What I learned

Here are some things I learned this weekend that I didn't already know, or hadn't put together myself:

1. The disabled are the only group of people left in the US that are systematically segregated.

2. The Nazi's perfected their killing techniques on the disabled, murdering 250,000 disabled people before they made their way to Jewish people. The ovens and gas chambers used in "hospitals" to kill those who were less than perfect in their eyes were then moved to the concentration camps and used to kill millions of Jews.

3. Some states have a system of distribution of benefits called Self-determination. Under this system the money that the state would spend housing a person with a disability in a state-run home, providing aids and other services, etc. is put into an account governed by a fiduciary. The person receiving the benefit can spend it how they see fit, hiring their own service providers, finding housing that they choose, roommates that they choose, in a place where they choose. Choice. It's a powerful thing. Nevada doesn't have such a system. Studies have shown that when they are using their own money, people receiving benefits are frugal and prudent with the funds and that fraud has a very low occurrence.

4. There is power in difference. How many years have I spent trying to make my kid be just like all the other kids? How much medication have I fed him, trying to attain that end? How hard have I struggled to make him fit in, make him normal? The problem isn't him. He's a perfectly normal person with autism. The problem is the lack of education, the lack of acceptance and tolerance, in other people.

I had an interesting conversation with my dad's wife this weekend. She's a special education teacher. (As an aside: When I told her that I decided I don't want to be a teacher, she actually cheered. She told me that if she had it to do over she would never be a teacher, she hates the job so much. THIS is why I don't send my kid to school. Unless you're related, how do you make sure that you aren't sending your high needs child to a teacher like this??) My dad was trained as a teacher, too. As you can imagine, whenever I'm there the conversation always comes around to the topic of Nick being radically unschooled. Nancy told me this weekend that school's purpose is to make children conform to society. I threw up a little in my mouth when she said it. Conform to society? That made me remember reading what John Gatto had to say about the Prussian educational system (our educational system) and how it's use in Germany gave a foothold for the Nazi's and their sick ideas to get in and take root.

Conformity? I want to raise all my kids, disabled and otherwise, to stand up for themselves, each other and anyone else who needs it. To speak up and have something to say. Conformity? I don't think so. This is exactly why I am having a hard time thinking about sending Ruby to school when she's old enough, and why I'm glad her birthday is in December so that I have an extra year to mull it over.