Idiots

Iraq: Four years on. I would take a look at that link if you are interested in crying yourself to sleep.

While I was waiting for my ASL class to start I was listening to two girls chat about speech pathology and yadayadayada. I progressively got more and more irritated as the conversation continued, for a couple reasons. The first reason was that the two girls were talking about their patients, clients, whatever and using explicit names in the conversation, talking about learning difficulties and problem behaviors. Now, I always figured that people who practice science to help people, in this day and age, are familiar with ethics. The number #1 rule is to not disclose information that So-and-so has "this" or that So-and-so has "that." They can't even say that they know So-and-so, let alone publicly talk about their health care issues.

You take measures of confidentiality to protect the rights of people. For all they knew, they could have been working with my son. And if they were publicly disclosing information about him, I would be very upset. Wouldn't you?

The second thing was, and like I've said before "it all goes back to the principles of behavior", the two girls went on and on about how the kids need "this" label and "that" label so they can succeed. It was as if they were eager to begin throwing names at behaviors so they could feel special.

My favorite was this: "Well, there cannot be any environmental factors involved because his brother is just fine."

It just irritates me. Victim blaming happens so much and so often. For the blamer, it's an escape contingency because it takes the responsibility of the environment and people around them, and places all of the burden on the child. For the child, it's a permanent punishment contingency that will haunt them forever.

I was elated with the teacher started class, because I was about to interupt their conversation because I was so pissed off. Good thing.

And as Dr. Malott has always said, "This is just my humble opinion. I could be wrong... but probably not."

But anyway, I have a bunch of business to take care of tomorrow on my day off. The GRE is coming up in 2 weeks, and I've been studying a fair amount. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit