poorly handled SEN at my school

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does anyone feel that the way special needs is handled has the wrong approach to it?

for instance the SEN deparment at my school is completely useless to me. the way they work is that when they want someone to help out with SEN children they advertise "teaching assistants wanted" when what they really mean is "people wanted to help the sp****cs, requirements: basic maths skills and the ability to write and talk" i mean i appreciate that i am given help because of my AS, but that fact of the matter is, i've had about 4 different teaching assistants over the years and 2 of them were of any help whatsoever. one of them happened to have A level maths (which by the way is the only subject i need any help in) and after a year he quit anyway, and the other one didnt know much better maths than i did, but he was good at teaching and made an effort to learn so that he could teach me as well (also quit to do teacher training) the other 2 were worse at maths and english than i am.

my point is this; i dont know if its different in America, but in the UK, SEN is a joke. they assume when they hear the words "special educational needs" that i'm some degenerate freak and that all they need is anyone with a primary school education to help me.

not just with school, in social services as well. when my mother died when i was little and i got put into foster care because he kept drinking too much (thank god he rehabilitated himself and im with him again now) my dad told me they said that my AS was 'caused' by my rough upbrining (yeah they said it was 'caused'). that just proves social services dont know anything at all about AS or how troubled families need help. they just treat every scenario they come across as a conveyor belt production line, they'll take perfectly fine children away from good parents, and leave tormented children with peadophiles and violent agressive parents (god forbid i know i dont need to remind anyone of the baby p incident). people who cant handle family issues just make things much worse when someone has special needs, i got no help for a long time because they refused to recognise high functional autism as problem (some really bad social workers just say "there is no such thing as high-functional autism, just stupid kids who need discapline")

maybe im being arrogant and selfish about the little help that i do get but does anyone feel the same way

No, it's definitely just as bad in America.

I was never part of the special needs program when I was in public school, but I would see the kids walking around with their aids, and it's exactly like what you describe. The aids were only helpful to kids with serious disabilities, and those who couldn't communicate/complete simple tasks. They weren't at all helpful to anyone high functioning. They were just adults that follow kids around.

I managed to escape special ed by virtue of going to a very small school. The one on one help I needed was pretty much par for the course there.

Hubby wasn't so fortunate. End result is he dropped out after 8th grade having only reached the third grade level in core subjects, all because he was 'ret*d'. He's actually quite brilliant, but you have to let him learn his own way, not the cookie cutter setup they have going right now. By himself he's worked up to junior year of HS, for the UK and AUS people that is about 16-17 years old. So not too shabby.

I have made it very clear to Mum that if she has any ideas about putting my little bro in a regular school, she absolutely MUST refuse special education. Here, the parent has to authorise it.

It's guesswork, and then they just justify a previous decision and that's where the real mistake comes in.

In fact, it seems to take an exceptionally good case worker and/or an exceptionally good administrator to get any kind of healthy interplay going between theory and practice. Okay, let's try something, then take an honest look at feedback, then ask ourselves what now seems helpful, and try that, get some more feedback, etc, etc. This should not be so exceptional, but apparently it is.

That one teacher who wasn't good at math but who was good at teaching, and then made an effort to learn math so he could teach you---that is a gift. It should not be so rare, but apparently it is. I guess in other cases, people's egos gets in the way and they can't admit they're wrong about anything. And I suppose an institution based primarily on blame keeps that kind of situation going.

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What I say with math is, try less hard, but try diagonally, and try in more ways. A good teacher can experiment and try three different approaches in the course of a single week. Different students just learn in different ways.

And remember, plenty of people who have struggled in high school have done well in college.