Re: Michael Adams/Abrigon (Was [OT] Books for sanskrit self-study

Tangent re "special needs"...

I find it a bit weird as a phrase. Basically, it says outright that
your educational or social needs are different from those of the
mainstream, but it's only applied to the low-performing or pathology
end of things. Why?

Why not also apply it to folk like me (and I'd bet a large portion of
the people on this list) who had 'special needs' that were not met by
the system - by virtue of being too smart for our own good? I for one
found it rather crippling, both mentally and socially; it would have
been very nice to have a forum where I could have been both mentally
challenged *and* in a decent social environment (which is rather hard
to achieve by e.g. just putting me in with mainstream at my cognitive
grade level).

Meh, I think the education system just sucks at doing anything but
educating / indoctrinating / acculturating mainstream (i.e. average
intelligence) kids and keeping them out of adults' hair. People at
both ends of the bell curve are poorly served. In some ways middle
ages style apprecenticeships seem like they'd be better. At least they
would give a sense of purpose to those twelve years.

I hear that this is starting to change in some schools. I wonder what
that would be like.

 - Sai

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