Gifts Special Needs and Issues - Special Ed: What's Going On?, Learning Disabilities, Ritalin: Keeping Kids Cool And In School

In this final chapter, we take a look a students with special needs and gifts and some issues in education — single-sex education, parental involvement, and the commercialization of the classroom.

The first two panels deal with special education. There are some 6 million children in our schools who require special attention. A portion of these children are retarded, have hearing or other impairments, speech defects, or developmental disorders. Such children have always been with us. But a growing number are simply "learning disabled" or suffer from "emotional disturbances." Over the last quarter century, special education has become both "federalized" and "medicalized." The subject is vast and complicated and we do not do it justice. But we attempt to show some highlights in two panels — and then deal with the popular pharmaceutical solution to hyperactive children, Ritalin. One stands in awe at yet another instance of the pervasive tendency of out times: when a social trauma is encountered, we first nationalize it. Then we turn it into a medical conditions. Finally we prescribe the pill.

While some children suffer from disabilities, others display superior gifts and talents — another kind of challenge. We discuss the current trends in helping (or ignoring) the gifted. A portion of the population sees special education for the talented as "elitist."

In the next panel we present a recent innovation — arising from a popular upswell in California — that may become a national trend: to teach students who speak a foreign language at home English in immersion programs. This phenomenon is part of the reaction to large increases in Spanish-speaking students due to changes in immigration policy. This trend is a counter-current to the pervasive "multicultural" tendency in the society. Next we look at another attempt to improve education: grouping children in same-sex schools and classrooms — where they can concentrate on learning better.

In the last two panels we look at parental involvement in schools — and attempts by corporations to "reach the consumer early" — commercialization of the classroom. Some school systems cooperate with such programs for budgetary gain. But reactions against advertising and products in the school are now emerging.