Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 119

SelFMatters
115
But [special ed teacher Charlotte] Orton said she had seen
this pupil’s violent behavior before. It was well-documented at Stiem
and past schooling mentioned his aggressive behavior as well, she
said. Two weeks ago, the same student attacked her at the end o f her
class, she added.
Charlotte Orton went on to inform the Californian that she told a team o f specialists
assigned to the boy o f his violent behavior, but Superintendent Dever dismissed Orton’s
claim, arguing that “Orton’s run-in with the student was an accident, and that school staff
did not know about any violent past.” Then, astonishingly, Dever shifted the blame away
from the “confused and frightened” student onto his mentors, who “should prevent an
attack like this from happening.” (“Teachers, district differ on boy’s violent streak,” The
Bakersfield Californian, May 31, 2003, A1-A4).
In other words, the real victim is a violently insane 200-pound 12-year old who wouldn’t
have done what he did if his mentors had found a way to deal with him properly—
precisely how, the superintendent didn’t say.
Of course the sick boy’s moral, legal, and psychological culpability isn’t at issue here. At
issue, rather, is the contemporary cultural assumptions embedded in the superintendent’s
shameless attempt to cover up for the failure o f the administration, and therefore himself,
to see the boy for what he is and remove him from the learning environment before he
kills someone. Because this child and countless others who are “challenged” emotionally
and mentally have been transformed into culture heroes in the postmodern Era of the
Underdog, it’s the “system” that must be at fault: morally, legally, psychologically.
In a flip-flop from an older (i.e., elitist) cultural dispensation, the word “special” is no
longer used to describe unusually advanced, precocious students, many o f whom are
destined to make significant contributions to society. Instead, the word is now applied to
the educational protocols o f those “challenged” special ed students who, sadly but truly,
can contribute little.
^ Robert Hughes, Culture o f Complaint: The Fraying o f America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993),. 8.
^ Matthew MacKay and Patrick Fanning, Self-Esteem, 3rd. ed. (Oakland, CA: New
Harbinger Publications, Inc..), 222-223.
^ I take the term “Stepfordian” from the 1970s film The Stepford Wives. In this film,
lifelike robots were designed to replace the flesh and blood wives o f men in Stepford, an
all-American suburb. The robots were always happy, never “down,” much less
discontented or self-critical. They embodied, in short, the precise affect and ontology
enthusiastically recommended by MacKay.