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Seclusion and Isolation Rooms Misused in Illinois Schools
- grenoire 7y agoMisused? They should not be allowed altogether. It's really sad to read about this, and equally frustrating to see that nothing is being done about it. This kind of behaviour is just sociopathic; it's child abuse.
- goda90 7y agoI think it's a horrible misuse of something that can be a good tool for helping children with sensory issues. A safe room where an adult and a child who is overwhelmed can sit, isolated from the hustle and bustle and sounds of the rest of the school. I have a young relative with autism, and their behavior in school and many other situations improved amazingly when their parents got them a pair of sound dulling ear muffs so that they were no longer overwhelmed by noises.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoWhat precisely should be allowed then, within the budget available to public schools and without shortchanging the education other students who are not misbehaving?
- throwanem 7y agoIt's easy to imagine this is a perversion of the purpose that public schools are intended to serve, but it's not. This is the purpose public schools are intended to serve: to create conformity, by whatever means are required, in order to render a society predictable and thus manageable. In service of that purpose, individual children are disposable.
- tptacek 7y agoWell, sure, that and Algebra II/Trig.
- mcguire 7y agoWell, yeah, but Resistance to Interrogation training is valuable.
- simonsarris 7y agoWhat % of high schoolers graduate knowing Algebra II and Trig? edit: 76%? I'm suspicious. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=97 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=97
- tptacek 7y agoAlgebra II / Trig was a graduation requirement at my kids public high school.
- simonsarris 7y agoWhat is a graduation requirement for high school and what high school students know (or can read, at all) at graduation are very different, regardless of whether they graduate.
- pvg 7y agoThe same can be asked about the claimed requirement that students graduate as docile cogs in a pliant social machine. Like, what are the stats for that so we can assess which one is the more accurate description of the purpose of schools?
- burfog 7y agoIt was, if you ignored the escape hatch. Anybody unable to pass the classes can be judged to have a disability (call it "dyscalcula") and then allowed to graduate with reduced requirements. This stuff is making a mockery of education. It has even hit college now, with many students getting extra time for tests simply because they were shameless about claiming a disability.
- sparrish 7y agoIsolation rooms shouldn't exist in schools. The reason they do exist is equally cringeworthy. Parents don't discipline their children and teachers aren't allowed to discipline them so to mitigate the safety issues, to protect the other kids in the class, they fall back on isolating the 'problem' child. It's not good for the anyone (the child, the parents, the teacher, the other kids in the class.) I'd bet 9 out of 10 of these 'problem' children are from single parent homes.
- throwanem 7y agoI can't properly respond to the arrantly contemptible idea that autism is caused by single-parent households without contravening HN rules in regard to civility.
- pc86 7y ago> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. > Assume good faith. Neither the GP nor this comment follow these two guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- goda90 7y agoI don't think the GP comment was focusing on autism necessarily, just bad behavior in general. There are still big problems with kids who aren't autistic that schools struggle to deal with, largely because of a lack of discipline at home. Single parenthood probably doesn't help, but I disagree with the GP that that is the primary factor. At least where I live, the teachers face not only misbehaving kids with little recourse, but also a general attitude from parents that teachers are largely responsible for their kids' success instead of the parents and kids themselves.
- throwanem 7y agoThe article and the intervention it describes exist specifically in the context of "special education". The children subjected to it have autism, epilepsy, and similar conditions. To say that they're merely "misbehaving" because of bad home training, lazy parents, or any other reason, fails to correctly understand the substance of the matter.
- ptah 7y agoI can see how this situation can come about due to penny wise pound stupid cost cutting. Surely one-to-one help for these kids inside the classroom would be better?
- duxup 7y agoPotentially but it depends. If you have a child who regularly hits other children, how much in classroom help do you need before you need to remove the child from the situation?
- ptah 7y agoyou will need one adult fulltime sitting next to the child supervising them
- PeterisP 7y agoIt may require to remove the kid from school, but it wouldn't require solitary confinement for the kid. An "isolation room" is something that may get used for adult prison inmates in case of serious infractions, or a psychiatric hospital might use in certain cases with an adequate medical supervision, but solitary confinement is definitely not something that schools should be able to impose at their discretion.
- burfog 7y ago
- mcguire 7y ago"For this investigation, ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune obtained and analyzed thousands of detailed records that state law requires schools to create whenever they use seclusion. The resulting database documents more than 20,000 incidents from the 2017-18 school year and through early December 2018. "Of those, about 12,000 included enough detail to determine what prompted the timeout. In more than a third of these incidents, school workers documented no safety reason for the seclusion." Done. There's no need for any further discussion. 8000 without "enough detail" and 4000 with no documented safety reason.
- trophycase 7y agoThe teachers I know say there is almost no other way they are allowed to discipline children.
- MaupitiBlue 7y agoIt’s almost as though the primary way the brains of every warm blooded animal evolved to receive discipline has been eschewed by polite society and problematic consequences ensued?
- nerdponx 7y agoWhat, hitting children? It doesn't seem to work. The only analogue in nature I can think of is violent competition among adult males.
- MaupitiBlue 7y agoNearly every animal with a brain has young that misbehave. Mama kangaroo, elephant, tiger, horse and chimp will put up with a certain amount of bad behavior, eg overagressive play or taking too much food, then they’ll grunt, then a growl, and then when bear cub keeps it up, Mama bear nips just hard enough to get them to stop and hopefully not do it again. We’ve abandoned something that’s been at the core of nurturing the young for 60,000,000 years. I would assume there’s been a fair amount of natural selection at work in a fundamental aspect of the parent-child relationship. I think choosing not to teach that “when I say stop, stop” without thinking that it will not work out for a meaningful fraction of the population, seems a bit like trying to figure out what the Boeing MCAS engineers were thinking.
- kaffeemitsahne 7y agoNever even knew there even were isolation cells in schools, that sounds completely insane.
- noonespecial 7y agoAfter the barb-wire, armed guards, and metal detectors, you almost expect "the hole" as part of the deal, no?
- dr_dshiv 7y agoDon't forget the automated ML surveillance of everything students say online.
- archi42 7y agoActually, if you put kids in there you will probably need barb-wire, armed guards and metal detectors at some point. I mean, who seriously expects that NONE of these kids go mental? "Best" case this ends up with a trauma, worst case one of them will eventually grab a gun (at least the odds increase a lot).
- perspective1 7y ago> Eli, 7, was secluded more than a dozen times in kindergarten and nearly 50 times in first grade while attending The Center in East Moline, records show What. the. fuck?
- nathan_compton 7y agoBut by all means, lets keep cutting taxes and letting rich people hide their money wherever. Its not at all possible that this kind of abuse is in part caused by understaffing and a general disregard in financial terms for the value of public education.
- bluGill 7y agoThis is Illinois, those who want to cut taxes are a minority and rarely have power.
- Shivetya 7y agosorry, this is caused by government and buried by the same. it is the lack of accountability most government agencies have that abuses like this fester and only surface with people aghast. We pour billions into school systems but it is mostly aimed at the adults if not retirees of those systems. I will give you my favorite link about Illinois, it describes the problem we face, we have let politicians reward themselves and their supporters to the point we spend too much sustaining golden retirements and not enough on the here and now[0]. This state is not alone in this problem. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/10/26/illinois-100000-club-94000-six-figure-public-employees-and-retirees-cost-taxpayers-12b/#658f77f6481a https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/10/26/ill...
- frockington1 7y agoIllinois is a leader in taxes, if anything this highlights how poorly taxes are utilized
- leonixyz 7y agoPlease someone from the US seriously tell me how can you keep on living and allow this to your children. Even though you don't live in a state that allows this practice, don't you feel guilty knowing that this happens in your country? Now I understand why you have so many school shootings in the US...
- skywhopper 7y agoWhere are you from? Since you understand so much about the US, what policies would you implement here, and how do you propose getting those policies passed and funded?
- leonixyz 7y agoItaly. Vote the right guy. Stop selling weapons as if they were candies and increase taxes to hire and develop teachers.
- pixl97 7y agoUm, ya, not happening anytime soon, and not really addressing the multitude of systemic problems that are occurring.
- pnw_hazor 7y agoProblems abound. "This month, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child gave Italy a failing grade on protecting minors from sexual exploitation. In particular, the committee expressed concern “about the numerous cases of children having been sexually abused by religious personnel of the Catholic Church” and the “low number of investigations and criminal prosecutions” of those crimes. And while other countries have taken a hard look at the problem of clerical abuse, Italy has approached it with something closer to a media blackout. Experts consider Italy’s response to be one of the worst among Western nations, comparable to that of some African and Asian churches in which denial about clerical sex abuse is still rampant." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/world/europe/italy-catholic-church-pope-francis-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/world/europe/italy-cathol...
- spodek 7y agoNurse Ratched incarnate, named the fifth top villain in movies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_Ratched https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_Ratched. I'm surprised the word "sexism" doesn't appear, or rather not surprised but disappointed. If the ratio were reversed I suspect we would change the system immediately.
- afandian 7y agoThis is very deeply unsettling. Solitary confinement is torture, wherever it happens. Doing this to children should be treated as a very serious crime. The psychological damage this must inflict is surely on par, or worse, with other types of assault. Also, the fact that this happens to disabled children paints a very dark picture about who gets to be treated as a 'human'. Establishment educational authorities of one kind or another round the world have a history of enabling and fostering child abuse (of one kind or another). That doesn't just stop by magic. It can be a lot harder to work with special needs children, but torturing them is no solution.
- burfog 7y agoIt is easy to complain. Propose a solution. Tell us what can be done to stop a crazy evil kid from destroying any hope that others can be educated. Make sure to propose something society can afford. To be affordable, it needs to work in a school of 1000 with 50 staff and 100 crazy evil kids. Remember also that the staff will quit if expected to just stand there while a kid bites them. Remember that the crazy evil kids must be protected from each other, even if you might think they don't deserve it. Remember that we've decided that even the most crazy and evil kid has the right to an education. Society awaits your affordable non-abusive proposal.
- afandian 7y agoNo child is evil. End of. Maybe they are troubled because their needs have not been met. Maybe in the case of special needs children their extra demands are too much for the parents. But they are not evil. Trying to treat traumatised children by inflicting more trauma is like admitting a child to a hospital and beating them until they somehow get better. I'm not saying its easy. I don't have a better solution. But there is nothing wrong with saying how screwed up it is. If a society can't provide what is needed for it's children why not come out and say that it's failed, as a whole, on basically its most important job?
- burfog 7y agoDo you believe that no people are evil? If it's just that no child is evil, does the evil pop into existence at age 18 exactly? Unless you have a better solution, how can you justify saying that we screwed up or that our society has failed? Maybe you are asking for the impossible. Other societies simply do not attempt to keep crazy evil kids in classrooms with normal kids. That works. Many societies manage to save a portion of the bad ones via various forms of discipline that the USA has mostly abandoned. Schools in the USA are set up to fail. They have an impossible job. They have no authority to provide effective punishment, and they have no right to reject the crazy evil kids. Of course that doesn't work.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mnm1 7y agoThey are just preparing the kids for their inevitable stint in prison isolation units later on in life that are guaranteed due to their being tortured as children. Of course torturing children doesn't need any supervision by the state. I mean come on, who would abuse children? That's never happened once in human history.
- aklemm 7y agoAnything beyond suspension should be moved out of the schools into juvenile justice or social services. Throw these problems back to the parents. Of course, such parents are utterly unprepared to deal with this, so focus on helping them. As others have said, we need to pay up. Figure it costs 3-6 times as much to educate a kid privately as it does publicly, and perhaps that’s an indication out schools run too thin.
- lumberingjack 7y agoclearly the rooms were designed for a reason. We could have used one when I was in school I remember a case where a kid flipped out and destroyed the nurses room. Can we now talk about why there are mentally ill people everywhere I look.