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in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 4/3/05 2:43 AM:

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Scott figures:
===========
It's not the "handicapped" that bothers me...people can be handicapped
and I don't subscribe to the pressure to use "politically correct"
speech, what
offended me is the compartmentalizing of the handicapped child as a
debit to the system and your presumption that this debit ought to be
leveled out by
abusing her sister out of egalitarian zeal.
=========

OK. in my anecdote, there was the need for brevity. To fully explain
the hypocrisy: here's the rest of the story.

The parents in question have a province-wide reputation as advocates
for the disabled. A cause celebre for them is school mainstreaming of
disabled pupils.

OK, so given their passion for this cause, they then remove their
bright daughter to an elite private school that does not admit pupils
with disabilities.

Um, is this true? I find that extremely hard to believe, particularly in
Canada, because even here in the USA, it's illegal to discriminate on the
basis of physical disability. I sort of imagined it as being a hanging
offense in Canada.

Actually, Scott, you'll be happy to know (I assume) that in many ways the US
is well ahead of Canada in terms of the rights of people with disabilities.

I'm not sure, but BCITORGB might be talking about intellectual disabilities,
rather than physical disabilities.

As I recall, their "rationale" for doing so was that
there were too many ESL students in the public school their daughters
were attending.

"ESL" meaning "handicapped" I presume?

English as a Second Language.

Surely, if "mainstreaming" is good for the goose, it
ought also to be good for the gander.

That's why it was hypocritical.

Hm. Well, given what you say, I'd say they were being perfectly consistent
with their beliefs and advocacy. They are "mainstreaming" their disabled
daughter, just as they argue ought to be done. Clearly they *could* provide
the very best individual, specialized care and education for their disabled
child, but choose instead to keep her in public school in order to "walk the
walk" and demonstrate that disabled children can be "mainstreamed." I laud
them for standing by their principles.

On the other hand, their gifted daughter evidently needs a more
intellectually stimulating environment to reach her full potential, so they
decided not to stint on her education by keeping her in private school.

I see no hypocrisy at all. I see rational judgment and a concern both for
their children and other disabled children, because they evidently genuinely
feel that the public school environment provides a SUPERIOR educational AND
SOCIAL environment for their disabled daughter. I happen to agree with them.

But...that's the very nature of the hypocrisy.

They want a generalized environment for one daughter, and a specialized
environment for the other.

Without commenting on which type of environment would be most beneficial for
either of these individuals, I do find the behaviour of the parents
hypocritical.

Putting disabled children in "special ed" programs, even very good ones,
isolates them from society and from their peers, and it leaves them in the
lurch when it comes to the necessary socialization skills they can only
learn when interacting with other non-disabled children.

There are different forms of isolation, and there are lots of interesting
articles and first hand accounts you might want to explore regarding the
experiences of people with disabilities in "mainstreaming."

It is also important to realize that the school environment is a temporary
environment, and there is life after school. "Mainstreaming" usually means
that a person with a disability (one with an intellectual disability) is
simply filling up space in a classroom with a curriculum that is not meant
for nor meeting their needs.

"Mainstreaming" is
specifically intended to get disabled children out of isolation and get them
involved in the community and society, where they can both learn to cope
with their disabilities in the real world as well as learn to make friends
and dispel prejudices and preconceptions that are often part and parcel of
"normal" childhood experience when "normal" children are isolated from the
disabled. Anything that leads towards the understanding that the disabled
are not "freaks" of some kind is good, and I applaud these parents for
sticking with it.

There's little evidence that "mainstreaming" accomplishes any of what you
think it does. But without getting into that, I'm confused by your position
about what the parents did.

If mainstreaming is all about people with all different abilities spending
time together, then how is pulling their bright daughter out of the
mainstream consistent with that belief?

As to the other daughter, being gifted, she is unlikely to have as many
problems with socialization

Are you nuts? That's one of the groups that has the most problems with
socialization! Worse than software engineers! (Although sometimes one in the
same).

and will experience socialization at her new
school as well, and will receive a better education. Keeping her in public
school would be unfair to her, particularly so if its done *because* she has
a disabled sister.

Explain again.

The child who is gifted is better off in a specialized environment with
other people who are gifted, but the child who has a disability is not
better off in a specialized environment with other people who are disabled.

Why?