight to get a kid services now, will you suddenly get negative observations to remind you that you can lose tenure at any time? Toe the line.
Wow you all hit the mark, thank you. I also think of my sweet, sweet students with Aspergers. They really would not have the ability to pull off such a thing.
I think Adam was misdiagnosed.
Psychologists and doctors are not going to tell you that your son/daughter in elementary school has a personality disorder or a narcissistic tendency.
Professionals sugar coat the message to soften the blow for parents. Everyone wants the Autism diagnosis, especially parents because these individuals will be provided for after age 21 with social programs. Can you blame them? Who will take care of their children after they’ve passed?
It’s just sad that you have to chase a diagnosis to cover another one that won’t be addressed by society.