Let’s just call it the politics of selfishness for want of a better phrase.

It’s a disease that seems to run rampant this time of year – a time when the state budget is on the table and scores of bills up for hearings.

Every special interest in the state is looking for a piece of the action, or to protect their turf, and they don’t much care whom they use to get what they want.

We’re not talkin’ about the big guys, here – like the tobacco industry or the insurance industry. No, they go out, hire lobbyists, maybe make a few campaign contributions and in the good ol’ days buy a dinner or a golfing trip.

All of that looks pretty much on the up-and-up compared with the campaigns of fear waged by the so-called advocates on issues like special education or bilingual education. In the greater scheme of things the “sin” of buying a vote looks fairly benign compared to what really ought to be a crime – the crime of putting people in fear for no good reason except preserving jobs in what is now the advocacy industry.

When the Joint Committee on Education held its hearing on the Weld administration’s efforts to make bilingual education the transitional program it was originally intended to be, hundreds of students in bilingual programs turned out – in the middle of what would have been a school day, we might add – to attend the hearing and protest.

But the saddest part of all was that most needed to have the hearing translated for them. Yes, high school students – many of them in bilingual programs for years – couldn’t understand what was being said. When a Weld administration spokesman got up to explain the changes being requested, the students applauded his remarks. Moments later, following a brief translation by an accompanying teacher, they booed.

The point is they were there to be a part of the democratic process, but couldn’t be because they had so little command of English. They are being held captive by those who make a living off that system – the “advocates” who want to keep it that way.

It’s not in their best interests to upgrade the standards for teachers in bilingual programs, to require that such teachers be fluent in English, not merely possess “communicative skills.” And it’s not in their best interests to have students move out of such programs in three years (unless their parents opt to keep them in longer). Why empower parents? Why should they count?

Nationally bilingual education started with a $ 7.5 million pilot program in 1968 to help Mexican-American children. It has grown to a $ 5 billion industry that “prevents kids from acquiring the language that will determine their economic and social success as adults,” writes Rosalie Pedalino Porter, a former director of bilingual education in Newton and now chairman of the board of the Washington-based READ Institute.

“If bilingual education were working – i.e., helping limited English-proficient students learn English quickly and efficiently – its costs might be justified. But 27 years of academic research suggest quite strongly it has failed to accomplish its purpose,” she added.

Those who make a living off bilingual ed kids don’t really care about that.

But the politics of selfishness certainly doesn’t stop there.

No, there are also those who would terrorize youngsters with genuine disabilities simply because some real reforms are needed in special education programs that have become a catch-all for every kid who acts up in class.

An estimated 1,500 people – disabled youngsters, their parents and not surprisingly the “advocates” – showed up at last week’s State House hearing on the Weld administration’s reform proposals. Youngsters in wheelchairs and on crutches ought not to be used as props, but that’s clearly what they were.

Or do you think an 11-year-old girl with cerebral palsy just decided that morning she needed to go to the State House to make her pitch?

Logic would tell us it’s unlikely one out of every six Massachusetts pupils is in need of special education. But that’s what the figure is statewide – 17 percent, compared with a national figure of 12 percent. Those who teach in urban systems also know that the easiest way to get a trouble-maker out of class is to label him “special needs.” Then he becomes someone else’s problem.

But this isn’t about logic and it isn’t about providing services to kids. It’s about preserving turf and funds, and about making a damned good show of it all.

And speaking of shows, there was the little weekend show in front of the governor’s Cambridge home staged by the Massachusetts State Association of the Deaf over – what else? – the budget.

Actually the House budget adds money for two legal interpreters in the courts for the hearing-impaired, but cuts funding for a new hard-of-hearing center and eight staff positions that the governor had put in his budget. But then we wouldn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good Sunday demonstration and photo-op, would we?

Rachelle G. Cohen is editor of the editorial pages.



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