Disabled Students: Virginia HB 389, Improved So As to Highlight a Potential Problem

Thanks to State Senator Carrico for the comments on HB 389 at the bottom of this post, which alerted me to the progress of Virginia House Bill 389. It's had an interesting history thus far. Here's the original text proposed by Delegate LaRock:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?161+ful+HB389

To which I commented:

http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2016/02/virginia-house-bill-389-just-right.html

That was my comment, not the official position of this web site. There are homeschoolers and Tea Parties that have in the past distrusted bills like HB 389 due to concern that, if state funds support alternative schooling one year, the state will move to dictate the curriculum content and other school policy matters next year. There are fiscal conservatives and Tea Parties that distrust anything that involves disbursing any state funds. I believe the potential problems with HB 389 (as proposed by Delegate LaRock) could be resolved; not everyone, even in the alternative school movement, agrees.

I knew David Peters well enough to stand by the claim that he would, during his lifetime, have wanted alternative schooling to be equally as available to less privileged children as it now is to our neighbors. I can't say, since the weather and her health were not conducive to meetings or long phone calls, that Grandma Bonnie Peters--his mother--would agree that state funding is the way to do that. This web site has aired points of disagreement between its founding members before, but I do respect her judgment.

So...HB 389 passed the House, but without Delegate Kilgore's vote. Well, his job is to represent the majority of his constituents. I'm not always convinced that they are right, but every year, when I identify points of disagreement with Delegate Kilgore, I have been convinced that the majority of his constituents are being represented. I even respect the man enough to consider the possibility that his judgment reflects his access to political information that I may not have, or that correspondents may not have. (That's why this web site has not aired more of those disagreements.)

And the fiscal conservatives seem to be the ones who threw in a drastic modification to HB 389. Look at it now!

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?161+ful+HB389H1

It's still a good bill, in some ways a better one, and I still support it...but I see one significant potential problem...not with the bill itself, but with the way it might work for one type of student and family.

There is some undeniable benefit in redefining a "qualified student" who can receive funding for an alternative education plan as a student with a "disability." The clear advantage is that this reduces the demand for such funding. Fiscal conservatives should be delighted. Another possible advantage is that it may slow down the retreat from public schools that may or may not be failing, giving these schools a chance to salvage themselves. An additional advantage, that I personally love, is that it creates a counterbalancing incentive for public schools not to declare every child whose parents let school staff get away with it either "attention-deficient" or "on the autistic spectrum."

There are schools, notoriously in Tennessee, where certain venal school employees appear to be using those "disability" labels as if they were no more than synonyms for "extrovert" and "introvert" respectively. They are not. It may soothe the egos of a few parents of genuinely brain-damaged children if their offspring are lumped together with every other child who ever learns something slowly or has a personality conflict with a teacher, but it's not actually helpful to the children.

Recalling the children anonymized here as Blair (the one who really is autistic), Tina (the one who has other perceptual handicaps and has been mislabelled autistic), and Chris (the basically normal one whose emotional growing pains caused different greedheads to mislabel him as both attention-deficient and autistic)...Blair hasn't had a lot of the opportunities and successes that Tina has, and Tina hasn't had a lot of the opportunities and successes that Chris has, and they never will. It's not kind to Blair or to his parents to suggest that Blair is in the same situation, or can benefit from the same learning plan or environment, as Chris. It won't help Chris or Tina find suitable jobs when they grow up, either, to suggest that either of them has ever had much in common with Blair.

Anyone who talks to Chris in a normal way, as distinct from the unique way greedhead school staff talk to children, can communicate with Chris. To communicate with Tina I have to choose different words, speak on different pitches, and repeat a lot, but I can affirm that Tina thinks the way other humans think--at least if they're very young, slow of sight, hard of hearing, sheltered, and slow learners. Communicating with Blair...some people think communicating with genuinely autistic humans is like communicating with cats. They are wrong. Blair's consciousness does not seem to me anything like the cats'. He's more like a possum, or maybe some more exotic animal that's even harder to domesticate.

You'd hire Chris in a minute if you were looking for someone strong, energetic, and intelligent, but not academic. You might hire Tina. You would not hire Blair; at some point we have to face the fact that whatever genuinely autistic people perceive is different enough from what the rest of us perceive that they can't be entrusted with jobs or money.

This brings me back to the memory of David Peters. He was officially classified as "gifted." During the legal battle over homeschooling rights, at some point he was tested and determined to be ready for college-level classes in English and general knowledge, but only for eighth or ninth grade math. (He was in grade seven at the time.) Ooohhh, what could this mean? If you were a friend, parent, or any reasonable observer, it meant a bright boy who'd always learned fast, read a lot of nonfiction and remembered what he'd read, talked with older kids and adults and remembered what he'd heard, but had never gone out of his way to work ahead of grade level in math. If you were the greedhead anti-homeschooling psychologist who talked to David Peters for one hour and then presumed to pronounce on the condition of his brain, it meant some sort of "learning disability" possibly associated with some sort of "neurological abnormality" that might even warrant psychiatric intervention!

That's the sort of student whose parents might be tempted, now, to think that the current form of HB 389 provides an easy solution to problems they may be having with a failing school. Just accept the greedheads' mislabelling of your child, and not only will your problems with the school system be over, but you may even get some extra money out of the deal...right?

Wrong, I say to parents in this situation. If you do accept a greedhead's misdiagnosis and affirm that any problem your child ever had was due to some sort of blurrily defined "disability," you're likely to be signing custody of your child over to social workers...which can be even worse than working with the school system. Your child may still be subjected to genuine brain damage, not to mention torturing pain, from the side effects of unnecessary experimental "medication" that some greedheads have touted as helping attention-deficient children focus and autistic children (theoretically) feel happier. Any disagreement between you and either your child or the social workers may still get your child placed in a foster home...see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for (obscene) details about the kind of thing that can and does happen to children with alleged mental "disabilities" in foster homes.



Young working parents may be tempted to accept theoretical brain damage as an explanation, perhaps depend on it as a solution, to almost any problem your child is likely to have. HB 389, if enacted into law, could add to the temptation. Resist. If your child is bored in a slow-paced class (as David Peters was) and, instead of working ahead of grade level in fifth grade math, concentrates on ways to get a tenured but abusive teacher removed from the school system (as David Peters did), your child may be creatively annoying, but s/he is brilliant, not brain-damaged. You need to set your child up for the future success s/he deserves, not for a future as a "disabled" ward of the Welfare State.

David Peters' parents were not wealthy, but they were dedicated enough to yank him out of the public school system the minute brain damage was mentioned. For other children whose families (and/or extended families) are equally dedicated, HB 389 presents no problems. A majority of the fiscal conservatives and Tea Parties I know in Virginia are in this category: if they have school-age children at all, they know whether their children are or are not disabled, and are dealing with their situations as seems appropriate. But I've been seeing some very ugly developments in Tennessee, with lower-income working parents who have eagerly accepted the state's "help" with problem children, and then had their children harmed, rather than helped--not so much by the state policy itself as by individual greedheads here and there.

So what I'm hoping this long post will accomplish is that those who've sent correspondence about HB 389 will follow through, and educate young parents about the real nature of "attention-deficit disorder" and autism as real disabilities that are not to be confused with ordinary personality differences and/or learning problems. Most of the learning problems children have are short-term problems with absorbing information. Some common reasons for these problems have to do with (a) the pace of a child's growth, or (b) lack of a mental "framework" the child will later use to absorb new information, or (c) resentment of being ordered to learn the information, or (d) cognitive dissonance, or (e) emotional reactions to life situations--all of which are vastly more common than real learning disabilities. Most children who aren't learning something one way may benefit either from having the material presented another way, or leaving the material alone for a year or two and learning it later. Relatively few children really have major mental disabilities, and when they do the problem is usually obvious long before anyone tries to teach these children to read or count.

(Can I throw in a link to a book Christian families should read? Sure, why not? Click this image to buy, not even the classic that made John Holt famous, but the updated version that reflects his correspondence with hundreds of successful teachers of problem children--including David Peters.)



It's important to acknowledge, and work with, major disabilities when they exist; expecting a genuinely attention-deficient or autistic child to learn anything in ordinary classes is like expecting someone to walk on a broken leg. But it's equally important not to try to exploit "help" for major disabilities where they do not exist; treating an ordinary mixed-up kid as if s/he were attention-deficient or autistic is like applying a cast to a healthy leg and immobilizing it for months.

Here's the official comment from Virginia State Senator Bill Carrico, District 40:

"

Thank you for your correspondence. It is always helpful to know how citizens of the 40th Senate district feel about legislative matters pending before the general assembly, so I am better able to represent you.

I look forward to supporting HB389 when it comes up for consideration in the Senate. I appreciate you taking the time to share your views on this important issue with me.

Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about issues important to you.

Again, thank you for your e-mail.

With warm regards, I remain

Sincerely,

Bill

Senator Bill Carrico

40th District

276.236.0098 District

804.698.7540 Richmond

district40@senate.virginia.gov

"

Should We Tell Terry Kilgore About This?

One of the stories featured in the Bible Story books this web site recently discussed comes from Genesis 14. In this story, five "kings" of cities went to war against four "kings," and only when Abraham, the "wandering Aramaean," intervened to rescue his nephew from being held prisoner was the tide of battle turned. (In feudal thinking, this showed that although God had not called him to settle down and rule over a city, Abraham could be considered a sort of king or equal to one.) The grateful king of Sodom offered Abraham whatever reward Abraham wanted from the spoils of battle. Abraham did not want to be obligated to the government of Sodom, so he said he wanted nothing, "Not a thread nor a shoe latchet."

I grew up with that story, and that's why I felt  uncomfortable recently when a person of good will recently said, about the funding impasse I've faced, "We ought to tell Terry about this." I hoped the person was thinking of some other friend or relative, but the person went on, "You know, Delegate Kilgore."

As regular readers know, this web site is generally supportive of our Delegate in the State Legislature. His mother and mine once compared notes and determined that he's my third cousin once removed, and I'm proud. Grandma Bonnie Peters has been known to hint that she would have liked him for an in-law. Adayahi doesn't recommend a younger man to prospective clients every day. I sincerely believe that we're blessed with a more honest, intelligent, sincere, competent, and responsive Delegate than some electoral districts may have. But that's partly because this web site has never asked for any kind of help or favors from politicians, nor have we pledged our unconditional support to any individual politician. We reserve the right to cheer for all of them when we like what they're doing, and jeer when we don't, too.

This web site also exists on cordial terms with a local Democrat activist known to cyberspace as Garrison McDavid. In the absence of data about the precise relationship, all I'll say is that people usually guess he's my brother, and that I know for sure he is not. For an extrovert who seems actually to prefer New York to Washington, he seems a decent fellow. This web site is not prejudiced against Democrats at all...only against some bad left-wing ideas the party has picked up. From Democrats as from Republicans, as parties, this web site accepts "not a thread nor a shoe latchet."

This web site is part of the Tea Party movement in the sense that we believe we are Taxed Enough Already. This web site is not connected with, or even aware of, a majority of the other Tea Parties in these United States, and it reserves the right to disagree passionately even with the ones with which we are usually allied...ask Patricia Evans!

This web site is still ambivalent, at this point, about whether it could best represent a for-profit business or a community service. We are definitely not a political party and do not collect taxable donations to campaigns, although we've been known to encourage candidates. We've considered trying to be a charity because the Cat Sanctuary does rescue feral cats, but the web site is much more about human affairs than it is about cats. Sometimes I think the guidelines for a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, which can be faith-based, education-oriented, supportive of political ideas without actually telling people how to vote, etc., sound like what I'm trying to do, and then again sometimes I think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with writers making a profit--as much profit as possible, even if we want to use the money for the good of others as well as ourselves. Sometimes I think legal advice would be helpful, but since this is not about litigation or avoiding litigation I've not bothered a lawyer about it so far.

But here, in the numbered-paragraphs format that at least amuses my family's Tennessee lawyer when applied to things that aren't really legal cases, are the 25 things I think Delegate Kilgore might be interested in knowing about this web site.

1. Scott County currently has one public-access computer center. At the time when I spoke to the aforementioned person of good will, that building had four computers available for the whole of Scott County. As of today, it has six again.

2. These six computers are crowded into what was originally designed as a walkway in between the front desk and the children's room in the public library in Gate City. They are slowed down by annoying "time-minder" software and by lots of filters and blockers designed to prevent anyone from using the computer to use E-Bay, Amazon, ad widgets, or almost any other program that helps people earn legitimate money online. (Associated Content used to work on the library's computers, and Bubblews does, but other pay-for-content sites don't.)

3. Expensive attempts have been made to allow more people to use the computer center by offering wireless Internet service. However, when I've made the effort to use that service, on more days than not it hasn't actually worked. Even wired Internet service is "iffy" in the mountains.

4. The library does not offer computer storage. Hauling computers in and out of buildings is not cost-effective in wet weather, which is the kind of weather Scott County has on the majority of days.

5. The library was not wired for a lot of use of privately owned computers. For the first year wireless users were forbidden to plug their devices into the outlets the library has, at all. Currently they're allowed to use one socket located under a table that's big enough for two work spaces.

6. Although smoke destroys computers and smoking is forbidden in workplaces, we can all smell that library staff smoke in the staff room. It's possible that this has contributed to the short lifespan of some of the library's computers.

7. The library also offers day care to toddlers, hosted by the character known to cyberspace as the Nefarious Librarian. Both of these features contribute to making the library a very inhospitable place for serious work or study.

8. For several years, nobody complained about the inadequacy of Gate City's computer center because the Scott County Telephone Co-op hosted computer centers more conducive to serious grown-up work in Yuma, Nickelsville, and Duffield. However, these computer centers were not profitable, so after grant money ran out, they were closed to the public. (Computers were removed from the building in Yuma; I'm told that computers were kept, but reserved for the use of a private organization, in Duffield.)

9. As a result, I've been forced to depend on the computer center at the community college in Big Stone Gap in order to maintain or publicize my web site. The web site has been growing, and most of the time I've not had to walk more than two or three miles to and from my workplace...but I believe that everybody should be able to have a workplace within two or three miles from their home.

10. Many people have been told that the "public-private partnership" mess known as Mountain Empire Older Citizens offers cheap transportation between Scott, Wise, and Lee Counties. This is not true. M.E.O.C. has consistently refused to offer bus service between Gate City and Big Stone Gap on any schedule that would work for any full-time student or worker commuting between these towns.

11. Many people express discomfort about the idea of anyone, but I suspect especially any woman, walking on public streets (just as if women paid taxes to maintain the streets). We need a public campaign to thank pedestrians for not driving. People who think they have to drive everywhere "accidentally" kill far more Americans than guns do.

12. Some people seem to think the solution to the problem of my walking to work should be early retirement. I am not in that kind of financial situation. If federal law had required the state of Maryland to recognize my marriage under D.C. law, so that I had simply inherited approximately $250,000, partial retirement might have been an option. Or if my relatives had chosen to participate in what the state of Maryland apparently preferred to do, which was to classify me as a home health aide who could collect $385,000 after allowing my husband's ex-wife to claim the $250,000 estate, which the ex-wife could and should have been forced to pay, partial retirement might have been an option. As things are, I still depend entirely on what I earn from writing and odd jobs.

13. Earning a living does not automatically become a hardship because a person passes the age of forty, or fifty, sixty, or even seventy, or because a person has a few white hairs. It seems currently to be difficult to me because of prejudice. American folklore romanticizes the ideal of very poor people succeeding through hard work, talent, and integrity, but Americans are extremely uncomfortable with the reality that, if people like that exist, they may be more than twenty-five years old.

(I've actually heard "Why don't you try to claim some sort of disability?" I was 4-F because gluten intolerance would have made it inconvenient for the U.S. Army to feed me, but I have no genuine disabilities. For the record:

(a) I was a Dean's List student at Berea College.

(b) My current "commute" is about the distance people "run" in a marathon, and I can do it in about the time women my age usually record when they run marathons.

(c) I have no addictions.

(d) People with blatantly selfish motives have tried to represent my independence and nonconformism as some sort of mental disorder...and all of those people, if not under psychiatric care at the time, have been put under psychiatric care shortly afterward. It may be dangerous even to indulge in verbal-abuse-as-sport about my "mental health."

(e) And I've never even had children, nor am I having any particular midlife crisis.)

14. While many middle-aged residents of Scott County have come to terms with the idea that social workers will enable them to report every little tooth or finger ache as a "disability," the federal budget is insanely overburdened. Every able-bodied person who claims residual pain from an old injury as a "disability" is preventing some blind or paraplegic citizen from receiving the pension that might keep him or her from becoming homeless. Conservatives who are serious about balancing and tightening the budget need to be thanking poor people who don't choose to beg for handouts based on "minor disabilities."

15. I've also heard "Can't you get Internet service at your home?" While I was in Washington, other family members tried to get Internet service in our home. It didn't work. And I'm glad. The Internet is not a safe place to store home addresses or any other private contact information. It is a business tool and should be accessed from business addresses only.

16. The majority of voters I know in Scott County would definitely agree that public access to the Internet should be funded by private business or organizations rather than by any increase in federal, state, or local taxes. So would I. The Internet is a business tool and, if worth funding, should be made profitable for its users, rather than burdensome for the public as a whole.

17. In Washington, D.C., privately owned public-access computer centers were profitable enough to maintain space in expensive uptown neighborhoods.

18. Due to fear that a computer center in Gate City might not have offered returns on investment (while S.C.T.C. was offering free unlimited computer access to the public), I conceived the idea of combining a for-profit computer center with a bookstore. However, despite the success of "Tales of the Lonesome Pine" in Big Stone Gap (or perhaps because that successful bookstore may be seen as competition), fear seems to persist that even this might not offer returns on investment.

19. One successful business owner told me that in order to be profitable in Scott County a business "has to have a vice." Nevertheless, two kinds of businesses that are perceived as honorable are consistently profitable in Scott County: gas stations and grocery stores.

20. Gate City's "flagship" grocery store location, originally planned by and for Giant Foods during Mr. Cohen's lifetime, is currently occupied by a tenant altogether unworthy of Mr. Cohen's vision, namely Food Lion. As a result, every day large amounts of money are taken out of Scott County and spent in grocery stores in Kingsport, Bristol, Big Stone Gap, or Norton.

21. To the extent that my work history forms a traditional resume, it can be read, and has been read by at least one supporter, as "lifelong preparation" for a final career as a bookseller. I worked in libraries, took "library science" courses in college, managed stores, had a small business, collected books, sold enough secondhand books to maintain a booth in a flea market for more than three years, worked on computers, and even managed a small computer lab on a college campus.

22. I don't have that kind of background experience for a career as a grocer. However, I did have the opportunity to observe what made Giant Foods the success it was during Mr. Cohen's lifetime. I also have some current information, which I'm not about to publish, that I'm willing to share with any local investor who wants to hire me as the consultant that could allow a local business to be more profitable than Food Lion. The owners of successful locally owned businesses such as Addco, Black Diamond, Broadwaters', Frazier & Mann, Gilbert's Guns & Pawn, Roberts & Jones, or Thriftway are welcome to bid on this opportunity, individually or in combination.

23. What we do not need is any other kind of "program" that doles out just enough of some sort of inadequate encouragement to poor people to keep a few more social workers employed. (Social workers, by definition, were recruited from the bottoms of their college classes and, if able to offer actual help to poor people such as scrubbing, driving, or shovelling, should keep their mouths shut and do what they're told.)

24. Also, we need no more distracting blather about non-options like trying to set up the Internet in anybody's private home. People who want to help the deserving poor need to be reminded: "If you're not helping them do what they want to do, you are not helping them." Any suggestions about ways to make my web site, writing, and bookselling more profitable need to be clearly focussed on the goal of setting up a privately owned public-access computer center in Gate City.

25. All the old families in Gate City are sufficiently connected, by blood or marriage, that my elders used to recommend thinking of everyone as at least honorary cousins. As private people, cousins and honorary cousins, and neighbors who stand to benefit from anything that is profitable in Scott County, Terry Kilgore and his family are certainly welcome on my team. As an elected official, Delegate Kilgore is the lawyer whom I consult only when able to pay whatever fee he requires, and from whom I intend to ask "not a thread, nor a shoe latchet."

Lee Regional Hospital a Casualty of Obamacare

E-mailed from the office of Bill Carrico...How can we get more Adventist funders and "missionaries" to notice this? Grandma Bonnie Peters, please share this post liberally:

"CARRICO, KILGORE STATEMENTS ON THE CLOSING OF LEE REGIONAL HOSPITAL

Washington – Virginia Senator Bill Carrico (R-Grayson) and Virginia Delegate Terry Kilgore (R-Scott) released the following statements today on the closing of Lee Regional Hospital in Pennington Gap:

“I am very disappointed that Lee Regional Hospital has become the latest casualty of ObamaCare, according to Wellmont Health System.  For several weeks, Del. Kilgore and I have engaged in discussions with leaders from Wellmont to find ways to keep Lee Regional open in order to provide care for the citizens.  Unfortunately, this decision is a reflection of what many rural hospitals are facing due to the strains of the federal health care law.  We will pursue other healthcare options for the community, including nonprofit care providers, in an effort to solve this growing problem.  This is a major blow to the safety, security, and economic growth of Lee County, and it is disappointing that policies from the federal government are to blame.” – Sen. Bill Carrico

“This is very disappointing news to me and the citizens of Lee County.  Sen. Carrico and I will be aggressively looking at other hospital groups willing to locate to the county for the safety and healthcare of our citizens.  It is our sincere hope that Wellmont Health System will reconsider and in the coming days, we will be calling on state and federal leaders to examine nonprofit duties to provide healthcare to the region.  ObamaCare has begun what appears to be a wave of casualties in rural healthcare, and it has now struck our community, where we need quality healthcare options more than ever.” – Del. Terry Kilgore

"

Over to you, GBP. Your fellow believers have been talking for years about wanting to create a healthy retreat and a "health care park" in scenic Lee County. Here's their opportunity. This hospital needs to stay open. Making it part of the Adventist health care system might make it even better.