Itsfuntorun #fundie freejinger.org

(A user was talking about her mentally disabled daughter volunteering and going to public school)

I could train a rat to communicate more than your said daughter can, AND the rat wouldn't drool. Let's say I wanted to take my rat to your older daughter's class and have it go to school there, so resources will be taken away from your daughter's class to teach my rat how to minimally communicate, because to me it's a big deal for it to communicate even a little? You would say "No, because the rat is not capable of learning, it doesn't belong there! If YOU care about teaching it how to nod it's head when it's hungry, then YOU teach it that yourself at home. It's not going to learn writing and mathematics, so it has no place is school with my child!", and you'd be right.

I thought hard about this because someone earlier pointed out that they are disabled and thus a burden to society, but they still deserve education. While I am somewhat financially conservative, I don't believe in a pure free market society, so for example, if a fourth grade boy has a terminal disease that will definitely kill him within five years (aka, he'll never use his education to contribute financially to society), then I still think he deserves to sit in that fourth grade class. Why? Because he's capable of sitting in history class and learning history, and that's where he's supposed to be. But a turtle that will live to be 120 has no right to be sitting in that history class because he's not learning history, he's just sitting there. School is for people who are capable of learning on that level!

If the city offers your older daughter and everyone her age free swim lessons, and I show up with a kid who is allergic to water and demand that my kid get skydiving lessons, what would you say? Would it be fair for my child to take away a teacher from the swim class and take away huge amounts of $$$ so that my kid can learn skydiving? Would you be happy that now your child sits in a class with a much worse teacher-to-student ratio, and now there isn't the money to teach butterfly stroke? Because that's exactly what you're doing.

I love cats and am all for volunteering, but what your daughter does is not impressive at all. Petting the cats is the fun part! There is so much more that needs to be done like changing the litter boxes and washing their dishes, feeding them, cleaning them. I hardly call "petting" volunteering because it's not something anyone would ever get paid to do. Most small children love animals and would give up their allowances to be able to go pet kitties. The fact that you're proud of your daughter over this just shows how far removed from reality you are. If a normal child convinced her parents to take her to the shelter and let her pet the cats, would you say "well, aren't you lucky that your parents let you do that?!" or "wow, you really deserve respect for petting cats!"?

Your daughter is less of the amazing volunteer making-the-world-a-better-place, and more of your own beloved pet rat whose tricks you love, who you are forcing upon the public schools.

31 comments

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