Sometimes boys hit other boys. Girls too, but let’s pretend for the sake of this post that gender isn’t really important, because the boy who hit another student here is 8-year-old Dakota Nafzinger, and he’s just a boy. Whether he hit a boy or a girl isn’t clear.
There’s no indication that the hit was a big deal, beyond the fact that it happened. It’s not good that it happened, but then, it’s not the first time that a boy hit a boy either.
Except Dakota is blind, and he hit another boy with his cane. That’s the long white thing that blind people use because they can’t see. I add that as a tip from my buddy, The Blind Guy, who informs me that there are still a lot of people out there who can’t figure out why blind people have long white canes.
A representative of the North Kansas City School District said that the cane is property of the district that was given to him during enrollment, and it was taken away when he hit another student with it. She said a pool noodle was given as a substitute because he needed something to fidget with.
The Lord giveth and the principal taketh away. Except the blind kid didn’t have a cane because he “needed something to fidget with.” He was given a cane because he was blind.
Dakota has Bilateral Anopthalmia, which means that he was born without eyes. He said that the pool noodle was very difficult to use, and his mom, Rachel Nafzinger, said that taking away the cane was like taking away his eyes.
That Dakota used his cane to hit another student is an issue that needed to be addressed. Sitting Dakota down, explaining to him that hitting others is wrong, that using his cane to hit is wrong, and telling him that he would be punished for doing so is appropriate. No recess for a week. Although one would suspect that an “educator” would realize that the likely reason Dakota used the cane, rather than, say, his hands or a spitball, was because that’s what he was holding at the moment. Kids do stuff like that. It’s not good, but it’s understandable.
But Dakota is still blind. For those who think a pool noodle is an adequate substitute, try being blind. Try it for five minutes, an hour. Maybe try it for the rest of your life before you accept the deprivation of a white cane as a punishment for a blind kid. It’s not nearly as much fun being blind as you may think.
There are places that no one should ever go when it comes to addressing issues of disability. Depriving a blind child of his ability to function is never a reasonable punishment, any more than enabling him to function as best he can is a “reward.” Functioning as best he can is no reward.
But the fact that this was done at the hands of “educators” reflects such a fundamentally misguided understanding of their function and their responsibility to disabled students. Yes, that’s an ableist way to express it, but as The Blind Guy points out to me, blindness sucks. It’s a disability, not a euphemism, and anyone who isn’t blind doesn’t get to decide what to call it.
After the school’s asinine punishment became publicly known, the school naturally backed off:
“The District has reviewed the situation. We regret that a mistake was made in making sure the student was in possession of his cane when he boarded the bus Monday evening.
The District has apologized to the family and is working to rectify the situation.”
A mistake was made? You think? But even in their attempt to apologize, they don’t get it. The mistake wasn’t limited to Dakota’s getting off the bus without his cane. The mistake was in punishing him by denying a blind kid the ability to function.
Maybe Dakota is the meanest, toughest, 8-year-old hombre the school has ever seen, beating up boys, maybe girls too, all over the place. Suspend your disbelief for a moment. So what? Give him detention. Lecture the kid. Make him eat school lunches. Break him of his 8-year-old violent nature before he grows up to be the first blind “wilding” youth ever, if that’s what you really believe is likely to happen.
But never, no matter what, use his blindness as a punishment by depriving him of his cane.
The long white cane (it comes in smaller sizes for kids) is a tool for people with little or no sight to get around. One is taught to use it in Orientation and MOBILITY classes. When the school district took away the kid’s cane it was taking away his ability to get around in his world. And as a result of that, were robbing him of his indepedance, the psychological impact of that could clearly be devastating. Most school buses, if not all, have stairs. In MOBILITY class I was taught how to use the cane to go and down stairs. I am not challenging sighted people to cover their eyes and try stairs (esp. going down) but just to be aware that it is different when you cannot see the stairs. The white cane is an invaluable tool. So important are the canes that the National Federation of the Blind has a FREE give away of white canes so that no one that needs one be without. The “educators” who thought taking away the cane are morons and need some training themselves. I could go on for days but I will simply thank Scott for his post.
I bring to this only what I learned at your knee.
Surely making him eat school lunches would trigger the eighth amendment?
I wondered if anybody would notice that I slipped that in.
Next up in this district: “Immobile student runs over teacher’s toe with mobility device; is forcibly removed from device and placed on floor in corner for remainder of afternoon.”
Or, perhaps, “the child who was in an altercation with the blind student was placed in a straitjacket and denied the use of his arms for a week.”
The stupid. It burns.
Sigh.
First rule from the bureaucrat’s handbook of effective public relations:
The first rule for playing this game
Is never revealing a name.
This must be your first choice:
Always use passive voice.
So the public won’t know who to blame.
Hanging with lawyers who litigate school cases (IDEA matters especially)
Inevitably turns into a Penthouse Forum of administrative blunders.
This summer, a school planned to accommodate kosher meals within its program using a separate line, with eligible students/lunches distinguished with a gold star sticker.
Sadly, better minds prevailed before implementation 🙁
Seriously? Unbelievable.
“Nothing special. Just waiting for lunch.”
As I understand it, the star was a school emblem of some sort. What I expect happened is they just cut-and-pasted the protocols for allergenic food. But, yeah, when you offer tasteless choices, don’t let kids opt out or trade, and say you will determine what counts as ‘kosher,’ the optics are … bad. (Or hilarious, in a “let’s give the blind kid a pool noodle” kind of way.)