A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Scott wonders:
===========
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.
==============

Well, Scott, you've admonished others more than once for not reading
carefully. Now I get to return the favor. At no point did I indicate
that the girl in question was "physically" disabled. She was, but
that's wasn't the issue. She was also severely mentally disabled. As
such, she would have been denied entrance to the private school on
academic grounds.

Well, I wonder if this is necessarily true of all private schools. Perhaps
for special private schools for the gifted, but I imagine that many private
schools would be happy to admit the disabled, because they understand that
being disabled is not the same thing as being worthless.


Scott asks:
==============
"ESL" meaning "handicapped" I presume?
===========

Not in my opinion. But the parents in this anecdote clearly felt that
the ESL numbers in the school constituted a "debit" (to use your
terminology) insofar as the overall learning environment in the
school/classroom was concerned. Interestingly, several of the ESL
students from Korea and China were the top students in math/arithmetic
and music.

Again, I don't know what "ESL" stands for, so I'm assuming it means
"handicapped or disabled."

And when you say the parents "clearly felt that the ESL numbers constituted
a debit," is that a presumption you made based on their putting their gifted
daughter in private school, or did they make quotable statements to that
effect? I suspect the former, and I question your assumptions. It could just
as easily be that they simply felt a private school for their gifted
daughter would provide a much better education than a public school, without
actually denigrating the public school at all, much less based on the
population of "ESL" students. Evidently they thought the public school good
enough to serve one of their daughters, so I don't see how your conclusions
are justified, unless you have some specific statements that can be
attributed to specific individuals (names please) that support your claim.



Scotts asserts:
================
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.
============

Yet somehow you are unable to see that by taking their brighter
daughter (not gifted, just bright) out of the public school, they
diminished the very environment they felt it was important for their
disabled daughter to be exposed to.

Well, that's probably because you appear to be the only one who believes
this to be the case. Once again you demonstrate a willingness to use
children as political pawns in your "leveling out" of education in Canada.
No parent should give even a moment's consideration to your sort of
complaint because it denigrates the students who remain in the public school
system by implying that they are somehow inferior and without the presence
of "bright" or "gifted" children the "environment" of the school will be
diminished.

Most importantly, no parent should consider your complaints because no child
should be subject to the sort of politically-correct academic slavery you
suggest. Children must be treated as INDIVIDUALS, and their INDIVIDUAL best
interests should be served by their parents, to the best of their ability,
without regard for other students, whose educations are the responsibility
of their parents. No child should be lumped into some generalized
classification for the purposes of egalitarianism and socialist
proletarianism.

Sorry, that's hypocritical.

No, it's entirely proper for them to put THEIR children's interests first.
It's their job. It's their most important job, in fact.



Scott, again displaying uncharacteristic, left-wing, concern for the
societal underdog, argues:
==================
"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.
==============

Yes.

And mainstreaming also places an undue and, at times, unfair burden on
teachers and classmates.

Only if you believe that providing a proper educational and social
environment for someone who is already facing an enormous uphill battle just
to survive is an "undue burden." Most people, and certainly most socialist
egalitarianists, believe that helping the disabled is not an "undue burden"
but is rather a mitzvah and a gift, and an opportunity to show charity and
love and empathy and concern for those less fortunate, and a teachable
moment particularly for children (as well as ignorant, bigoted adults)
wherein the intrinsic value of every human being can be demonstrated and the
rewards of altruistic service to others taught to impressionable youth.

The whole reason that "mainstreaming" is being mandated in many places is
precisely BECAUSE of the sort of attitude that you demonstrate that the
disabled are a "burden" on society, which is the same thing as saying they
are worthless, unworthy and ought to be hidden away someplace where we don't
have to look at them and don't have to deal with them, and don't have to
expose our children to them.

The disabled are only a "burden" to the selfish. Where does that leave you?

If a "non-disabled" child were to exhibit
behaviors shown by many of the disabled children, they would be
immediately removed from the classroom and, eventualy expelled from the
school.

Not in any sane educational system. In any place where there are *real*
teachers; qualified, dedicated and understanding, even "difficult" children
are not ejected from the system merely because they have emotional or
cognitive difficulties to overcome. Teaching difficult, damaged students is
hard, but it's immensely rewarding too when a child who was about to be
given up as lost suddenly finds his or her way out of the darkness, with the
help of a TEACHER.

Problem is, that in many public schools, we don't have teachers, we have
overpaid, under-qualified, unmotivated hacks who are uninterested in
actually being educators, but merely want to put in time for 8 months a year
so they can party in the summer. These kind of "teachers" ruin children and
schools. In many other public school, however, we have highly-qualified,
dedicated, motivated educators whose sole interest is to teach the young.
Unfortunately, they are both overworked and underpaid, and there are too few
of them. In both cases, the problem is the public school system itself. This
is where private schools can again excel by hiring and properly compensating
the best and brightest teachers we have.

I've often wondered why it is that we will pay doctors hundreds of thousands
of dollars a year to prescribe Valium and cough syrup, but we won't pay the
people who have the most influence on our children's lives, other than the
parents, a decent, living wage.


As a teacher-school-society we need to find accommodation for pupils of
all capabilities. However, it is an axiom of teaching that, if a pupil
consistently undermines the learning environment of the majority of
pupils, then that pupil must be removed.

Funny, I always thought that the goal was to figure out why the student was
being disruptive, solve that problem and find ways to motivate the student
so he becomes a scholar.

In the case of the disabled
child in the anecdote (and many, many others), the learning environment
was compromised by loud, random, unintelligible utterances that bore no
relationship to the matter being taught. This was complemented by
random physical outbursts of the child rattling her wheelchair and
otherwise thrashing about.

Do you know what the cure for "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder"
used to be?

SMACK! "Now shut up, sit down and study, or you'll get another, and worse!"

Seemed to work pretty well for most students for, oh, a couple of hundred
years. Note that this corporal punishment is not to be meeted out to the
disabled student who is incapable of control, but to the OTHER students who
are allowing themselves to be distracted by what ought to be ignored.

It's a great pity that neither parents nor teachers will ignore all the
liberal touchy-feely crap the "experts" are handing out decrying the
practice of corporal punishment. Kids need to be *taught* to pay attention
and ignore distractions, and sometimes that means refocusing their attention
with a bit of discomfort and embarrassment. Children today are so grossly
over-stimulated, nearly every waking moment of their young lives, what with
TV, video games, ipods and soccer practice that they never have time to
simply learn to sit and think or read a book. There's rarely any quiet time
at home, and there's precious little study time in school, now that schools
are forcing more and more rote learning on kids so they can pass the state
standardized tests. Schools are unwilling to waste a second with quiet study
time, and parents don't enforce it either.

This makes actively teaching them to concentrate and exclude distraction all
the more important, and having a disabled child in your class is an
excellent way to learn this vital study skill.

This over-stimulation extends clear down to the cradle, where the drive to
make "baby geniuses" results in hour after hour of stimulation and instant
coddling and response to every whimper and cry. Some child rearing experts
warn that this constant attention and stimulation is extremely harmful,
particularly to very young children, who, being distracted all the time,
"never discover their toes," as one writer puts it. I'm a firm believer in
letting young children and babies cry for a good, long time, rather than
running to them every time they burp or whine. This causes them to learn to
amuse and control themselves, which is a valuable lesson indeed. It also has
the beneficial effect of teaching children that their parents are not at the
child's beck and call.

I've seen many examples of spoiled children who expect instant service no
matter how petty the complaint, and it causes nothing but trouble as they
grow up. Kids need to learn early that they are NOT in charge, and that the
world does NOT revolve around them and their desires. The sooner they learn
this, the better off they, and society as a whole, will be. Unfortunately,
it appears that discipline is a thing of the past in most homes and
virtually every public school. This is yet another benefit of private
schools...they can use discipline properly without having to be afraid that
some twit of a permissive parent will sue them for motivating their child to
proper behavior in the classroom.

So, as regards your complaint about disabled students being a distraction in
the classroom, I'm un-persuaded that your concern is legitimate. The
solution for other students exposed to this distraction is to be taught to
ignore it and get on with their studies, however that needs to be
accomplished.

There can be no doubt that, notwithstanding the positive attributes of
mainstreaming, there are many "debits" (your word) that can be
attributed to it.

Not a one I can think of. Again, disable students are only a "debit" if you
choose view them as such. Open minded people understand that a challenge is
not a debit, it's an opportunity. In this case, it's a golden opportunity to
teach the other children in the class many good and necessary lessons:
Altruism, concentration, tolerance, acceptance, understanding,
accommodation, charity, love, and inclusiveness. All of those lessons are
easier to teach *because* the disabled girl is in their class, presenting
them with various dilemmas and challenges to overcome and things to learn
about being a good citizen and a good person. If you look at "mainstreamed"
disabled children in that light, it would be best if *every* class had such
people as members.

And then there's the benefits to the disabled child...

So, back to the parents in question: of course it is
hypocritical to expect others' children to try to learn in an
environment compromised by their disabled daughter's outbursts while
taking their brighter daughter to a private school simply because they
have the money to be able to do so. Sheer hypocrisy!

Nope, not at all. Her presence creates a wealth of opportunities to teach
children how to be better students, better citizens and better people. Not
everything you need to learn in school is covered by the Three R's.

I judge that the parents were being good parents and were demonstrating a
strong degree of altruism and commitment to the well-rounded education of
all of the children in the class, who stand to benefit enormously from
learning to understand others and cope with challenges posed by those not as
fortunate at they.

They were served up a heaping helping of lemons, so they made up a vat of
lemonade. Good for them!

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser