How the System Failed My Son: Part Three -- Experts

Having already been to the administration in an attempt to have my son promoted when he was in 1st grade, I knew not to try that again; there was no way his 2nd grade teacher would recommend him to be skipped to 3rd grade. Not that that would have mattered, because he would have had the same teacher. I did go talk to them about having him switched to the other 2nd/3rd grade class. That the woman, his teacher, could tell me that my son was "slow" because he did things at his own pace showed a complete lack of perception on her part (see last post). And, to be honest, she had already demonstrated (and would go on to demonstrate repeatedly) her own lack of actual intelligence. I didn't want my son in her class.

What I found out was that there was no place to move him to. The other 2nd/3rd grade class was the lower level class; he was already in the advanced group. Sure, I could move him to that class if I wanted to, but it would have made the issue of him already knowing all of the material even worse.

And there was no way to advance his progress beyond where he was without support from the teacher. It always came down to teacher recommendation. From the school's perspective, that's what they had to go with, and I get that. I would have had the same kind of standard had I been in their place. Most people have unreasonable and irrational expectations.

I'm just not most people. And neither is my son.

It's like this:
When my wife was pregnant with him, we got up one morning, and her water broke. We were about two weeks away from his due date. We, of course, went to the hospital. The admitting nurse was, shall we say, skeptical that my wife was correct in her assessment of her condition, including asking my wife if possibly she had just peed on herself. My wife, having actually worked in health care for a while, was understandably insulted. The nurse was not at all contrite when it turned out that we were correct and that my wife's water had, indeed, broken.

The thing here is that the nurse was right to be skeptical. She wouldn't have asked my wife about urinating if there was not a proven need to ask women in the same condition about urinating.

So, you know, I understand that the school needed to be skeptical with parents proclaiming the brilliance of their kids. I'm sure it was something they had to deal with all the time. The problem here was the refusal to even really listen or to look at the evidence. They just dismissed me out of hand because, you know, the teacher was the "expert" and surely she would take the appropriate action if it was called for.

It's a good thing the hospital actually checked our claims and didn't resort to the same "the nurse is the expert" way of operating.

In retrospect, it probably would have been better for us, for him, if we'd put him in some other school, maybe even any other school, but he had an older brother and a younger sister in this school, and we liked the school. We figured we could tough it out. It was only 2nd grade, right?

Right?

At the beginning of his 3rd grade year, I put in another request for him to be promoted. I think that one didn't even get a response.

Things got worse, and my son started asking to not have to go to school.

After a few months, I put in another request. At some point, they actually did a review of my kid's performance, including his standardized test scores, and they wavered, but, in the end, the principal told me it was policy to go with the teacher's recommendation, and that is what they were going to have to do. He stayed in 3rd grade, and he stayed in that horrible woman's class. By the end of that year, he hated, really and truly hated, school.

[Many years later, the school would actually "invite that teacher to leave," which, while satisfying, was much, much too late to make any kind of difference for my kid.]

[I just want to add in here because I forgot to mention it earlier:
My son taught himself how to use a computer... at the age of two. In fact, we couldn't keep him off of it. His older brother, who is five years older, had a bunch of educational games, and Phillip wanted to play them, too, especially the Sesame Street one with Elmo. It's not that we had something against him using the computer; we just hadn't even considered the possibility that he could use the computer. So he figured it out on his own. At two.]

Abandoned Places: Ypsilanti State Hospital

The Ypsilanti State Hospital was kind of a rush job. Evidently, the 20s weren't good for the mental health of Americans and by 1930 the existing mental institutions were experiencing some overcrowding. Okay, a lot of overcrowding. So the Ypsilanti hospital was thrown up in Michigan and opened within a year of when construction began. In its first few years, it was one of the only mental institutions in the United States to get favorable reviews based on its conditions for its patients.

That's not a condition that would last. By the end of World War II, two new wings had been added and the hospital was still overcrowded. Perhaps because of this or, maybe, because it was one of the newest facilities, the Ypsilanti hospital was used for various types of experimentation: early flu vaccinations were tested, studies on the effects of milontin, and, um, LSD. During the 50s, the hospital facilities were used for several films about psychological practices, including two about the effects of prefrontal lobotomy.

Perhaps the most interesting thing, though, was some early work and experimentation in group therapy. It seems that during the 50s Jesus was one of the patients at the hospital. Actually, there were three of them. I guess they didn't get the memo about the trinity not all being the same dude, because they were all going for the Jesus aspect. At any rate, Milton Rokeach thought that putting all three of them in a room together, making them confront their delusions, might force them to see reality. That's not really how it worked out, but he did get a book out of it, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

Generally speaking, the 80s and 90s weren't a great time for mental institutions, and the Ypsilanti facility was shut down in 1991 during the push in Michigan to close down all of its mental hospitals.

All photos courtesy of opacity.

Your bonus for today: pictures from the York Street Jail.