OPINION:
In Massachusetts, children with autism and other disabilities are having their behavior managed with devices similar to cattle prods. While this practice is rightly banned in most other states, some states willingly send children whom they deem unmanageable in their school system to live in a center in Massachusetts that has the approval to apply this medieval practice.
New York, New Jersey and Maryland recently abolished this practice. Parents advocated for legislation to prohibit transferring children to out-of-state facilities that practice electric shock and other aversive, Spanish-Inquisition-style methodologies. A center previously based in Rhode Island relocated to Massachusetts to continue this practice after it was banned in Rhode Island.
Readers may recall the name of B.F. Skinner, whose dated approaches are often taught in introductory psychology classes. He essentially believed the same kind of tactics that work on an animal can work on a human being. Skinner was a proponent of these types of inhumane practices. Children are not cows. The practices permitted in Massachusetts seem to be condoned by misinformed, outdated therapists with limited understanding of positive approaches to behavior. They market it to parents as much-needed “treatment.” It can be likened to the use of leeches for blood-letting to cure patients, a practice in use until the end of the 19th century.
Massachusetts is the home of the Patriots, the Red Sox, John Adams, George H.W. Bush and John Kennedy (who had a sister with disabilities). Where greatness has lived, the state’s care for children has failed because the state government continues to allow these abusive practices under the disguised name of treatment.
ROBERT STACK
President, Community Options
Flanders, N.J.
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