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.

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.


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.

Sorry, that's hypocritical.


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. 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.

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. 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.

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

frtzw906