Parents Defend School’s Use of Shock Therapy

NY Times ^ | December 25, 2007 | LESLIE KAUFMAN

[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.”...

[metmom]

This doesn’t sound like a public school but one where the parents chose to send their kids; and they are defending it.

I didn’t think it quite fit the list, since it’s not something just any child in any public school would face.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[KarenMarie]

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.

That is exactly what I did when I first read the headlines. Reading the rest of the article put everything in an entirely different light.

:)