Our research has advanced and there are many opportunities to comment as new insights surface. Dr. John Panagos
Myth Busting
Ironically, the ASHA members who sustain the “medical model” face the problem that medical education has moved on without speech pathology. At the academic centers students must practice and learn in settings including other specialty students. The silo of the college speech and hearing center does not work. Not only is school SLP practice out of date, because the legal changes of 1975 were ignored, now status quo thinking is really challenged. The chickens have come home to roost. ASHA as we have described has no central curriculum process. Whether the Portal project ever gets there is an open question.
Founders Strategy
From our historical notes we have this comment: “ASHA founders solved this problem by taking over accreditation and that remains the ASHA strategy.” This goes a long way to explain why ASHA’s organizational approaches to school functions is deeply divided.
School Office
ASHA seeks input on school programs but it already has plenty. For years school issues have languished. You only have to read the interview of Dr. Kathleen Whitmire, former ASHA director of school services.
http://www.speechpathology.com/interviews/interview-with-kathleen-whitmire-ph-1387
In 2002, Dr. Whitmire’s comprehensive summary of school issues is still with us. The year 2002 was a long time ago.
http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad5/papers/whitmire.html
It is painful to see how ASHA recycles old problems as new. The public relations department needs much more direction about what is a new “hot topic”, and ASHA needs to stop spending money trying to solve old problems. As our current work shows (Nov 2014), the Board of Directors does not have the time nor the information to track historical trends in the field and adjust the vision and the tactics accordingly. The Board is lost in the weeds.
June, 2015
We now do declare the national curriculum for speech-language pathology is a mess. We do so with a better understanding of how this situation evolved. The details need to be worked out. Right now two points are evident:
1. The Board of Directors is responsible, fully.
2. The prevailing curriculum model is wrong.
June 8, 2015
I confess I have a hard time trying to figure out ASHA’s curriculum model. Topics have multiple representations. Old and similar documents appear in the same space and time period. And this seems to carry over into medical speech pathology. The push for swallowing studies leaves me flummoxed as to the status of aphasia in the field, and the role of language in neurological programming for expression. Hence by pushing aside language aphasia as a science domain is left without specificity as to how cortical and subcortical mechanisms control speech. OMG
The Logic of F. de Saussure’s Theory of Language
Panagos, John M.
Acta Symbolica, 3, 1, 50-52, Spr 72
School Speech Pathology Blog 