Posted on 11/28/2012 6:49:37 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine
OLYMPIA, Wash. – An Olympia mom wants to learn why her 10-year-old son was placed in a padded room at his elementary school last Friday.
Melissa Gum's son attends Garfield Elementary, where she acknowledges he's been to the principal's office before.
The school says he was sent to the principal's office Friday for being disruptive in class.
But Gum said he’s never been sent to a room the district refers to as "the quiet room," which is described as the size of an office with gym mats padding the walls.
It gets worse, according to Gum. She said the principal forgot about her son after the end of school and she was frantically trying to find him.
The school district said the room was set up a few years ago for students with special needs. But Gum said her son is a typical 10-year-old with no diagnosed behavioral or developmental issues.
The district said the boy was acting out, but other resource rooms were unavailable, so the principal opted to place him in the quiet room. They also said the boy was released two minutes after the bell rang at the end of the school day on Friday.
I was in the 4th grade in 1954. Three swats on my butt with a paddle (with drilled holes) in Principal Rasmondson’s office got my attention.
Then I got the belt from dad when I got home. Mom kept me busy with extra chores for the entire weekend.
I never again stole chalk from school — I also never again wrote dirty words on the road, right up to my house. ;>)
Wow! That was back in the day when men were men and women were women. And children were expected to behave.
Isolation rooms? Really?
Public schools are not schools. At best they are prisons posing as indoctrination centers.
I remember those days with great fondness.
I didn't have classmates who routinely crawled under their desks, cursed out teachers, or banged their heads against the walls.
Did you?
My child had to deal with this type of unacceptable behavior everyday.
I doubt the disturbed children benefitted much from the experience.
I know the “normal” children didn't gain anything constructive, other than pure disdain for their supposedly superior adult teachers, who tried to force them to pretend to tolerate abnormal behavior.
This is the result of refusing to permit schools to use corporal punishment. When you cannot swat the kid for bad behavior when small, you end up with an over-sized “time out” room with padded walls to prevent injury and a locked door to keep them in.
I think you have hit the nail right on the head. Why this helps the "mainstreamed" child I will never know, but I do know it hurts every other child in that class.
Best of all, most times it is not permitted to concentrate all of the "mainstreamed" kids in the same class. They have to be spread out so as to disrupt the maximum number of normal kids.
You described my granddaughter. It took me a long time to learn that her problems were not going to be cured with spankings. She had sensory integration problems and chaotic classrooms with lots of noise or even flickering
florescent lighting drives her crazy. And once the impulsive response begins it easily escalates to the point where someone may get hurt. The doctors tried her on ritalin and it did make her want to crawl out of her skin.
We still do not understand what is going on. It is shocking how common this is.
You described my granddaughter. It took me a long time to learn that her problems were not going to be cured with spankings. She had sensory integration problems and chaotic classrooms with lots of noise or even flickering
florescent lighting drives her crazy. And once the impulsive response begins it easily escalates to the point where someone may get hurt. The doctors tried her on ritalin and it did make her want to crawl out of her skin.
We still do not understand what is going on. It is shocking how common this is.
“Why this helps the “mainstreamed” child I will never know, but I do know it hurts every other child in that class.”
I remember mainstreamed kids when I was in school 40 years ago. It was taxpayer funded babysitting for the parents and I’m sure there were big Federal bucks involved, too.
None of the kids I remember were violent but they were all attention-intensive and there was usually a teacher’s aide around to help, nothing we had for a class of 25+ normal kids.
What is public education Alex?
All schooling is babysitting. The goal of compulsory schooling was to separate children from parents, so that the children could be molded according to the will of the elites, and so that women could be thrown into the "workforce." It's been that way from the beginning. It's nothing new.
Have you heard the term, "Carnegie Units"? The reason for the name is that Rockefeller and Carnegie spent more money on "educational research" in the early 1900s than all levels of government combined. They wanted a docile working class, and they got it, through the methodology of behavioral psychology.
Nothing proves the brilliance of their strategy than the fact that parents, who suffered through 12 mind-numbing years of school, gladly send their children off to the same fate, all the while imagining themselves to be freethinkers.
Yes, schooling works. But not in the way we've been taught to believe.
Read, "The Underground History of American Education" for free on-line, or watch any of John Taylor Gatto's interviews on YouTube.
God help us. And God save the children.
I remember when a kid got one chance to be “disruptive in class” and, within minutes, learned that it was a very bad plan.
He would have come down when he got hungry.
At least the normal kids do learn something. I don’t remember any of the mainstreamers being of the type that were going to live un-institutionalized lives.
It’s called sensory processing disorder . The worst thing that a doctor can do is put her on ritalin. I think that is what the padded room is for, to calm them down. The important thing for parents and teachers to remember is that the child is not misbehaving when he has a melt down. The child is just overwhelmed and yelling at the child or trying to discipline him will only make things worse.
Yes, homosexuality, disrespect, atheism and socialism. Contrast our little Einsteins to students from practially any other country in the world.
You all should respect what many spec ed teachers go through, attempting to educate these basket case kids; we have to make a place for them to be successful in our greater society or build more prisons. Look first at the kid's family and you will see abuse, drugs, mental illness, and an environment kids should never experience. My wife has come home with black eyes, bite marks, bruises, and blk & blue marks from grade school kids. More to all of this than most believe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.