May 26 , 2006

Bartol is wrong

Baraboo School Board member Kevin Bartol said at a school board meeting last week that some cognitively disabled students are “unteachable,” and that the school district should not be required to provide services to all students.

The Baraboo News Republic quotes Bartol saying, “There are some people in this country that cannot be educated ... They may have their eyes open, but there's no one awake upstairs.”

Parents of special-needs students have spoken out against Bartol and at the idea that some students do not deserve a free, public education. WEAC President Stan Johnson echoed those parents’ sentiments in issuing the following statement:

“It should go without saying that Mr. Bartol’s statements, and what they imply, are abhorrent. I do not know anyone who knows anything about education who would not agree with me.

“Many of us who work in education do so with a desire to help the very students Mr. Bartol dismisses in his remarks. And the progress we make in the classroom with the students who need us the most are often the experiences we hold closest to our hearts.

“While no educator will side with Mr. Bartol, I believe he does, sadly, represent at least a small faction of those who serve as elected officials in our state and throughout the nation. It is a faction that says schoolchildren matter less than school budgets, that tough talk trumps human decency, and that politics is the route to altering the values and priorities that make this state and this nation great.

“We, as educators, must work to convince young people not to think and act like Mr. Bartol just as we work to educate the students he calls ‘uneducable.’”