The Supremes those enlightened and humane arbiters of civil rights for all have agreed to hear the case of an Oregon teen’s family vs. the Forest Grove school district–a case concerning the lower courts badminton over whether the public schools should have to pay for a private education when they have failed miserably to accomodate and educate a student with a learning disability. There are several features to this story that are achingly familiar: the public school officials who blame the student for her failures by pointing out that she was a marijuana user. The loud insistence that despite their failures to help the student get properly diagnosed and accommodated, they are just terrific at what they do. Its an old story.
Sometimes in creative writing classes I point out to students that the hardest story to write is the one in which everyone is a villain. I also suggest that these types of stories are quickly “dated” like those anti-heroic movies from the early 70’s that no one watches anymore. (Remember Ratso Rizzo?)
All stories about really bad people behaving badly and then more badly are always about money. I like to call this “the Bleak House Effect” and you can call it whatever, say something like “The Uncle Johnny Effect” or whatever you like.
The Supremes actually heard a case like this one back in 2007 and the creeps couldn’t come to a decision on the matter, splitting 4-4. But now they have their “Ken doll ultra conservative plastic hair right wing Stepford husband Chief Justice who Can’t Administer the Presidential Oath of Office” so we can count on a ruling against the student and for the school district.
You can count on Judge Scalia to say: “Why doesn’t this student just drop out and go work in a lead mine?”
You can count on Alito to say: “I’m not certain, but I believe I read in the Bob Roberts Medical Journal that marijuana causes learning disabilities…”
You can count on Clarence Thomas to snooze. When he wakes up you can count on him to doodle on his blotter.
The real crime here is that local school districts are often permitted to underfund their special education programs. Real lives are in the balance as we like to say over here at the POTB.
The fact that the Forest Grove school district had to pay for its failures is justice and you can count on the 5 clowns to administer the coup de grace. to our old blind lady.
P.S. I smoked marijuana in high school and it made the miserable hours spent in quasi suffocation go more gracefully upon the cherished inner life where the meanings are.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 