Posts by giovanni tiso
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Sacha,
including how any priorities are determined and maintained.
I still don't know why you want to prioritise anything. We teach our children literacy and maths. Strategic goals very within that, but we don't prioritise literacy over maths, or teaching maths to some children over teaching maths to others. Why should the right to accessing the curriculum of some children have priority over the right of others?
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Sacha,
There will never be unlimited public budgets. How will prioritisation happen?
if you can show me how the right to education of one child is greater than the right to education of another child, then we'll prioritise between them. Otherwise, our priority may just have to be to build fewer motorways.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Sacha,
The medical profession should not be the gatekeepers of that.
Neither should ministry of education accountants, or NZQA bureaucrats.
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(Sometimes I like to tell people in Group Special Education that back home you can self-certify that your child has an intellectual disability and receive automatic support, just to see how they react. You can write that your child is autistic on the back of a napkin, I'll say for instance. Their response varies, but basically always seems to uncover the bizarre and completely unfounded assumption that there a lot of people out there who would fake an intellectual disability in their children just so they can get a teacher aide.)
But far too simple an idea.
Hah! Yes.
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My idea is pretty simple. You take a child, any child. I don't care if they have an officially recognised disability. You enrol them into their school and the teachers and the family assess what obstacles there are, if any, for that child to fully participate in the curriculum. It may be nothing, or it may be the need for ESL tuition, or there may be an environmental factor, or the child may have specific learning needs that require a speech therapist or a teaching assistant and so forth. Then you apply for that support, and the standard response from the ministry has to be that they give it to you, unless they can demonstrate that the support is not needed or is already provided. Put the onus on them, and make it hard and expensive for them to say no.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Saving pennies at the expense of pounds.
I'm not even sure you save pennies. I have the strongest suspicion that if we were to reverse the philosophy of our disability services - from the withdrawal of resources to the provision of resources - we'd waste a lot less money and spend no more than we are spending.
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Thank you Lilith. I meant it yesterday when I said I haven't been able to reread it yet. Got halfway through once. The things they make you do (or, worse, do to your child) just make the anger well up every time.
On the sunny side, our whole school is learning sign. That's how having a child who is different can benefit an entire community.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Sacha,
At its root, we need to regard disabled people as worthwhile. Which won't happen on its own.
We need to regard people as worthwhile. Which is even less likely to happen on its own.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Sacha,
Almost inhaled my coffee. If only.
Yeah, I know, it's thorny. Put it this way: schools have to be. So you can access the building. Not necessarily access education however.
They're called waiting lists - and private medical insurance. Most of the public are just not aware how much the public health system has been put into rationing mode over the last few years.
We try to contain overall costs. And yes, there are waiting lists. But not outright denial of essential services. Break a leg every Sunday morning playing rugby, they'll fix it every time.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Hilary Stace,
There is just not enough resourcing or understanding
There is plenty of understanding, which actually makes things worse. Nothing like the awareness that the people you are dealing with know exactly how much they are hurting you. The perversion is the capping of the resources. We don't set a limit of how many broken bones people can have - the hospital system will set them all - or on the number of cancers people can have. We also require that public buildings be physically accessible. Yet we cap the number of children who have full access to education.