Posts by giovanni tiso
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Bart Janssen,
If you want you can reason it this way. I'm being selfish because I want NZ to have a better economy and social structure - I will benefit from that as much as every one else will benefit
I'm highly sceptical. Even if many people could be persuaded that this is the right way of thinking, it would still amount to a pretty crude economism. These campaigns work - as the one on marriage equality did, as the Basaglia reform in Italy did, as the battles for civil rights did - when they create a moral imperative. It starts with bringing together a few people who care a lot about the issue and you make your case until you've convinced enough people inside and outside of politics proper that there is an injustice that needs to be urgently remedied.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Things are slowly getting better nationwide and there are more and more welcoming schools with inclusive practices.
Oh, boy...
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Hilary Stace,
This might offend those activist fathers and friends on this thread and those who I know personally
None taken whatsoever. I'm with you on this one, advocacy in my (limited) experience is still expected more of mothers than of fathers, and has more power (for instance in the media) because it is supposed to be coming from the quasi-mystical place of motherly love, which still has a firm grip on the collective imaginary.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I'm happy to pay more tax to educate Gio's children!
My kids are fine, though, that's the thing - to echo what others have said. If we write on this board chances are we're the lucky ones.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to George Darroch,
What does that template look like? And who would have the social and political resources to make that happen?
To put it as simply as I can, it involves a very robust framework for establishing and protecting the rights of mentally ill individuals, alongside very stringent duty-of-care requirements for the organizations that provide them with treatment and social services. Underlying these is a philosophy of care from the psychiatric profession that stresses autonomy over intervention and psychotherapy over the use of drugs (which is not to say that drugs aren't used, of course). Whether we have the social and political resources to make that happen here, it's harder to say. The mental health reforms in this country were vastly less successful, this has to be said.
What I would say we urgently need is for people in the profession - and not just disabled (or mentally ill) people and their families - to come on board. Advocacy has to include them and in this respect the gagging of public servants is a real obstacle to progress.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to George Darroch,
I don't think it's going to be enough to have a half-hearted promise from this or the next Minister of Education to increase funding within the current model
They're not even doing that. Inclusion is now one of the three strategic focus areas of the Ministry of Education - alongside the achievement of Maori and Pasifika students - but this focus has no funding attached. However I agree that increasing the funding within the current model will never lead to real change.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Sacha,
Okay, I must not be reading you right. Apologies.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Bart Janssen,
That does kind of help his performance :).
He consistently meets the national standard in aliveness.
I get that. Like I said your argument is correct. But I don't believe it is an argument that can result in a change in policy. Neither Nat nor Lab have shown any signs of doing what's right just 'cos. Instead they both respond to arguments that target revenue and/or cost, functionally both parties are simple minded accountants.
I'm not terribly interested in working with them. What's needed is a revolution. I have my personal model for this, which is the radical reform of the mental health sector in Italy in the 1970s. No reason why we couldn't demand a change of that magnitude.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Bart Janssen,
It is CHEAPER for the country to spend extra money to educate for the dozen or so years that a person receives education than to have to provide more support for the rest of their lives.
I don't like this argument. If for no other reason that it justifies not supporting the work or education choices of disabled adults, on the basis that by then they are a lost cause. I don't want the state to educate my daughter so she can become a productive member of society and cost less to the taxpayer in the long run. I want the state to educate my daughter because she has the right to an education just like everybody else. It's about social opportunity, not economic efficiency.
But the ONLY reason for wanting your child to have a teacher aide is to allow your child to perform better. Isn't that we want our parents to do? What possible personal gain is there for the parent?
We have two neurotypical children with no special learning needs. Are you suggesting they would benefit from having a teacher aide? I really don't think they would. (In fact one of them has a teacher aide due to a medical condition and we've been pretty clear about the fact she shouldn't interfere with his education. Just check he stays alive.)
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Sacha,
Because resources are not unlimited and all needs are not currently being met.
Sacha I love you but this sentence right here? It makes no sense. The fact that all needs are not currently being met is the crisis that should make us rethink how we distribute resources. And to say that resources are not unlimited is tantamount to saying that resources need to be capped, which I thought you were against. The reality is that we treat a lot of resources as if they were unlimited even in the absence of crises. It's true that the money comes from somewhere else, but that is an issue of overall political priorities, not of priorities within disability education. We could spend less on roads, less on private schools, less to bail out finance companies, less on film industry subsidies - so long as we made the political decision of regarding equity of outcomes in education more important than or at least as important as those other things.