Do I live a life of stress? Surely I do but I rather that and home school than to put my kids through this type of experiences and whether some want to admit it or not it is quite common everywhere.
This is why there should be cameras in the class rooms. Not only does it help protect a teacher but it can help protect a child like these children. I think special needs kids need more care and they should have a right to have good quality care to help them.
The only real danger here is a repeat of the "facilitated communication" tragedy of years past, where the idea was that "trained facilitators" would hold the autistic child's hands and either write or type things, detecting the slightest hint of movement and helping the children perform the task they were attempting.
Parents wept with joy when finally able to "talk" to their children this way, getting messages from the kids about loving them and such... Until the allegations of parental child abuse began surfacing, and many parents began to be arrested as facilitated children began accusing their parents of unspeakable abuses committed on them.
After a lot of chaos and finally serious scientific inquiry and study and controlled conditions, it was revealed the facilitators were actually the ones responsible for all of the messages. Not intentionally, in most cases, and not even knowingly - they really believed they were helping the children communicate, and were equally horrified with the allegations they were receiving from the children.
But no one had apparently familiarized themselves with the ideomotor function, which is at play in a number of similar activities, mostly paranormal, such as Ouija boards, dowsing rods, automatic writing and table tipping/dancing - whatever the person using the apparatus thinks about (even UNconsciously and unknowingly) or even wonders about, our bodies tend to "flow" along with whatever we're thinking, and so visibly undetectable pressure is applied by the hands in a way to use the apparatus (such as a pointer on a Ouija board) to indicate letters or otherwise reveal messages or information.
Unfortunately, this information was from the users' own minds, and were patchwork unconscious creations, anxiety, assumptions and imagination, which is why younger people that use Ouija tend to get stranger, scarier, more offensive and abusive results, that's just where their heads are at.
So in this case, the so-called facilitators were actually using the autistic children like Ouija board pointers or dowsing rods, unconsciously guiding their little hands that resulted in whatever happened to be percolating in the facilitators' minds. This was finally proven and demonstrated, resulting in even more chaos and controversy and I'm sure, relief but crushing grief from the parents who thought they had been talking to their children. It was a horrible, horrible snapshot in the history of medical/psychological approaches.
Jpatt, I am trying to follow you here but I don't understand how your first example can be compared to a teacher allegedly holding a boy's head under a water faucet when he dozed off in class or making him eat his own vomit? Please explain, thanks.
I'm sorry, I wasn't very clear and I admit even I had to scroll up and then read the article to figure out what my point was.
What I was getting at was all these reports of abuse, how many of them are known to be realities, to have actually occurred, or is there some sort of "epidemic" of assumptions and hasty conclusions. My point was that it would be bad if this were another case of people resigning and losing their jobs and being arrested on false claims or conclusions.