Tuesday, November 2, 2010

"Look there's a kid in a cage" redux department

I see there is yet another interesting story about an autistic kid in a cage. Along with "retard", calling the special education bus a "tard cart", "look there's a kid in a cage" is yet another cliched insult among those who bully autistic children who attend special schools. I have previously written about my personal experiences with this slight going back to my childhood in the 1960s. I also used this line in my short story, Mr. Twiddle which I wrote quite a few years ago. Also used this line in my unpublished novel "The School of Hard Knocks".

Stories about autistic or other developmentally disabled kids in a cage fascinate me.

9 comments:

Kent A. said...

Stories about autistic or other developmentally disabled kids in a cage fascinate me.

Is the word fascinate have the meaning you are trying to impart to the reader?

jonathan said...

I think you know what the word fascinate means

Kent A. said...

1. to attract and hold attentively by a unique power, personal charm, unusual nature, or some other special quality; enthrall: a vivacity that fascinated the audience.

2. to arouse the interest or curiosity of; allure.

3. to transfix or deprive of the power of resistance, as through terror: The sight of the snake fascinated the rabbit.

4. to bewitch.

5.to cast under a spell by a look.

Using the word fascinate to me in this context is I think a bit wrong from maybe what you are trying to say.

I'm not fascinated by kids in a cage. I'm outraged. It will never lose its shock value to me.

Kent A. said...

Putting autistic kids in cages is just not a meme Jonathan, it happens.

This is from the news today:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325796/Cage-autistic-pupil-removed-Nicolson-Institute-Stornoway.html

John Best said...

Too bad the kid in the cage wasn't Ari Ne'eman.

Jake Crosby said...

I was about to send you this story, but I should've known you'd already be on top of it as you'd written about this issue before.

Anonymous said...

Too bad the Neurodivsity pedophile didn't generate as much interweb interest (odd that)

but, since this one has:

something about the cage story so far everyone seems to be overlooking that is also very disturbing is

that it seems that cage was built and delivered from an institution that houses autistic people

if that's the kind of construction they'll send out


Whats going on with the rest of the people housed in the institution who saw fit to build such a thing?

Matthew Saunder said...

I get the distinct impression that the cage was put up over the summer holidays (BBC site mentions it was up a few months, I suppose there is a chance that noone at the school or council was aware, assuming they had the builders working unsupervised with no orders (I don't know which is worse though...).

On the plus side, this is a great chance for us blogs writing in the field to network and share links to increase our SEO, here's an article I worte on this: http://www.soundtherapy.org.uk/210/#more-210

walking said...

I read stories like that and am thankful we had the energy and financial wherewithal to homeschool our daughter with autism. I just wish we could create school environments where this kind of cruelty destroys people . . .