Déjà vu!
“Adequate special education is not a luxury,” wrote Justice
Rosie Abella, rendering the Supreme Court’s decision Nov. 9 in favour of
Jeffrey Moore, a B.C. boy with dyslexia in the 1990s. While people rightfully cheered the decision
as a great achievement for children with learning challenges, it took me back
to another case in 1978 in Ontario. A 12 year old boy in Peel was charged with
manslaughter for scaring an elderly man out shovelling snow who succumbed to a
heart attack. This at-risk boy had
severe learning disabilities and ADHD and was functionally illiterate. His
counsel Jeffrey Wilson asked me if I would teach him at my privately operated
special Ed school. I agreed and rather
than sending him to a group home the judge ‘sentenced’ him to the school—at the
local board’s expense. The boy progressed
well in that year; however, his parents couldn’t afford to keep him in school
afterwards.
Thirty years later, adequate education is still an issue
that has to be enforced by the Supreme Court.
The math seems simple to me: give these children the private
education they need to be able to succeed in mainstream
schools and the workplace. Or foot the
bill to keep them in custody for years when they’ve become so frustrated at
being left out that they tune out and act out, as statistics show happens over
and over again.
