Posted on 12/25/2007 9:53:07 PM PST by neverdem
Nearly a year ago, New York made plans to ban the use of electric shocks as a punishment for bad behavior, a therapy used at a Massachusetts school where New York State had long sent some of its most challenging special education students.
But state officials trying to limit New York’s association with the school, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, southwest of Boston, and its “aversive therapy” practices have found a large obstacle in their paths: parents of students who are given shocks.
“I understand people who don’t know about it think it is cruel,” said Susan Handon of Jamaica, Queens, whose 20-year-old daughter, Crystal, has been at Rotenberg for four years. “But she is not permanently scarred and she has really learned that certain behaviors, like running up and hitting people in the face, are not acceptable.”
Indeed, Rotenberg is full of children who will run up and hit strangers in the face, or worse. Many have severe types of dysfunction, including self-mutilation, head banging, eye gouging and biting, that can result from autism or mental retardation. Parents tend to be referred there by desperate education officials, after other institutions have decided they cannot keep the child.
While at Rotenberg, students must wear backpacks containing a device that allows a staff member to deliver a moderate shock to electrodes attached to the limbs, or in some cases palms, feet or torso, when the students engage in a prohibited behavior...
--snip--
“People want to believe positive interventions work even in the most extreme cases,” he said. “If they did, that is all we would use. Many of these kids come in on massive dosages of antipsychotic drugs, so doped up that they are almost comatose. We get them off drugs and give their parents something very important: hope.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Some idiots have no idea what being the parent of a severely disabled child is like.
They see everything through their own prism, their own experiences with “normal” children, and can’t understand why anyone would want to treat a disabled child in any way differently than a “normal” one.
They’re the same liberal idiots who are pushing for severely autistic and CP kids to be “mainstreamed” into “regular” classrooms, so they can disrupt and slow down the progress of the other students.
Not to mention that the shocks probably aren’t powerful enough that it would be “shocking” if they were used on normal kids. Some people hear the words “electric shock” and freak out; by brother and I used to pull apart lighters and shock ourselves with the ignition thing, try to touch cow fences, etc. It’s really not that big a deal.
Remind me to hire you to change light bulbs in my grandparents farm house.
If it works, fine. Let them do it.
Juror in Long Island Killing Says He Was Pressured Into a Guilty Verdict
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
Oh yes, I once learned that if I’m doing electrical stuff in the house and I want to know if a wire is hot, use the back of my finger rather than the front, since apparently if it is my hand will naturally jerk away from the wire instead of grasping it.
My dad was not amused when I mentioned this to him. But I say, bring it on... (Seriously, I take the dull option and turn off the breakers.)
Man did the chit change from when the first story of this hit a few days ago.
In these cases the only thing crueller than using electric shocks would be not to use electric shocks.
Where can I get one of those things for my wife?
Nearly a year ago, New York made plans to ban the use of electric shocks as a punishment for bad behavior, a therapy used at a Massachusetts school where New York State had long sent some of its most challenging special education students.I'd be very surprised if this therapy used electric shocks as punishment.
I'd be even more surprised if the author of the column understood the difference between positive punishment and negative reinforcement.
“I’d be even more surprised if the author of the column understood the difference between positive punishment and negative reinforcement.”
Interesting thought. So, if the publisher stopped paying this guy for his work, which would that be?
If they were to stop paying him, and as a result he were to write less frequently, it would be negative punishment.
“Some idiots have no idea what being the parent of a severely disabled child is like.”
Maybe we should make these idiots take care of them?
The Judge Rot. case is really tough. The use what I believe they call aversion therapy, and it’s what the article describes, low level, painful shocks to correct behavior you don’t like. Sorry to put it this way, but it is exactly like the “no bark” or “electric/invisible fence” collars you put on dogs. I was open minded about this treatment when I first heard about it. On some level, I believe that some people with mental disabilities are not, to varying degrees, able to be rationed with, and don’t care what you (or society) wants them to do. Therefore, they do what they want and don’t perceive any consequences. On some level, I believe that pain is universal enough that everyone understands it, and some people with disabilities might recognize pain as a negative consequence of some behavior. Basically, it’s the same reason people (used to) spank their kids. I don’t know that this line of thinking is right, but it makes some sense to me, and I’d like to see peer reviewed studies on it.
That said, Judge Rot. was the only school the NYS Education Department approved that used this type of treatment. The Department tried to take away the school’s approval to take kids from New York, but hadn’t been able to, because they didn’t have a rule against this kind of treatment. I think they do now, but I’m not sure.
The State Office of Mental Hygiene would not permit the use of this treatment in a facility it oversees. Now, they do allow, and think can be appropriate for some patients. I’m just pointing that out, so you don’t think that this department is universally against treatments that aren’t “drugs and hugs”.
In the histories of medicine and mental health care, there have been lots of one-off experiments in treatment. A few turned out to be great, a lot more didn’t.
I wouldn’t wish that upon the children.
This sounds like a reason to homeschool, but I’m not sure I’d want the parents mentioned in this article to homeschool their children, given how they might turn out as adults.
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