Introducing Robin’s story and the cost of manufactured scarcity
In British Columbia, the promise of public education is being quietly dismantled. Not with headlines, not with declarations—but with slow erosion, strategic omission, and institutional neglect.
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The scarcity script: how manufactured famine shapes public education
British Columbia’s public schools are not suffering from a natural shortage—they are operating under a system of manufactured scarcity. This blog explores how austerity, rationing logic, and institutional self-preservation create harm for disabled students and their families. Drawing on thinkers like David Graeber,…
Robin’s story is one among many. A child who needed support, and who instead became the collateral damage of austerity politics. His experiences expose the human cost of a system that withholds care, normalises distress, and treats vulnerability as an inconvenience.
Robin was thriving—with dedicated support staff, carefully built relationships, and a structure that helped him stay regulated and safe. He is autistic, with a PDA profile, and he needs adults who understand how to de-escalate, who use precise language, who earn his trust before asking for compliance.
But when the district cut support—without a plan, without consultation, without a safety net—everything unravelled. Robin began melting down. His sister Lily, in the same class, stopped eating. The classroom became chaotic, unpredictable, and unsafe for everyone. By December, they used the fact that Robin had survived that long without support as proof he didn’t need any.
This is not just a failure of individual judgement. It is a failure of design. And it is happening everywhere.
The supports that make inclusion possible are being treated as luxuries. Staff trained in regulation, trauma, and access are being let go, shuffled, or denied altogether. The funding that should sustain children’s rights is rebranded as a “budget pressure.” Inclusion is promised—and then hollowed out from within.
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Balancing budgets by denying disabled kids support
In British Columbia, we are told that the education system is improving. Budgets are rising. Inclusion is a stated priority. And yet, for families whose children require consistent, sustained support—especially those who are disabled or living with complex trauma—the lived experience is defined…
Families are blamed. Educators are burned out. Children are punished for their needs, or for simply existing in a system that does not accommodate difference. What we are witnessing is not just inequity. It is a slow, bureaucratic violence.
It is collective punishment.
When a school removes supports for one child, the whole classroom feels it. Dysregulation spreads. Fear sets in. Peers withdraw or lash out. And soon, the entire class is suffering—not because of any child’s disability, but because of the institution’s refusal to honour its obligations.
We are told there isn’t enough to go around. But the scarcity in BC schools is not natural. It is not accidental. It is engineered.
And like all forms of manufactured scarcity, it justifies abandonment. It cloaks political decisions in the language of inevitability. It tells us that care must be rationed, that some children are too expensive, that access must be earned.
Learn the language of refusal.
The ABCs of Engineered Scarcity gives you the vocabulary to expose the logic behind institutional neglect—and to confront it.
Robin’s family did everything right. They followed every procedure. They provided documentation. They made requests. They offered expert strategies. They appealed decisions. They poured their energy, their income, and their hope into helping their children belong in a place that should have welcomed them without condition.
The school didn’t listen. The district didn’t act. And the children paid the price.
When we allow this to continue, we are all diminished. Because when care is made conditional—when access becomes a negotiation—every student is at risk. Inclusion without infrastructure is not inclusion. It is exposure.
It is time to stop accepting this. It is time to stop treating harm as an unfortunate side effect of budget constraints. It is time to name what is happening: a systemic failure that punishes the most vulnerable, and harms everyone in its path.
