The Plebs at Number 10

[rebness]

Right. Have done the voting thing today, eschewing maverick voting for the Liberal Democrats. It's just that Nick Clegg and his policies are so sexy.

I am so, so worried for my country. The general prediction is that the Tories are going to win this election. I don't see how that's even palatable when the spectre of Thatcher and the crippled North still looms large in the memories of many.

I was so enraged with Labour and its disgusting tuition fees and the Iraq invasion and all that nonsense that I, like many in the UK, want change. And I did even take a look at the Tories. But it's like they take every single ideal of mine and reverse it.

The Tories want to stop helping families with young children. They want virtual segregation in schools for disabled children. They want to repeal the foxhunting ban. They love hysteria on immigration. They have members with incredibly dubious views on gay and trans people. They want us to distance ourselves from the rest of Europe and become some insignificant, friendless island drifting here alone.

In short, they're a goddamn nightmare. And yet it looks like we British are taking leave of our senses today and committing to the most un-British, un-European Government for a long time. My heart is breaking even as I hope and pray people at those polling stations today vote with their head.

Yes, Labour needs to be taught a very sore lesson. This really isn't the way to go about it; it's a betrayal of our own people.

Comments

[pandorasblog]

They want virtual segregation in schools for disabled children.

FUCK. How did that one get past my radar? Though it doesn't surprise me. I remember when Cameron said he didn't believe there were a quarter of a million under-35s unable to work due to illness. Dick.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

It's one of the more crazy policies. I only found out about it in The Guardian very recently: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/11806

I hate them! >:(

[pandorasblog]

The trouble is that, like a lot of Tory policies, it has a tiny grain of basis in a real problem. Every single time there are cuts to the health and social care budget, two areas get hit disproportionately: special educational needs, and mental health.

I think (and I'm not telling you this stuff because I assume you don't know; I know you're very aware of these issues and it's more out of my need to make my comment coherent that I include my whole argument) there are a lot of children whose parents want them to be in special schools because of the concentration of necessary facilities in one place, the understanding of their children's issues, and the will to see their child as an individual beyond their disability.

And the closures and reduction of budgets for special schools has essentially been ableism and penny-pinching under the guise of 'inclusion', just as chucking vulnerable people off disability benefits (particularly people with mental health issues) has been done on a large scale under the guise of 'letting them achieve their potential'. 'Letting them sink or swim in a labour market that fears mental illness and doesn't understand 'good days and bad days'' is more like it.

What frustrates me is that neither Labour nor the Tories are able to see that a one-size-fits-all solution is simply not appropriate. Each of them favours a different extreme re: special education needs, but the choice of mainstream or special schooling should be made by parents who know their child's needs and desires, and backed up by appropriate local authority funding, with that local authority given the freedom to be flexible.

Example - I've known (IRL) two autistic people. One was a friend at my mainstream grammar, and he was given a classroom assistant to help him deal with stuff. The other is the 18-year-old son of a friend, who is in developmental terms similar to a very young child. Now he's of school-leaving age, the local authority offered him an alternative to his special school: a day centre that, his mum discovered, was the worst kind of institutional hell. He doesn't deal with change well to begin with, and this would've been totally wrong for him. So she's seeking (and hopefully getting) funding from the authority to stay home with him, giving up her day job but keeping her night-time teaching up.

I'd like to see a better understanding by government that these two examples are representative of the spectrum of special educational (and beyond) needs - the thing I fear, based on the Tories' plans, is that once they've got disabled children nicely squirrelled away where society cannot see or understand them, and therefore doesn't have to give a toss, they'll start reducing funding for special education anyway. :/

[rebness.livejournal.com]

No, I appreciate hearing more on this argument, because it tends to be brushed under the carpet.

the thing I fear, based on the Tories' plans, is that once they've got disabled children nicely squirrelled away where society cannot see or understand them, and therefore doesn't have to give a toss, they'll start reducing funding for special education anyway.

That is exactly it.

I am torn on disability in education because of what you've outlined. My mother worked in a school specifically for children with Down's syndrome and though it was (and I presume still is) an excellent school where the needs of the pupils were met in a way not necessarily catered for in mainstream schools, two things strike me - the first being that this was in the eighties, when, let's face it, we disregarded the feelings of these children. There was much less emphasis upon integration for them and their disability shut them away from other children.

There was a pupil there with a semi-famous British father who absolutely refused to acknowledge him. Everybody on the school staff was aware that it was because of the stigma of Down's and the stigma of him being in a 'special' school.

My own younger brother, who is absolutely fine now, was removed to a 'special' school when he was an infant just because he was a bit of a slow learner. That's honestly the only 'problem', in their words, that he had. It doesn't make sense! Remove a slow learner (who went on to get great A-levels) and force him through that system from 4-11 just because he struggled in the first year at school?

Then again, my sister does have severe learning difficulties. It would have been absolutely impossible for her to attend a mainstream school, as even in her thirties she still requires full-time care.

So you're completely right; we need to realise that all children need to be looked at individually. Some people with Down's are happy to be in a like-minded environment. Some would be devastated to be removed from mainstream schools where they are thriving. It's the same across all levels of disability. And where can either party draw the benchmark for what determines where you go? They can't! People are individuals. People change as they age.

Finally, I find the Tory policy to be sinister because I just... I feel that it is less about meeting the needs of disabled children than a sneering indictment of Labour's inclusion policy and a middle-class phobia of equality and helping the disadvantaged. We can't have those weird disableds corrupting our own precious normal children, can we?