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[fpb]

My conservative friends may want to ridicule such things as sensitivity training, and certainly it can get to be no better than a racket. But faced with total ignorance such as this - http://www.palmbeachpost.com/treasurecoast/ ( Read more... )

Comments

[superversive]

Sensitivity training in the matter of children generally wouldn’t have hurt, either. Apparently the dimwit did not realize that if an authority figure even looks like she might be granting permission to form a lynch-mob, the little monsters (there is an element of monster in us all, and it is unreasonable to expect children that young to have learned to control it in all circumstances) may queue up to form one, just for novelty’s sake.

You can be sure that nobody ever asked these kids whether someone ought to be thrown out of class before, and some of them may have voted ‘yea’ just to find out if she would really do it, and what would happen next. Would she really go through with it? Did they have that kind of power? People a lot more mature than any kindergarten student might well be tempted. (I can remember some sad instances from my own past.)

As for autism specifically, what I think the teacher needed was not so much sensitivity training as clinical training (if only on the level of a St. John’s Ambulance course: we can’t all be therapists). What autism is, how to handle it, what are useful and possible ways to engage children at various points on the scale. A teacher as ‘acluistic’ as this should not be called upon to teach an autistic child without being carefully informed on the subject.

[fpb]

I agree with everything you said. (Which is particularly nice because it represents a resumption of normal service.)