During my time as a
teacher-candidate at
Brock University, I was expected to take a half-year course on
Special Education.
For the first few weeks of the
course we were introduced to the
laws and
regulations regarding special education in
Ontario, as well as some of the more common
exceptionalities that we would most likely encounter in our teaching careers, such as
autism and several
behaviour disorders. All of it was engaging,
informative, and our instructor was a true
riot. The course was only weeks away when we were informed we'd have a special guest coming in, on
short notice.
It was then we learned about
Scott.
We didn't actually
meet Scott. His mother was the one that introduced him to us. See, Scott can't.
See that is. Nor can he
hear very well (the doctors think he may have partial hearing in his left ear). He has
cerebral palsy, was born without
eyes (didn't develop at all in the
womb) and had a horrible reaction to
vaccination when he was one and a half years of
age, leaving him almost completely deaf and also
brain damaged. They also believe that the medication that he requires to stay alive has both damaged his sense of
smell and his sense of
taste.
Scott therefore only lives in the world of
tactile, and they're not even sure if he understands everything he takes in from that sense either, because of possible
nerve damage due to the vaccination.
His mother is an
amazing woman, don't get me
wrong. She and her
husband run a very successful driving
instruction school across
Canada, so they have the resources to keep Scott both in school and with
nurse almost 24 hours of the day (she
estimated the cost at $85,000 a year). She tours schools in the area (sometimes with Scott in
tow, other times with her husband) to educate people about Scott and his life.
And what a life he's had! Travel to
Europe,
Africa, and
Australia. He has his "own
van" (which is actually driven by his "
peers" from his
high school, as long as they
hang out with him) as well as a
hot tub and
personal trainer. He has met the
Prime Minister personally (twice), and also had dinner with then Vice President
Al Gore. He's been to
Disneyland,
Canada's Wonderland, and a few
Six Flags theme parks. He been to numerous
ski lodges, engaged in
water skiing and
horseback riding, he rode in a
tank with the
military and travelled in Europe by
hot air balloon.
Problem is, I believe he has no idea this is what he has done.
His mother gleams with
pride, saying that Scott is always
happy. But how do we know? He can't
speak at all, and the six hand
signals he uses to
communicate with the world are for such words as
bathroom,
hungry, and
thirsty (and even his mother admitted that these signals are used very
seldom and are often
mixed up).
But the
kicker came when one of my fellow
students asked Scott's mother what she expected him to do after high school (he was "graduating" later that year, at age 18). She said that it was all settled: Scott wanted to be a
public speaker.
My
jaw dropped. She continued that Scott likes to educate people about his
multiple conditions, and how he lives through them, so they were going to go on a
circuit to educate people.
It ocurred to me, after hearing this and watching a short
video on Scott (where they showed him being
tied to a toboggan and shoved down a hill, and also showed him "swimming", which is actually Scott floating around in a small pool with a half-
dozen floatation devices strapped to his body) that in fact his mother was using Scott as a
puppet. Nothing more than a
doll for her to walk around and talk through. All of Scott's adventures, in a way, are for his parents.
But what I still can not even begin to imagine is what goes through Scott's
head on a given day. He doesn't
cry, he doesn't
laugh, he doesn't
speak, he doesn't really communicate at all with the
world around him. All the while he is dragged across the
globe and set up in front of people and
admired and brought on adventures and experiences life to the fullest that any human being can
imagine to.
But how much of it does Scott really know is happening?