Posts by Hilary Stace
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Thanks for highlighting this issue, Russell. What I can't understand is why the urgency to change something as fundamental as our education system? This just risks alienating all those groups who usually expect to make sunmissions and be heard on education bills, such as all the principals' groups, the School Trustees' Association, parents and others - more than just those pesky teacher unions. And the week before Xmas is not the time when they want to be doing this either.
I listened to my local MP Grant Robertson's maiden speech last night and was pleased to hear him referencing the 1989 Education Act with its guaranteed right of every child to attend their local school . He also quoted those significant and still incredibly important words from Peter Fraser and Dr Beeby in 1939 (overlook the gendered language):
'every person, whatever his level of academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted, and to the fullest extent of his powers'.
-
This Education Bill has huge implications and it is crazy not to put it through the scrutiny of a select committee. One result is that is going to make it very hard for parents of children who are school refusers or school phobics. Watch out parents of kids with autism - they will be open to prosecution if their kids can't cope with all the stress of school and refuse to go.
Kids with special educational needs and their parents better get ready for the humiliation of having their potentially poor achievement against inappropriate 'national' standards made public.
-
I watched the abridged version of the Attitude awards, thanks for the notice.
It is a great start, and must have been a huge understanding, but if this is going to be a new tradition I have some comments
I would like to see an education award as this is where disabled people have faced great discrimination - and it is a lifelong thing, so not just for young people.
It was such an Auckland event and reflected the line that to achieve (usually in a very individual way) you just need a good attitude. However, the personal is political - in disability as much as any other area of discrimination and human rights.
If it had been a Wellington event it probably would have had an activists award, or a NGO of the year award.
I hope Ruth Dyson was there and that some of the speakers recognised her contribution which has led the huge political changes, including major law changes, over the last 9 years.
Disability has been intensely political and my experience is of endless select committees, lobbying, trips to parliament supporting legislation etc. Attitude will only get you so far if you face legal discrimination because of your disability.
-
And finally for now I would like to thoroughly recommend the DVD Philip made for the Health and Disability Commissioner last year (I think this is right, and hopefully it is still publicly available, Philip?).
It shows how to turn around all that negative anti-disability stuff that most of us do in common situations such as the receptionist addressing the person behind the wheelchair rather than the person in it. And it has several fascinating stories of lived experience of disability. I lent mine to someone and must get it back...
-
And sorry Joe. I use the word theory probably because I'm living in the academic world at the moment. I mean opinion or personal reality from observation or lived experience - or whatever you want it to mean.
Words are powerful tools.
-
Special v unique.
Unfortunately, special is too often a synonym for being different in a negative way - ie special education, special needs. It implies a problem which requires fixing in order to fit in with the normal world, but resources are scarce.
I much prefer unique as there are no underlying value judgements, or cultural ideas of otherness. And we are all part of the diversity of humanity.
If people think this is being picky about words, think how much negativity is associated with 'afflicted with', 'suffering' 'wheelchair bound', let alone the old words of deficient, feeble minded, handicapped or that awful word 'retarded'. Who wants to be labelled as these?
-
Re Kimberley. The Donald Beasley Institute in Dunedin was contracted to do some research on the effect of the closure. While their research on the attitudes of staff who worked at Kimberley might support Joe's theory, some other aspects of their research strongly refute this.
There was also a really interesting govt-led restorative justice approach whereby people who had been in institutions before 1992 could tell their story in confidence. The report (2007) can be found on the www.dia.govt.nz website - called Te Aiotanga: Report of the confidential forum of former in patients of psychiatric hospitals (or something similar).
I think that those with lived experience of the experience have the most valued expertise on issues affecting their own lives. Parents, carers, staff have different expertises.
-
The most inspiring aspect of the conference I was at in Melbourne last week (ASSID) was the self-advocacy stream. Here are people with ID telling their own stories of institutionalisation and doing their own research on today's residential care. A group of People First self-advocates from Christchurch did a great presentation on self-advocacy rights including employment, independent living. People First - a group for people with ID - now has its own Ministry of Health Disability Information and Advisory Service. So as the word spreads...
Joe Wylie - have you tested this theory on people with lived experience of being locked up in institutions? There are many around who can tell you what it was like including NZer Robert Martin who spoke to the UN as the head of global self-advocacy NGO Inclusion International during the work on the convention.
And as for humour - of course. I once saw the results of a workshop Philip Patston took with teenagers with intellectual and other impairments
-
Thanks Russell for covering this event. I celebrate anything that brings disability into the mainstream and so I was also cheered that Brian Crump's Radio NZ evening programme featured International Disability Day too. The dilemma is that to feature in the mainstream media disabled people have to be either heroes or tragedies. Ordinary people who are disabled but doing regular but interesting stuff are rarely considered newsworthy.
I was at a conference in Melbourne last week which was opened by their Minister for Disability Issues (their first one ever), a former union organiser, Bill Shorten. He asked why disability and disability issues are so invisible politically when they affect 20% of the population personally and a lot more by connection? Good question but one which disability activists have been addressing in NZ and globally for many decades.
NZ, including many disabled New Zealanders, had a major input into the drafting of the UN convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons, and all our laws our now compliant and we managed to ratify it just before the election (thanks largely to our first minister for Disability Issues Ruth Dyson). The press gallery was empty.
Earlier this year NZ was presented with the FD Roosevelt award for international leadership on disability issues at the UN (the Governor General led the party which included some distinguished disability activists) but TVNZ's Tim Wilson who was in New York went to a film premier instead, and didn't cover it. In the DomPost it was briefly mentioned in a column entitled 'Junket watch'.
But watch out - those activists are organising.
BTW Those wanting to learn more about Philip Patston should check his website and blog at www.diversityworks.co.nz. He's done some interesting thinking about diversity. He's one of the best public speakers I have ever heard too.
-
key ora
Tony Ryall's prescription for waiting lists.