english essay #2.

edit; this essay was marked by my teacher and she said something like "shannen calderwood, this is a magnificent piece of writing, it's just so heartfelt and beautiful. it's perfect." you can imagine how pleased i was.


Writing a whole essay on a topic you feel strongly about, without it turning into a rather biased rant, is quite difficult. But so is finding a topic that you feel strongly enough about to write an essay on. There are few, for me personally, but this is probably the biggest one.

Parklands school, for children with support needs.

If you are an animal lover, animal cruelty is more disgusting to you than to people who don’t like pets. If you are a bookworm, libraries to you are the greatest place in the world. Everybody has things which are personal to them. For me, with a younger brother who happens to have aspergers syndrome - a form of autism - the idea of a school like this being closed is horrific. 

To truly express the way I feel about this school and it’s possibly closure, I would suppose I have to truly express my feelings towards my little brother. I have three younger brothers, and they are my only siblings. Cullen, the eldest, is 10 years old, 11 next month. Craig & Jamie are 9 year old twins. Craig, mentally and physically, is perfectly healthy for a 9 year old boy. Jamie, however, is not so lucky. Physically Craig and Jamie are nothing alike. Craig, along with his older brother Cullen, is very much like his dad in looks. They are tanned, tall, slim, and have dark hair and eyes. Jamie is much more like me, and my mum. We all have fair hair, pale skin and blue eyes. We knew from when Jamie was about three years old that he was slightly odd, but we thought he was just his own person, he enjoyed his own company. It wasn’t until his primary one teacher suggested that we have him tested for autism that we thought anything could be truly wrong. But it didn’t change how we thought of him. Jamie is the light of my whole life. He is the one person who I know, no matter how bad I feel, could cheer me up with one smile. He is the most beautiful child I have ever seen in my life and he will always be the most beautiful. Jamie is intelligent, and I will never tire of coming home to the sound of him rambling about something he has learned in school that day, or something he found in one of his books. He loves dinosaurs, and could talk about them for longer than any other child can talk about one thing without getting bored. He has his bad days and he has his tantrums, but he makes me happy every single time I see him, and I could want nothing at all more than for him to have a long and happy life, even with his condition.

Parklands school allows children like Jamie, and children who are much worse off than him (as well as better) to have a decent standard of living and a happy, enjoyable few years while they are there. They have facilities which could never be provided for them if they are placed into mainstream education, which is what is proposed by the government if the school is to close. Inside Parklands there is a hydropool, so that the children who are in wheelchairs can have an hour or so of freedom a day and allow their bodies to move around. There is a class of five children, who I do volunteer work with, who are far, far too badly disabled to go into mainstream schools. Only one can walk and none of them can talk. There are hoists and changing facilities in their classroom as these children (I say children, but some of them are as old as 18 years old) cannot even signal when they need to go to the toilet, let alone dream of going themselves. One of the girls cannot move enough to eat, she is fed through a tube in her stomach at intervals throughout the day. These people cannot be put into mainstream education. Although the government propose that some of the money they save will be spent on extra training for teachers, they will not be able to, or may choose not to, deal with things like that. Even if they could, the government would have to spend even more money building extra facilities into schools so that the children could be looked after properly. There is also a multi-sensory room which is full of soft mats and cushioned areas and, again, hoists, so that the pupils in the school can all get use out of it. It has many coloured lights, a bubble machine (which again is a visual stimulant), speakers to play calming or upbeat music depending on the children and their moods. Things like this could not be provided if these children were put into mainstream education.

I personally believe that if you put the “big men” who are right at the top, who are responsible for this idea being considered, into that school for a day, they would stop their debating and leave Parklands open without a second though. To walk into that school every day and see the joy that the surroundings, the staff - even down to the smiles they get from the dinner ladies - brings these young people, is touching to say the very, very least. To enter the classroom of those five severely disabled individuals and see the slight smile they give you, the wave from one or two of them, could reduce you to tears if you thought for a moment what would happen to those smiles if they could no longer be there every day. The staff in this school are also some of the most brilliant people I have ever came across in my entire life - they are doing the job I strive to do and they enjoy every minute of it, it’s clear on every single one of their faces. They, too, know the happiness that they bring these children every day just by being a familiar face and that is not a feeling you ever want to trade - not even if you were offered the world. If Parklands was to close and these people be put into mainstream education, they would no longer have those familiar surroundings and day to day activities  - some as simple as a member of staff pressing snow into their hand so that they can feel it and recognise that it’s cold - which bring them such happiness. They would not cope in mainstream education so they would have top stay at home with their parents - who would most likely, therefore, need to give up their jobs or at least have to work part time instead of full time, therefore losing money, and their children’s standard of living would decrease that little bit more. 

I don’t think any amount of money that can be saved by the government is worth the effect that the closure of Parklands would have on the lives of these children. It is not worth the sadness and confusion that would wash over them with the loss of such a massive part of their every day. And, as I said, I feel this strongly about it because I can empathise. My little brother qualifies for Parklands, and although he is currently in a normal primary school, he only copes as there are under 100 pupils in the school and he has adequate classroom assistants. After primary school that could change, he could be unable to deal with the amount of pupils in a mainstream secondary school and have to go to Parklands for his secondary education - if the school has been closed, what will happen to him?

The mere thought of this school and all the excellent facilities it offers children being closed is unreasonable and, quite frankly, disgusting. If they do decide to close it, I can only imagine what the parents of pupils there and residents of Helensburgh will have to say about it, if this is the views of one fifteen year old girl in an English essay. It will be rather interesting.