Top Set, Bottom Set is the easiest game in the world and it took me about three seconds to announce that it was the bottom set (Kay-Tee and Colt for example are hardly likely to be anywhere else). What did surprise me was that out of 19 pupils, 15 had some sort of label ie ADHD, ADD Aspergers, School phobic, etc.
Now I know that since virtually all the special schools have been closed down, large numbers of children with all kinds of 'special needs' have been dumped into mainstream education where we can't cope with them. Their parents are very keen on this, saying that they want their child to integrate, which is fair enough, but often doesn't work. Most teachers have no special needs training and aren't really interested- they just want to teach their subject to children with a reasonable range of abilities and behaviour, which is after all what they signed up for in the first place. You don't see Lee throwing a tantrum (and a handful of test tubes) on these teaching adverts, do you?
I just can't help but wonder how many of these conditions have a genuine medical basis and how many are simply down to the child never having been shown how to behave and actually made to, rather than just being asked politely (Parents do seem genuinely afraid of being seen to control their child in public nowadays and you see comedy moments in every park or supermarket, where a fed up adult is trying to reason with a naughty three year old, rather than just giving them a good smack and telling them not to do it again. No doubt the same happens at home).
The cynic in me also firmly believes that the number of 'rich world diseases' will continue to rise for ever more as drug companies dream up new and profitable mind altering drugs to sell to us.
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