Two standard deviations

Friday, easy ride today around the Garden of the Gods, maybe hit a climb hard to open the legs up.  The sun is out and the sky is ridiculously blue.  Just past the rondpoint on the west side of town, a tourist is trying to read the signs in the shops and slows to five miles an hour, I slide through the gap on the right side just as a trike with a leathered up biker on top moves to the right, towards a parking spot.  I move to the left anticipating a pass.  Suddenly he swings the trike to the left also to do a U-turn in the middle of the block.  I hit the brakes and skip on the cobbles in the meridian.

It’s amazing how fast the mind works.  Instead of spewing invective and cursing his pets in front of people that know me (Hey, that new guy on Pilot Knob is a real wacko), it’s ‘Hey, buddy, where did you learn how to drive?’  He doesn’t like this, ‘You shouldn’t pass on the left.’  Retort, ‘You shouldn’t try to kill me by crossing two solid yellow lines.’  And now we’re past each other. 

I’m angry, way too angry for what’s just happened.  A couple of turns of the crank and thoughts about my meeting a couple of days before begin leaking out and I understand where the anger is coming from.  Wednesday morning Janet and I met with Johann’s IEP team.  IEP means Individual Learning Plan.  If you enjoy acronyms, you’ll love the world of education, where acronyms are a convenient way to refer to people and their needs.  ELLs?  As in I’ve got a bunch of ELLs in my classroom aren’t a kind of bug or type of computer, they’re kids who speak a different language at home.  You could call them LEPs in some states, or NNSs if you’re more theoretically bent. 

In my sons’ educational worlds, we’ve been focused on having them seen, referred to and treated as kids.  Unfortunately, that isn’t enough for some folks who feel a need to quantify who they are with ‘instruments’ and ‘probes’ to find evidence of who they are that is readily evident if you get to know each of them. 

‘Our hands are tied.  In order for your son to get paraprofessional support, we have to do ‘cognitive' testing.’  Intelligence.  Some test results from the battery of other tests already done are pushed across the table.  Look, see where your son is testing?  His scores are below the large white space in the middle.  This is somehow meaningful.  An estimated age equivalent is scribbled next to the table, 7 years, 6 months.  So precise!  There is strong magic in the precision of the test, a test normed on the folks swimming in the middle of the bell curve.  ‘We need to do an IQ test to rule out cognitive deficits.’  Hmm, have you taken an IQ test as well?  Nervous laughter.  Why don’t we put all of our IQ cards on the table? 

Raised voices now, this is getting personal.  How will an IQ score help you teach him better?  We gave you a box of ‘evidence’ before we came; I don’t think you looked at it too closely.  ‘Now we need the numbers.’  The bait and switch. 

We are so concerned about separating those that belong from those that don’t.  When my son was born, I saw a long line of ‘services’ leading to a life of separation, wiping tables at McDonald’s, living in a ‘home’ with others separated from the rest of the normal people.  He was one week old when we were told about a special school forty miles from our home in Iowa where ‘his needs would be met.’  I got angry then and told the ‘team’ they had five years to plan on him being in our local school two miles away. 

‘Have you met with local families who have children with Down’s?’  I look at the nurse, ‘Wouldn’t that be like a meeting of amputees?’  I know she’s trying to be helpful, but she doesn’t know us, our family, my son.  I know the reason that a Down’s group might be useful would be to fight a system of separate but equal, a habit of pulling out those different ones who don’t belong.  My team is the system and we’ll have that fight now, thank you.  ‘Your son is two standard deviations below the norm.’  Let me translate: Your son is two standard deviations below being fully human. 

I push into the climb, red rocks in the sun, pinion pine in the air; I feel the wind on my face and let the anger flow through my limbs.  I’m alive; I feel the pain, gravity resisting my will, the sweat and stink of the real world reminding me that I’m alive.  The struggle of life is not antiseptic and defies measurement.  I laugh at the crest and dive down the apex of the turn.

We are all two standard deviations away from something, otherwise we would all be the same.