Since he was tracked to graduate at 18, his transition process should have started when he was 15 -- and he should have been a part of those team discussions. At 16, federal law dictates that he be a big part of those discussions. If college was not his desire then a full vocational screening and plans should have been afforded him.
But since when do school districts adhere to laws that apply to the disabled?
I'll get back to freedumb2003's third question, and to DixieBelle in a bit.
It's just a really lousy hot sweltering evening here, but as very large rain-storms are headed this way, it should cool off.
I'm assuming you're referring to Vocational Rehabilitation, formerlurker; I'm not aware of any "system" in the schools around here that specifically "guides" the "handicapped," although there might be.
My own experiences with Vocational Rehabilitation have been pleasant and fruitful ones, but that's perhaps because of the way I've used their services.
When I moved up here from Omaha, I immediately contacted Vocational Rehabilitation--not to find me a job, but simply to verify to prospective employers I was who I said I was. I was new here; no one knew me, and all of my references were from people in faraway places.
Vocational Rehabilitation, because of record-keeping, could assure anyone locally that yes, I was who I said I was, yes, I had what I said I had, and yes, I had done all I said I had done. It saved me a great deal of time and trouble, and within three days after I started looking (I didn't start looking right away, still having income from my previous job in Omaha), I was working.
When I was in high school, remember, I didnotdidnotdidnot want to go to college; I wanted to be immediately out in the real world doing something, even if shoveling dirt.
My parents, but not I, had discussions with Vocational Rehabilitation at the time, and it was decided that Hastings College, a private college owned and operated by the Presbyterian Church in Hastings, Nebraska, with only 800 students, would be "ideal" for me, as compared with, say, the University of Nebraska, a great big huge state institution with 25,000 students.
No one with whom I was familiar was going to Hastings College, which raised red flags, but then it was thought something else would ameliorate that; most of the students at Hastings College were from eastern states (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, whatnot), at the time "my sort of people."
I cannot say too much about Hastings College; and for those who wish the smaller-town (Hastings is a city of circa 20,000) wide-open spaces, acres of green lawns, ivy-covered buildings, very low professor-student ratio, caring staff, excellent football team, well, consider Hastings College. It's a great place.
However, it just did not work for franksolich. Not that everybody didn't bust their asses to make it work, but it just didn't work. Inbetweentimes, my father died, and so as to please my mother, I transferred to the University of Nebraska, where there were a lot of people with whom I was familiar. But it wasn't easy; an older brother had to physically, forcibly, shove me into the office for the initial admissions interview.
Shortly after getting in there, my mother died, and ooops, suddenly while I was not where I wanted to be, I was at the only place I could be. I remained in college only because there was nowhere else to go (the brothers and sisters all being much older than I, married with children, all that).
In the case of the kid now threshing wheat, I suspect he was pressured, and buckled; "You're just as good as everybody else, and since everybody else is going to college, you're going to college, too." But unlike me, while he appeared to "give" at the beginning, he showed some spine at the end.
There is not much point in spending money educating those born hard-of-hearing, and those of us born deaf.
Gaulladet College, the special college for the deaf, which has been around since 1840 (or something)--well, with thousands of students passing through it the past circa 170 years, one would think it has built up a rather impressive roster of alumni.
I looked it up once; the most famous, the most distinguished, product of Gaulladet was a guy who did the engravings for books by Gustave Dore.
That guy was it; that guy was the apex of their students.
JohnnyReb here once told, in our old home, the story about a kid who used to badger him, whenever JohnnyReb went out to chop wood. The kid was deaf or hard-of-hearing, and while he loathed school, he really liked chopping wood (if I am recalling the details correctly). One suspects the kid was a nuisance to JohnnyReb, always wanting to chop wood.
The kid's parents and the school decided he had to continue his education.
The kid didn't want to do that; he wanted to chop wood.
Well, he caved, and got into all sorts of trouble, and ended up in the state penitentiary.
Such is what happens when the hearing world seeks to impose its standards, its goals, upon those not part of the hearing world.
If the kid had just been left alone, by now surely he would be an affluent member of his community, a homeowner, a taxpayer contributing to the public till, because damn, there's a lot of money to be made chopping wood. But no, he's in prison, costing everybody money.
Those born hard-of-hearing or deaf are just not academically inclined, and all the care and trouble in the world is not going to make them academically inclined. I suspect that simply mastering the ABCs and arithmetic is all that is needed, provided we are thereafter left alone to develop and thrive as wildflowers.
Wildflowers are durable, and can be beautiful.
Myself being a graduate of the University of Nebraska, and a one-time student at Hastings College and Muhlenburg College (Allentown, Pennsylvania), well, despite all this fancy education, franksolich is Genghis Khan in Vienna, a barbarian in civilization.
