One Brain's journey

A month or so back I wrote that one of the first neuroplasticity programs, Arrowsmith, was about to be dropped by the Toronto Catholic District School Board fo reasons of cost. It’s a little more complicated than that. The Board had asked Arrowsmith to waive their fees over the next two years while the Board conducted a study to see specifically if the program made a difference to subjects in the classroom. There is a similar program using Cogmed Working Memory Training currently running at Sick Children’s’ Hospital in Toronto under the auspices of Rosemary Tannock. Arrowsmith refused and the Board dropped it. Well now it seems that the parents of the children who were enrolled in the program, there are about 70 of them, are taking the Board to court to get them to reverse the decision saying, according to an article in the Toronto Sun, that “the children enrolled in the program will be irreparably harmed.” Named in the suit are: Education Minister’s provincial supervisor Norbert Hartmann, associate supervisor Norm Forma and the Toronto Catholic District School Board. Michael Watson, a partner at Gowling, Lafleur, Henderson LLP, speaking on behalf of the parents said, the case, which has yet to be proven in court, isn’t about money, it’s about helping those children. ” Parents can disagree with decisions of the board … what’s really different about this case is we say this decision was made completely unlawfully and contrary to various provisions of the regulations under the Education Act and beyond the jurisdiction of the supervision team,” Mr Watson says that this team has interfered with and meddled in a very important special education program of the board under the guise of a budget matter. He went on to say that the parents fundamentally believe in the Arrowsmith Program and that it has achieved results.