A heart-felt article in the Guardian Comment section, by journalist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, about her learning disabled brother and his experiences of SEN provision, provoked a large and generally well-argued response from readers. This article was itself was written in response to the publicity given to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s own account of his education (Oliver suffers from dyslexia).
Under the headlines ‘The young people failed by society’s tyranny of the norm’ and ‘In schools and wider society we still fear, mock and segregate young people who, like my brother, have learning disabilities’, Cosslett describes her brother’s experience in his school’s ‘special unit’. Her conclusion: ‘In short, it’s looking as though society has failed a generation of children, many of whom will have been suffering from learning disabilities, diagnosed or undiagnosed.’ What a stark contrast to the ambitions for SEN being invested in the current Children and Families Bill.
The article is worth reading in full, as well as some of the readers’ comments received in reply.