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Several months ago, we brought you a story of about this bizarre school. Here’s an update.
State won’t stop funding shock therapy school
The state won’t stop funding a school for disabled youths despite reports of “skin shocks” that sometimes injured students for minor offenses including sloppy appearance.
The decision means the state won’t interrupt the $50 million a year in funding it provides to the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Mass., until its review is complete. The school cares for about 150 autistic and disabled children from New York.
But the state did take a step toward ending at least some shock treatments of New Yorkers at the school.
A state Board of Regents committee recommended that the state prohibit the use of automatic shocks – triggered by getting out of a seat, for example – and for shocks administered while a student is restrained.
Didn’t the CIA’s terrorist torturers go to this school?
If you didn’t try some behavior modification on some of these children they would have to be physically or chemically restrained. Some of these kids will bite hunks out of themselves until they’re covered with blood. I don’t know if this is moral or if there’s some abuse of the system, but they’re not treating mildly mental or emotionally handicapped children here. These are the hardcore handicapped that doesn’t respond to any convention care. I don’t think the answer is major tranquilizers and sedatives either. These children are never mainstreamed, and most people aren’t exposed to them. Their parents are often at wits end trying to do something, anything that will make them more manageable.
If I only had that ugly choice, I’d sedate before torturing.
Anyone who would cause pain to someone ill-equipped to understand is sick.
Yeah, except that there’s nothing to support that kind of conjecture, dude. If this is something that’s being used because somebody didn’t button their shirt straight, there are some judgment issues involved. Headbangers usually can’t dress themselves at all.
What disturbs me here is that I recall a similar story about a kid that had been subjected to a cattle prod, given the same kind of thinking. This was ruled inhumane, after which time the kid succeeded in injuring himself — gotta wonder who decided that was the only means of dealing with the problem.
None the less, it remains — very few places approve of this sort of thing and it simply isn’t done. Figure if there really wasn’t any good alternative, the same kind of thing would be used to treat people with Alzheimer’s.
Work with these kids, and talk to their parents before making knee jerk reactions. There is a tendency for any human to abuse authority, and working daily with these children is very stressful. I stated that if the negative feedback is abused it should be stopped. This is not only immoral, but probably ruins any conditioning if the patient is too stressed. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. This is a study with the goal to make these children a bit more manageable so they can be better integrated into society. We decided decades ago we no longer wanted to warehouse the handicapped in remote institutions. This requires more of the patient, caregivers, and society. I have worked with these children and have a family member that’s developmentally handicapped. The average person has no concept of the patience required.
Figures. So let me get this straight. We encourage children to rebel against their parents by exposing them to mtv, dropping them off at the movies on Fri night, or not giving them enough to do on weekends, and then we do not understand it when they misbehave at school ?
Screw patience. Schools promote children to all flock together in packs like wild wolves. They are easier to control and also more susceptible to state propoganda. The kids that do not flock in packs are skirted over to the fringes, which is where MySpace comes in. Seems like if we get these children on MySpace instead of giving them shock treatments, that would work quite nicely.
But then again, I’m not a multi-billion dollar conglomerate wanting to integrate these children into a life long program of medication and shock therapy treatments. So what do I know.
Am I correct in assuming this is a device that is worn throughout the day and is controlled by remote?
RTaylor:
Um, as it happens, I’ve spent the better part of my life caring for an adopted sibling with similar issues in terms of self-care and behavior. I do know what kind of patience is needed.
Just because I disagree doesn’t mean that I’m ignorant or niave.
Gads.
$50 Million for 150 students? That’s $333,000 per student per year!
In one of my church youth groups we had a shock chair!
(I can hardly believe anyone did that, back then! Everybody was more naive about law suits.)
We considered all great fun… the person in the shock stool had to complete some task — usually a child’s puzzle or similar — in the allotted time before they got shocked. When the adults were out, and we kids got ahold of it, we did lots semi-cruel stuff to each other with it.
I was the “victim” of the stool, so I’m not sure how it was built. It was powered by several D batteries, if I remember correctly.
It sounds abusive but we thought it was a blast — sort of like that early Simpsons episode where the family is shocking each other at the psychiatrist’s office.