Wandering through the hall at Cal State LA, it was screaming out to me from the bulletin board of the special education department. African-American and Hispanic children are diagnosed with autism at least a year and a half later (on average) than white children. If Hispanic, they're assumed to be delayed due to second-language problems; if African-American they're discounted as having behavioral issues. Once diagnosed, they are far less likely to receive the services they need. Low-income communities don't have the money or social capital to launch the exhaustive legal battles required to get the government to pay what every handicapped child is technically required to receive. Actually, some are muttering that the schools don't have the money anyway.
On NPR the other day, CDC was quoted as saying that autism is a national health crisis. 1 in 150 children are now classified as on the autistic spectrum. And yet some children move forward in learning communication/social/functional life skills, and others remain in the shadows.
Now rewind the tape a little to last week, while I was observing a Speech therapist at a school in Pasadena. The therapist is a wonderful woman who does her job well, but I couldn't believe my ears when she began commenting on his African-American dialect. "He has no phonemic awareness. I keep trying to get it into his head that it's "ask" and not "aks".
African-American English has been extensively researched by linguists and established as a legitimate rule-governed dialect of English, with complex verb tenses that don't even exist in Standard American English. The American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA) puts diversity issues front and center on their website, as well as requiring them to be addressed in master's programs. Yet, on the level of children receiving speech services in the schools, the same incongruities, injustices and inconsistencies remain.
How do I even begin to imagine my role in this world where so much has gone wrong?
On NPR the other day, CDC was quoted as saying that autism is a national health crisis. 1 in 150 children are now classified as on the autistic spectrum. And yet some children move forward in learning communication/social/functional life skills, and others remain in the shadows.
Now rewind the tape a little to last week, while I was observing a Speech therapist at a school in Pasadena. The therapist is a wonderful woman who does her job well, but I couldn't believe my ears when she began commenting on his African-American dialect. "He has no phonemic awareness. I keep trying to get it into his head that it's "ask" and not "aks".
African-American English has been extensively researched by linguists and established as a legitimate rule-governed dialect of English, with complex verb tenses that don't even exist in Standard American English. The American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA) puts diversity issues front and center on their website, as well as requiring them to be addressed in master's programs. Yet, on the level of children receiving speech services in the schools, the same incongruities, injustices and inconsistencies remain.
How do I even begin to imagine my role in this world where so much has gone wrong?
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