Special Education and its Failings

Special Education and its Failings

By Leah Zanzucchi-Marroquin

When someone talks about their area of job interest is working with special needs kids, the thing I think about is how is the classroom conducted? Are the teachers actually teaching the kids or only sitting at their desks watching them?  Are they shaming them? I was placed in Special Education when I was five years old.  I was mainstreamed in middle-school.  I know Special Education’s failings from the inside.  I am trying to liberate myself here, of this label Selective Mutism…

Having been gone through the failings of the Special Education System I am strongly opposed to the shaming of a child into talking.  I guess the premise is the child is being bad for not talking; talking is the word that was used.  The School I am writing about is Franklin Elementary of Syracuse New York.  I am in the fourth grade.  My desk is placed against a wall in the corner to socially isolate me for the whole school day. I am only allowed to leave to go to the bathroom or to get lunch.  At lunch time I am relived for a time and think it is business as usual:  I can eat in the cafeteria. 

Stunned and disheartened I am informed, “Leah you need to go back to your desk The Cafeteria is only for people who talk.”  I am developing a sense of injustice. I bring back the lunch to my desk in the corner facing the wall.  I am not sure what else I did besides mutilate my arm and feel more distrust from them overall.  I didn’t have exact trust in them, but I was more relaxed at times.  When they did this I cut them off from me.  I felt no emotional connection to them, those three teachers.  Three Teachers I would wonder!? And not one of them would teach. I mean two things here: One they would not instruct in regular lessons of any kind.  The main teacher never verbally instructed anyone.  Another teacher sometimes would come up with lessons and the aide would make fun of me and sit at her desk complaining about her job at Wal-mart.  What’s Wal-mart? I would wonder. But she’s not at Wal-mart, she‘s supposed to be at a job.  She isn’t doing anything here but wasting space.  These were the reasons I was chronically stressed by that woman’s presence and treatment of me.  I hated hearing her talk.  I hated her voice.

The second thing is I mean do this act of shunning, and I no longer view you as teachers.  They don’t teach.  I may have had a book to read, but I don’t remember it.  I was mostly in fear, and afraid to move.  They would do these things to break my spirit.  My spirit felt broken to a degree.  But did I talk? No.  Because talking under the force of shaming wasn’t going to uplift my spirits.  This kind of reminds me of potty training.  How when parents view the pre-school age child as not using the toilet as bad; it becomes a battle-of-wills and a power struggle and no one is winning.  American children train themselves to go to the potty is what my child’s pediatrician says.  So maybe people with Selective Mutism train themselves to speak? I like the word speak better; it means more to me.

 Also typically people who are treated like shit don’t give a person what they want the most.  It is equivalent to selling a part of your soul. 

These experiences in my life have made me think deeply about The Freedom of Speech and The Right to Remain Silent. 

If talking is constantly a catch 22 there is no room for The Freedom of Speech.  And people who run their mouth, brag, bully, force one upmanships on others really take the Right to Remain Silent for granted. 

Addendum: Prior to being mainstreamed in the middle school I was mainstreamed twice, from Mt. Tabor to Dwyer Elementary in New Jersey.  Then a year after at the school mentioned above, Franklin Elementary I was mainstreamed to a 3^rd and 4^th grade class (same school).  In both those situations I was in the class for about a month because my family moved out of state.  I went from being mainstreamed to not to being mainstreamed again.