Blaming Mothers: A disability perspective
This article discussed the many ways in which some school districts tend to take aim at blaming the mother for their child’s disability, which to me is by far the most unfair, unjust and wrong approach. Instead, school districts should be offering support and resources to these mothers and children.
It also provided four different stories that demonstrated how some school districts blamed the mothers for their child's’ behavior. The mothers in these scenarios were often blamed for being incompetent, assertive, passive and for having a job outside of the home.
The story of the working mother resonated with me the most because I am and have always been a working mother. In this story, the school district passed judgement and blamed the mom for her child’s social emotional problems which resulted in the child often times running away from home and engaging in prostitution.
Unfortunately, the school district blamed the young girl’s home life for her problems and saw no reason as to why she wouldn’t succeed in a regular public classroom. Their findings were supported by evidence that showed the young child demonstrating positive behavior when the mom previously taking a three month leave of absence from her job. As a result of the mom returning to work, the child’s negative behaviors resurfaced. In the end, the mom found help and placement outside of the school district for her child.
With all that being said, I think that the school district could have done more for the young child. Did they consider placing the child in smaller classroom settings? She obviously suffered from social emotional issues and needed more attention, hence her behavioral success when mom took her leave of absence.
Did the school district provide the mother with outside resources such as counseling and other mental health support?
My biggest takeaway from this article is that as a classroom teacher, I need to make sure that I’m not passing judgement against my students’ parents for their academic and social emotional issues and ask myself if I’m doing all that I can for my students. I’m also going to position myself as a stronger advocate for ALL of my students but especially my emergent bilinguals. I’ve seen firsthand how they are often looked over in regards to receiving individualized education plans due to ruling out language. Trust me, I understand the need to rule out language but sometimes that one rule gets in the way of students receiving the help they need. Moving forward, I’m trying to do a better job of pushing for my emergent bilinguals that I feel language in some cases is not the issue to receive services sooner rather than later.
Porsche, nice summary. Interesting, in the article I read today, “In the Shadow of Brown; Special Education and Overrepresentation of Students of Color” by Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor I did find a similarity. This article was focused on taking a look at what happened soon after the decision in 1954 to Desegregate schools as well as IDEA which began in 1975 and was refined in 1990. The focus was on how minority students seemed to be labelled more quickly as needing special education due to the fact they were labelled as Mentally Retarded. The means for the label were very biased and judgmental on the part of the assessors. Soon after the Desegregation of schools took place, the teachers were asked to answer the question how was it working? The teachers mostly seemed to be biased stating the test scores demonstrated that Black's learned differently than Whites, that Black's were not as smart as whites, black students were more apt to quit school and skip class, and that the HOME LIVES of BLACKS were not as good as the home lives of whites. We now know that best practices first in the school and classroom of creating an inviting relevant curriculum which embraces all cultures would be a step in creating a successful setting that Black Students would want to be a part of. Did they do this? We know this from what we have learned for best practices for teaching EB's. Another step would have been to invite parents of all students into the community of the desegregated school to provide an opportunity for the White and Black Cultures of the times to learn about each other and give an opportunity to gain a ground of mutual respect. Did they do this? Thinking back, it seems the desegregation of schools was a platform. The students were guinea pigs and they were set up for failure and the families were set up for judgment. Shameful. My take away of similarities from my reading and yours is that our educational system (which houses a group of highly educated individuals whose expertise is in best practices for the education of children) needs to merge more with families. It should not be US versus THEM. It takes a Village to raise a child. All in the Village need to lend a helping hand. Despite our differences we need to utilize our strengths to build up our communities to facilitate the growth of all the individuals within.
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