Thank you, this sounds extremely fascinating and I think I should read this and get back to you :D Random and somewhat tangential thought I had:
There has since been a huge controversy over her physical neglect and endangerment of them, in which she lost her access to them. Which is hugely disappointing if true. (She rejects the accusations and says the apes are now being treated with no dignity and have reverted to being animals in a zoo again. Both could be true--god knows there are plenty of neglected human children.)
I read a little about this, and with the caveat that this is based on my reading a couple of necessarily shallow articles, what it reminded me of (to a much different degree, of course) is my kids' head of school, who generally speaking has been a good head of school. Two years ago her husband died in a car accident -- they were both young, and had a 4-year-old kid. (The news article said he swerved into the path of an oncoming truck, so it seems like there's a good chance it might have been either suicide or drug involvement, which if true adds another aspect of horribleness to the whole thing, but that part is totally speculation.) Just a terrible trauma and she abruptly became a single mother, and either of those things separately would have been awful, much less together! And... the last two years, well, have also been not great for schools in general because of *waves hand at world*, it's been really hard to find teachers, and all the staff at this tiny school, especially the head, have been filling in gaps where needed... and with all of this, parents (including me) have gotten kind of frustrated with a lot of things that have been going poorly or not being taken care of at the school. And there have even been several incidents where the head of school seemed very much like she was being hostile to the parent she was talking to. I mean, it's also absolutely the case that I'm getting all this from the parent point of view (the school admin does not talk about it, which of course is the right choice) which is of course going to be biased, but I've got enough data points now that I don't think bias is all of it, and I think some pretty egregious mistakes were made when dealing with families (though not, I think, anything egregious with the students).
Now, what happened in this case is that this particular person saw that it was too much for her and she is transitioning out to another career, and she worked with the director to hire another head of school that they feel really good about, and we're getting a new head of school next year. But if you were sufficiently attached to the bonobos/students you were working with, and convinced no one but you was going to treat them well, but also under a lot of stress and possibly effectively working two jobs because there was not enough funding / not enough teachers -- yeah, I can see how you might forget or cut corners and even do things that might physically endanger your subjects, while still having nothing but their best interests at heart and even perhaps remaining being the best for them in many other ways.
(I'm kind of horrified though by Savage-Rumbaugh's successors giving up on all the communication stuff, which it seems like they mostly have -- to me that seems like talking to a toddler and then just saying, "well nope! you can only play with other toddlers now, not ever communicate with an adult." I realize that's very anthrocentric and possibly a bit condescending of me, but... I mean... it's one thing for bonobos in the wild, it's another for bonobos that have been learning all this stuff!)
(Also AGH PROBABILITY! This will have to stand in for a much longer rant/comment :) )
no subject
There has since been a huge controversy over her physical neglect and endangerment of them, in which she lost her access to them. Which is hugely disappointing if true. (She rejects the accusations and says the apes are now being treated with no dignity and have reverted to being animals in a zoo again. Both could be true--god knows there are plenty of neglected human children.)
I read a little about this, and with the caveat that this is based on my reading a couple of necessarily shallow articles, what it reminded me of (to a much different degree, of course) is my kids' head of school, who generally speaking has been a good head of school. Two years ago her husband died in a car accident -- they were both young, and had a 4-year-old kid. (The news article said he swerved into the path of an oncoming truck, so it seems like there's a good chance it might have been either suicide or drug involvement, which if true adds another aspect of horribleness to the whole thing, but that part is totally speculation.) Just a terrible trauma and she abruptly became a single mother, and either of those things separately would have been awful, much less together! And... the last two years, well, have also been not great for schools in general because of *waves hand at world*, it's been really hard to find teachers, and all the staff at this tiny school, especially the head, have been filling in gaps where needed... and with all of this, parents (including me) have gotten kind of frustrated with a lot of things that have been going poorly or not being taken care of at the school. And there have even been several incidents where the head of school seemed very much like she was being hostile to the parent she was talking to. I mean, it's also absolutely the case that I'm getting all this from the parent point of view (the school admin does not talk about it, which of course is the right choice) which is of course going to be biased, but I've got enough data points now that I don't think bias is all of it, and I think some pretty egregious mistakes were made when dealing with families (though not, I think, anything egregious with the students).
Now, what happened in this case is that this particular person saw that it was too much for her and she is transitioning out to another career, and she worked with the director to hire another head of school that they feel really good about, and we're getting a new head of school next year. But if you were sufficiently attached to the bonobos/students you were working with, and convinced no one but you was going to treat them well, but also under a lot of stress and possibly effectively working two jobs because there was not enough funding / not enough teachers -- yeah, I can see how you might forget or cut corners and even do things that might physically endanger your subjects, while still having nothing but their best interests at heart and even perhaps remaining being the best for them in many other ways.
(I'm kind of horrified though by Savage-Rumbaugh's successors giving up on all the communication stuff, which it seems like they mostly have -- to me that seems like talking to a toddler and then just saying, "well nope! you can only play with other toddlers now, not ever communicate with an adult." I realize that's very anthrocentric and possibly a bit condescending of me, but... I mean... it's one thing for bonobos in the wild, it's another for bonobos that have been learning all this stuff!)
(Also AGH PROBABILITY! This will have to stand in for a much longer rant/comment :) )