{"id":1042,"date":"2007-02-02T06:46:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T06:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2007\/02\/what-is-to-be-done-2\/"},"modified":"2007-02-02T06:46:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T06:46:00","slug":"what-is-to-be-done-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/what-is-to-be-done-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is to be done?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chto Delat? [What is To Be Done?]<\/span>
–Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908<\/p>\n

A lot is going on. Yesterday was miserable, a literal pain in the neck. I ached so much from that fall from skating that I had to use heating pads and get into bed. (Even so, in the morning I worked out because I missed my gym so much after being in DC, etc. Probably a mistake.) Ned helped me make dinner, it was so bad. Dinner is really my turf, but I needed a break.<\/p>\n

I was also mad, very mad. The Boston Globe<\/span> had an editorial about what needs to be done regarding special needs students, talking more about screening out dangerous ones. Read A Clash of Rights in Education<\/a> and see if smoke comes out of your ears. The editors think they are being even-handed here, but they quote from some idiotic study the American Psychology Association did in 2003 that showed that special needs kids can be more dangerous than typical kids in school settings. How were they defining special needs? Who gains from this study? What do they mean by “dangerous?” These questions pounded in my head, along with my frustration that I have never been able to get the Globe<\/span> to put my opeds on their page (somehow I’m good enough for the New York Times<\/span> and the Washington Post<\/span>, but not the oped of the Boston Globe<\/span>, my hometown newspaper!) I guess you have to be affiliated with Harvard to get that.<\/p>\n

(Oh, but now I will be! Well, not affiliated, but I have been asked to speak at Harvard Medical School’s autism conference in November. I am quite honored by that request. 90,000 medical professionals are asked to attend, throughout the country. My sister Laura (a doctor in NJ) told me she might go to the conference, which will be fantastic if she does.)<\/p>\n

I am now working on both my book proposal and an essay for the Post<\/span>. My agent has finally gotten back to me with the proposal, full of notes and comments. She loves it, but it needs a little honing. Fine, that’s what I expected from her. She’s the best. She’s also Sidney Poitier’s agent, and he’s not doing too badly these days!<\/p>\n

My Post<\/span> essay is going to be about screening: prenatal and in-school for “dangerous” special needs kids. The ACOG, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has just posted new recommendations whereby they will test and counsel all pregnant women, regardless of age, for Down Syndrome. So I wonder: how will they counsel? How neutral will they be? To what end is this testing and counseling? Will there be more abortions of Down Syndrome fetuses? What happens when they start testing for autistic babies?????? George Will wrote a good piece<\/a> on this, for Newsweek,<\/span> but not good enough; there’s not a whole lot of his heart in it, too many statistics. So I’m doing one, too. It looks like I am becoming less and less pro-choice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chto Delat? [What is To Be Done?]–Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908 A lot is going on. Yesterday was miserable, a literal pain in the neck. I ached so much from that fall from skating that I had to use heating pads and get into bed. (Even so, in the morning I worked out because I missed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-gO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}