The headline of this musing is aspirational, just so you don't think it's an actual news report (yet).
Aspirational but so named because we had an awesome super power in our day as kids – the ability to quickly tell if someone was bad. Or dumb for that matter. Teachers, kids, even parents used this decoder ring, you probably did too. I'm not super proud but I do remember it. And I bet I’m not the only one who can name a couple of kids who fell into those politically sensitive categories.
Aspirational but so named because we had an awesome super power in our day as kids – the ability to quickly tell if someone was bad. Or dumb for that matter. Teachers, kids, even parents used this decoder ring, you probably did too. I'm not super proud but I do remember it. And I bet I’m not the only one who can name a couple of kids who fell into those politically sensitive categories.
Well, as it turns out there aren’t nearly as many bad or dumb kids as we all originally suspected! See - I have recently learned that 30(ish)% of prisoners have undiagnosed learning disabilities, 45% have undiagnosed ADHD, and 90% of those who can't read are illiterate due to a visual or reading impairment. This this doesn’t even begin to touch on psychiatric issues. And this problem is longstanding. Yes, I have read all of the articles about how learning and other disorders are on the rise, but they didn't just start in some garden where a kid in1998 bit the tangelo of disorders... people have had these differences for a long time - we just didn't know it.
Now I feel even more badly about one or two of my adolescent quick judgments and I bet lots of you do as well. But here's the thing that is awesome. We now have the diagnostic ability to learn about and better understand our kids. And we can have a real impact on their lives and, if we are lucky, help them to never think of themselves as bad or dumb. One of my kids even goes to a truly wonderful school for language based learning differences - resources like this exist and there are speech pathologists, reading tutors, language labs galore.
Here's the thing that sucks though. We now have to consider how many people are taxi drivers who could have cured cancer and how many people are in prison who could be solving world hunger. And we have to look at our school system and wonder how well served the kids are who really are brilliant but don't fit into traditional school boxes. And we have to turn our heads away from the stark fact that all of this testing and tutoring and counseling isn't free, isn't accessible, isn't even socially acceptable in every community. And so there are still approximately zillions of kids who think they are bad and dumb and who should be at a Mensa conference or working for NASA right about now.
Once you start to look, you can find socioeconomic disparity in pretty much anything. And you can find samples of people who find their way through convoluted systems to come out on the other side. But sitting here with the questionable privilege of four kids needing special education services, sitting here paying for reading tutoring every week and therapy to feel good about that reading tutoring, I can't pretend to know what it would be like to have the knowledge that my child needs help and no power or resources to address that.
Actually, I have a little small slice, like a teeny lemon wedge of an idea. Because I tried to get an IEP once in the public school system. For a kid with Cerebal Palsy. Six months into the process, I was exhausted and dejected and my fingers were tired from follow-up emails and I had a crick in my neck from making harassing follow-up phone calls. I took my kid out of the school just short of hiring an advocate, and I moved them to a private school where someone might listen. I know, it's a total spoiled brat maneuver that I wish no one had to make... or that everyone could make, I'm not sure which.
Anyway, I'm not an economist or an educator, but I sat in that stuffy public school office with 13 school officials piled in during the middle of a work day and I felt intimidated, overwhelmed, unclear and not sure what I would do if I had an hourly job and couldn't attend these forums. And I personally without pride gave up and quit on the system instead of trying to figure it out - I know, it's not exactly the making of a real expert.
But one thing that even in my limited expertise I am sure of is that cancer and NASA can use a few good people, even and especially people who think and act and look and live differently. And we as a big huge global team need to find those people, and we may just need to look in the most unlikely of locations.