Now to continue with education.  If, as stated in my last post, we cannot adequately meet the needs of someone with an obvious disability, how can we even see the need of other children?

The answer……we don’t.  Although there are many children that have been diagnosed as ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia and other autism spectrum disorders, we do little more than medicate them and hope for the best.

Let’s take a look at that from a child’s point of view.  You are in 6th grade.  You have just entered junior high school.  You are having trouble with your school work, you are falling behind, the teacher looks at you as a problem and disruption.  You are trying desperately to fit in and find your identity and you are failing.  What happens now?

In 2002, the “No Child Left Behind Act” was put in place to bring accountability to our education system so that we were not just passing children along through the education system.  I am a strong advocate for accountability.  Yet this system and the subsequent checks and balances have left schools and education systems at the mercy of the resulting test scores.  While this is good in theory, it has also caused school funding to be directed at “teaching the test” in order to maintain school funding.  It has also required the elimination of programs that could benefit our children.

School systems used to meet the needs of all children on a broad scale.  For instance, if your learning skills required that you be able to learn through hands on projects, you could do so.  I was a terrible math student.  I made it through algebra, thank to the diligent efforts of my math teacher and my after school education.  I was very thankful that my required math courses could be completed through business math and accounting courses.  I was an excellent student and excelled in English, history, business courses and management courses.  I was able to continue being an excellent student by focusing on my abilities.

We used to offer alternative courses that counted toward our credit requirements for graduation and prepared us for our future employment.  These included vocational classes and arts classes that focused on the abilities and talents as well as interests of the student.  Those have been shut down in favor of academic preparation.  Does This work?  National statistics say that one in four high school students fail to graduate.

Upon sentencing to the Department of Corrections, you are sent to Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center (Colorado) or DRDC.  There you receive a medical, mental health, education, vocation and offender classification evaluation.  Once you have cleared DRDC you are sent to your permanent facility.  The only real requirement that CDOC has is that you receive your GED.  However, it is not made easy.  There are few teachers for the preparatory classes and the classes are sporadic.  Even if you have the best intention of obtaining your GED it can take you two years to get it done.  When my son reached his first facility, he began to work on his GED.  When he found out that the GED classes were sporadic, he decided to get the books, read and take a pre-test.  Once the pre-test was completed you were evaluated to see which classes you needed to be prepared for the test.  Jon did not need any classes.  He signed up for the GED test. 

When the test results came back, he had passed 3 portions with a 98, one portion with an 96 and the last section with an 88 (math).  He was in the top 3% of the state.  When he was arrested, he was failing school.  His fault?  Yes, you have to attend and do the work to pass.  When I asked him why he did so well on the test when he was failing school he said, “I could not focus in class, I always felt lost and I lost interest.  I stopped trying.  Now I have no distractions and I found out that I understood everything better than I thought.  I would get bored in class because we were always covering the same things but now I can study at my own pace.”  When Jon’s other evaluations came back, the Officer called him over to discuss the results.  he looked at Jon and said,”Do you realize that your IQ test shows that you are of superior intelligence?  What happened?”  “I was a kid.  Kids do dumb things.”

I have seen the creativity of those behind bars.  They are incredible artists, inventors and engineers.  I have received a beautiful stemmed rose folded and created from toilet paper.  I have received a macrame cross that was woven from the threads unraveling at the end of the sheet.  I have received pen and ink sketches that rival great artists.  I have heard of the tattoo guns they build, the wine they brew and the creative communication system they have….even when they are not supposed to communicate. 

But out here they failed, out here they didn’t fit, out here they were singled out as “trouble”.  Don’t you think we could find a practical use for all of this talent and energy?  Don’t you think we, as a society of people, would be better served by requiring that these offenders be educated and then devote their skills to helping their communities?  Is it possible they have solutions for some of the problems our communities face?  And they have the time to devote to finding the solution. 

Facts, Figures and rules are the foundation of education.  Teach a man to think, reason, problem solve and create and you will have possibilities, inventions, solutions.