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KMAN contributes:
=============== You might want to learn more about what goes on when students with intellectual disabilities are placed in the mainstream classes, and see if the results are as you expect. What most students with intellectual disabilities need more than anything is a peer group, just like the rest of us sought out in high school. They want peers they can relate to and they want friends - real friends - who spend time with them on weekends and during the summer. They also need a curriculum that meets their needs.... None of that is taught in a Grade 12 chemistry class... What is happening is the kid with the disabilitiy is picking his nose and playing with his pecker, which is in my view a toally appropriate response to being in an environment that has absolutely no relevance, and an environment where everyone else there can see that you are totally out of place and is reaching all sorts of disparaging conclusions about you. ================= WOW! KMAN, your insights are bang-on. frtzw906 |
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"BCITORGB" wrote in message oups.com... KMAN contributes: =============== You might want to learn more about what goes on when students with intellectual disabilities are placed in the mainstream classes, and see if the results are as you expect. What most students with intellectual disabilities need more than anything is a peer group, just like the rest of us sought out in high school. They want peers they can relate to and they want friends - real friends - who spend time with them on weekends and during the summer. They also need a curriculum that meets their needs.... None of that is taught in a Grade 12 chemistry class... What is happening is the kid with the disabilitiy is picking his nose and playing with his pecker, which is in my view a toally appropriate response to being in an environment that has absolutely no relevance, and an environment where everyone else there can see that you are totally out of place and is reaching all sorts of disparaging conclusions about you. ================= WOW! KMAN, your insights are bang-on. frtzw906 Only because I have been involved with people with intellectual disabilities and their families for almost twenty years in a variety of capacities - particularly...listening. |
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KMAN... off-thread comment: did you ever sort out the "time" issue on
your computer and 4 of your posts which still don't appear on google because they were "sent" some time later today (but actually two days ago)...??? frtzw906 |
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"BCITORGB" wrote in message oups.com... KMAN... off-thread comment: did you ever sort out the "time" issue on your computer and 4 of your posts which still don't appear on google because they were "sent" some time later today (but actually two days ago)...??? frtzw906 Yeah, sorry 'bout that. |
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A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:
in article , Scott Weiser at wrote on 4/3/05 10:14 PM: A Usenet persona calling itself frtzw906 wrote: KMAN picks up something I missed. Thanks: 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). It's not the kids who have problems, it's the parents and schools which create problems. ========================= Exactly! As I mentioned, one of my daughters fits into the gifted category. One of the most heart-wrenching experiences for me (I can't even imagine how it must have been for her!) was picking her up from school with a couple hundred kids playing on the playground and she, always, by herself with no friends. High school was a relief. University has been a godsend for her. ==================== This is why it's imperative that children be carefully socialized very early, beginning when they are babies and toddlers, so that no matter how bright they are, they are still well able to communicate and interact with their peers. The problem with "gifted" children tends to be that their parents, in their zeal to advance their child's intellect, unconsciously isolate their gifted children from their peers, usually by focusing on academics to the exclusion of socialization. Kids simply do not grow up to be socially isolated all by themselves, it takes parental complicity. Actually, once kids reach adolescense, the fact that they were well socialized at an early age seems to matter very little, in terms of the experiences of gifted children and children with intellectual disabilities. The high school experience results in abuse and isolation, even if physically integrated with other kids. I'll grant you that high school is a cruel place, but it's a lot less cruel if a large proportion of the students have grown up with disabled schoolmates. It takes time, of course, to change the culture. 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? ================= Excellent question. Gifted minds need to know. =============================== Because gifted students need specialized teaching and stimulation to fully realize their *intellectual* potential. And you don't think a student with an intellectual disability needs specialized teaching and stimulation to fully realize his/her intellectual potential? I believe I said that just below. However, their needs are different. Don't you think it would be even more important for that student than the student who is gifted, given that the student who is gifted is likely bound for many more years of formal educational opportunities, where as the student who has an intellectual disability is likely to complete their formal education at the end of high school? It depends in part on the nature of the disability. If they are unchallenged by ordinary educational curricula, they become bored and often disruptive and their intellect suffers. What do you think is happening to the intellect of the student with an intellectual disability who is forced to sit through an irrelevant curriculum? What do you think is happening to their behaviour? How do you think it impacts on them to be sitting in a classroom with a curriculum that doesn't meet their needs, being bored, and being disruptive. Do you think that earns them a whole pile of non-disabled peers who invite them out on dates for Saturday night? Nobody said it was easy. Still, mainstreaming disabled students is better for them, and for their peers, and for society, than hiding them away in "special" schools. We tried that model. It doesn't work. At the same time, gifted children also need socialization time with "ordinary" children, so that they can also learn how to come to grips with their intellect and learn how to integrate into a society that may try to exclude them out of jealousy or merely because they are the "green monkey." Gifted children must learn how to put on social camouflage so that they can associate successfully with those who may not be as intellectually advanced. But these lessons are much easier for gifted students to learn, in part because of their intellect, but also because they can learn to "hide" their intellect when necessary. It's not like being in a motorized wheelchair or having some physical deformity. Disabled children also need specialized instruction to help compensate for their disabilities If you mean they need learning opportunities that are appropriate to their needs, that is certainly true. Yup. but most of all they need socialization with others to learn the skills of living in the world that they cannot receive in special, disabled-only classes. Do you have evidence that they learn these socialization skills through being placed in classes where the curriculum is directed to everyone but them? It depends on the individual student, the particular class, and the specific needs of the disabled student. It may well require additional teaching aides to help the disabled student keep up. It may require special teaching techniques and tools. It may even require modifying the *whole* curriculum so that the "normal" students participate in ways which help the disabled students through. Peer mentoring has had some success. It's a matter of tailoring the classroom to the students, not tailoring the students to the classroom, which is a fundamental paradigm shift for most public schools. In such classes, what socialization they learn is how to interact socially with other disabled children, not with everybody else. You might want to learn more about what goes on when students with intellectual disabilities are placed in the mainstream classes, and see if the results are as you expect. You might want to not make assumptions about what I know about the subject. What most students with intellectual disabilities need more than anything is a peer group, just like the rest of us sought out in high school. They want peers they can relate to and they want friends - real friends - who spend time with them on weekends and during the summer. Yup. I agree. And they find those peer groups not just among the disabled, but among ordinary students in a non-discriminatory environment. They also need a curriculum that meets their needs - learning how to use the public transportation system and how to manage money. Yup, but not until they are older. We're talking about young children here, remember. The need help with the challenge of a world that deals in abstraction, places importantance on sequencing, requires the ability to read the emotional states of others, and the ability to understand various social contexts and apply appropriate behaviours - all areas where people with intellectual disabilities experience severe learning difficulties. Yup. No argument there. They do need help in those areas beyond what an ordinary student would. None of that is taught in a Grade 12 chemistry class, Correct. What's taught in Chemistry is chemistry. Plenty of disabled students are capable of learning chemistry. Physics, too. Just look at Stephen Hawking. and in fact, you probably could not come up with a more cruel environment. Learning to deal with peer cruelty is also a necessary skill. I submit very little is being taught about socialization either. That may be true, but that is the fault of the educators and the people who oversee them (like the parents) not the student. So fix the problem. What is happening is the kid with the disabilitiy is picking his nose and playing with his pecker, which is in my view a toally appropriate response to being in an environment that has absolutely no relevance, and an environment where everyone else there can see that you are totally out of place and is reaching all sorts of disparaging conclusions about you. I find the way that you stereotype all "kids with disabilities." Very diverse of you. This leaves them with a deficit that can cripple them for life, not just physically or mentally, but socially. It leads to feelings of exclusion and isolation because they never have the opportunity to meet and make friends with non-disabled children. Do you have evidence that this happens as a result of being placed in the mainstream classroom? Sure. It happens all the time. To develop a friendship, mutual respect is required. It's hard to develop the respect of your non-disabled peers if you are sitting in algebra class doing self-stimulation to pass the time as concepts totally irrelevant to you and of no benefit to your future are discussed, and the rest of the class points at you and comes up with insulting nicknames. Stereotyping. What about the "disabled" kid who is perfectly normal intellectually, but was paralyzed in a car accident and can't move anything below her neck? Do you think she is going to be "self-stimulating" rather than learning algebra? You really need to examine your anti-disability prejudices a bit. Hiding the disabled away is also harmful to non-disabled children. I agree. Don't hide them. Give them a curriculum that meets their needs and make sure that their achievements are celebrated as loudly and proudly as anyone else in the school. You falsely presume that the only curriculum that they "need" is specialized life-skills training. Disabled kids need to learn math, science, english and all the things any child needs to learn. Yes, they may need MORE help, and specialized life-skills training *in addition* to their regular schooling, but that doesn't mean they should be excluded from mainstream society. It only exacerbates the "green monkey" syndrome and makes it much harder for non-disabled children to accept those who are different. It is to everyone's benefit that children be required to associate with and create relationships with disabled children as early as possible. The earlier the better, before prejudices, bigotry and bias rear their ugly heads. This works quite well in elementary school, but starting in middle school and by the time of high school it doesn't work, I disagree. How well it works in high school depends entirely on how much importance parents, teachers, students and the community as a whole puts on tolerance, diversity and empathy for the disabled. and part of the reason is simply that for the non-disabled students, the purpose of high school is to move on to the next academic step (university or college) which is not the destination for students with intellectual disabilities. Most high schools are little more than a 4 year holding pattern wherein children go through puberty and learn social skills. That being the case, one of the skills they need to learn is how to get along with the disabled. If they don't learn it then, they will grow up to be bigoted, intolerant "abilitists" who stereotype, demean and marginalize the disabled. They need a curriculum that is focused on giving them the most tools possible to enjoy a meaningful and contributing existence in the post-school world. Sitting in classrooms and spacing out while someone else's curriculum is delivered won't accomplish this. Stereotyping. Ensuring an inclusive school environment for all is very important, but putting kids with disabilities into a classroom that is delivering a curriculum that does not meet their needs for the misguided purpose of offering "socialization" is a fool's game. No, it's a game of compassion and diversity that every child needs to learn, if for no other reason than the "there but by the grace of God go I" lesson. And it is the person with the disability that suffers. Not necessarily. Not if the community is compassionate and supportive. Now, if you are talking about a person who happens to use a wheelchair but is perfectly capable of benefitting from the Grade 12 chemistry curriculum, then by all means, that's where they belong, not in some separate classroom doing the same work but separated from their non-disabled peers. The problem with your argument is that it makes grossly erroneous presumptions about "the disabled" and their abilities. -- 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 |
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A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:
I'll grant you that high school is a cruel place, but it's a lot less cruel if a large proportion of the students have grown up with disabled schoolmates. It takes time, of course, to change the culture. You won't change the culture by having people with intellectual disabilities sitting in a classroom while a curriculum targeted at everyone but them is followed. This just wrongly teaches the other kids that the students with intellectual disabilities are useless and at best are to be patronized as pets. Then change the curriculum or place the disabled child in the appropriate class. To earn the respect of their non-disabled peers they need their own curriculum tailored to their needs where they can experience and demonstrate success. Indeed, but they must be taught in conjunction WITH their peers, which is to say in the same facilities and classrooms, whenever possible. Otherwise you end up with the old, two-tier system of separate schooling for the disabled. Properly integrating the disabled (and there are many different types and degrees of disability) into mainstream schools can be difficult, and often requires individualized instruction that may require in-class tutors and assistants for the disabled, as well as special classes to help them keep up. The primary component of mainstreaming, however, is that the disabled students are to be kept in the general classroom with their peers whenever, and to the maximum extent possible, depending on the individual disabled student. And you don't think a student with an intellectual disability needs specialized teaching and stimulation to fully realize his/her intellectual potential? I believe I said that just below. However, their needs are different. Everyone needs a learning program that meets their needs. A high school kid with an intellectual disability needs a curriculum to prepare them for life after high school, not wasting time sitting in the back of a chemistry class picking their nose. You falsely assume that all disable students are equal, and that all of them are incapable of comprehending chemistry and that all of them do nothing but pick their noses. This is merely ignorant bigotry. Don't you think it would be even more important for that student than the student who is gifted, given that the student who is gifted is likely bound for many more years of formal educational opportunities, where as the student who has an intellectual disability is likely to complete their formal education at the end of high school? It depends in part on the nature of the disability. I'm talking about intellectual disabilities. I'm talking about every possible variety of disability. Keep in mind that "intellectual" disabilities are often misdiagnosed and children who are actually quite intelligent are pigeon-holed as "mentally disabled" merely because their ability to communicate is impaired. Again, I refer you to Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most intelligent human being alive on the planet today, who can barely communicate at all, but when he does, human knowledge and scientific understanding are advanced substantially. The child suffering from cerebral palsy may have normal learning capacity but suffer from an inability to control her body or communicate. CP is "brain damage," but it doesn't mean that the child is unteachable. You don't specify what disability the particular child you are so upset about has, so it's hard to judge whether the problems are caused by parents, teachers, peers or are simply a function of the degree of intellectual disability. If they are unchallenged by ordinary educational curricula, they become bored and often disruptive and their intellect suffers. What do you think is happening to the intellect of the student with an intellectual disability who is forced to sit through an irrelevant curriculum? What do you think is happening to their behaviour? How do you think it impacts on them to be sitting in a classroom with a curriculum that doesn't meet their needs, being bored, and being disruptive. Do you think that earns them a whole pile of non-disabled peers who invite them out on dates for Saturday night? Nobody said it was easy. Still, mainstreaming disabled students is better for them, and for their peers, and for society, than hiding them away in "special" schools. We tried that model. It doesn't work. I haven't said a thing about a special school. And yet you clearly imply that they need to be taken out of the general classroom so that they are not "disruptive." If they are not to go to a special school, what are you suggesting as a way to fulfill their RIGHT to an education? And, frankly, the special school model is very old and was done at a time when a person with an intellectual disability being in school at all was considered progressive. Every student needs a curriculum that is right for them. Sticking a kid in a class that is not intended for their learning needs for five years is just the pre-abandonment phase for the lousy quality of life that will follow and the kids they were sitting with have moved on to post-secondary education and/or jobs. You're the only one suggesting that disabled kids be "stuck in a class that is not intended for their learning needs." I've never even hinted at such a plan. Disabled children also need specialized instruction to help compensate for their disabilities If you mean they need learning opportunities that are appropriate to their needs, that is certainly true. Yup. They won't get it sitting in a class with a curriculum that has nothing to do with their needs or abilities. The needs of disabled students are, at the core, exactly the same as the needs of any child. That a disabled child may have *additional* needs does not take away from their need for basic education and socialization. but most of all they need socialization with others to learn the skills of living in the world that they cannot receive in special, disabled-only classes. Do you have evidence that they learn these socialization skills through being placed in classes where the curriculum is directed to everyone but them? It depends on the individual student, the particular class, and the specific needs of the disabled student. It may well require additional teaching aides to help the disabled student keep up. Oh, what great socialization that is. So the rest of the class follows the teacher at the front doing their Grade 12 lessons, and the kid at the back sits in the corner with a TA doing his Grade 2 lessons. Yessir, that will develop a profound mutual respect and open up all sorts of social opportunities. You're the only one making such a suggestion, and it's demeaning and bigoted of you to do so because you use a blanket characterization (and a largely incorrect one at that) to disparage all disabled students. It may require special teaching techniques and tools. It may even require modifying the *whole* curriculum so that the "normal" students participate in ways which help the disabled students through. Peer mentoring has had some success. Ah, yes, the kids that are trying to get an A in Grade 12 chemistry so they can get into college will have their curriculum altered, and the teacher will stray from the curriculum to take time to include the kid with the intellectual disability. It's no problem if the chemistry curriculum doesn't get done and the kids don't get into college. Nobody will mind. Thus are the vicissitudes of a public school education. When you suck at the public teat, you get the same pabulum everybody else does, and in public schools, the curriculum is quite often concocted to serve the lowest common denominator. Pity about that, but that's socialism for you. Sounds like you need to send your kids to private school. ;-) It's a matter of tailoring the classroom to the students, not tailoring the students to the classroom, which is a fundamental paradigm shift for most public schools. Good luck with that. Nobody said it would be easy. As early as Grade 9 high school kids are being hammered (as are their teachers) with the need for high grades to get into college. As should be the case. Going to college should be a *privilege* offered to the best of the best of our young scholars. When society "levels" colleges like they do public schools, you end up with the same pabulum being served and you end up with hordes of unqualified graduates with useless degrees that represent nothing more than 4 (or more likely 6) wasted years and a couple of hundred thousand dollars down the rat-hole of liberal arts, and they end up flipping burgers, hauling trash and digging ditches anyway. That's what high school is for most students - preparation for the next stage of schooling. Hardly. Most kids learn next to nothing in high school, or college, except where the best parties are and where to score some really gnarly bud. Scholars truly interested in, and deserving of a college education don't usually get there through the public school system. When they do, it's in *spite* of the public schools, not because of them. For students who aren't going on to post-secondary education, they need their own curriculum to prepare them for their own next step, not a watered down peanut gallery version of somebody else's curriculum. Great argument for the elimination of public schools in favor of private ones! What most students with intellectual disabilities need more than anything is a peer group, just like the rest of us sought out in high school. They want peers they can relate to and they want friends - real friends - who spend time with them on weekends and during the summer. Yup. I agree. And they find those peer groups not just among the disabled, but among ordinary students in a non-discriminatory environment. You aren't going to find that sitting in the Grade 12 chemistry class, sticking out like a sore thumb and being humiliated by an environment that has no relevance to you. Depends on whether you are up to Grade 12 chemistry. Just because a person is disabled, even mentally, doesn't mean they are incapable of cognition. The need help with the challenge of a world that deals in abstraction, places importantance on sequencing, requires the ability to read the emotional states of others, and the ability to understand various social contexts and apply appropriate behaviours - all areas where people with intellectual disabilities experience severe learning difficulties. Yup. No argument there. They do need help in those areas beyond what an ordinary student would. And they won't get it in the mainstream high school class, where the kids are being prepared for the next step in their formal education. No, they DON'T get it, because of people who dismiss and demean them as worthless and unable to be anything but a burden and drag on the system. As for the other kids, one of the greatest lessons they can ever learn is not to be judgmental, bigoted assholes towards people with disabilities. None of that is taught in a Grade 12 chemistry class, Correct. What's taught in Chemistry is chemistry. Plenty of disabled students are capable of learning chemistry. Physics, too. Just look at Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking does not have an intellectual disability. Indeed. Nor do many disabled students, even ones with brain dysfunctions like CP. The problem is in figuring out who's who. Too often, children who have vast untapped intellectual potential are discriminated against by ignorant bigots who *think* that they are intellectually deficient merely because the child cannot communicate very well. It's not at all uncommon for teachers and parents to assume that bad, anti-social behavior is caused by a brain defect, when in fact it's caused by frustration and anger in a child who understands *exactly* what's happening to him, but who is unable to communicate his needs and desires to uncaring, bigoted people around him who judge him on his appearance and demeanor without taking the time to discover why it is that he's acting so badly. Often, the reason for bad conduct is simple frustration and anger, not intellectual deficiencies. Imagine the anger you would feel if you were brain-damaged to the extent that you could not communicate but still understood exactly what was going on, were well able to think and reason and learn, but found that people were treating you like a useless piece of humanity with no ability to think or reason? It would **** me off to no end, and I might very well decide to engage in socially inappropriate behavior in public out of pique and spite, just to garner attention and relieve my frustration. You wrongly presume that all children with brain defects are properly diagnosed and are getting appropriate care and support for their true level of disability. That's hardly the case. Disabled kids are misdiagnosed and their abilities underestimated all the time...probably more often than not...and far too often, embarrassed parents try to hide them away, either deliberately or wrong-headedly denying them socialization and education because they are afraid of being ridiculed or simply believe their kids are incapable of learning and thus don't need social intercourse. One of the other purposes of mainstreaming is to make sure that disabled children are NOT isolated at home, but rather that they are moved into society so that they can at least be given every opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual capacity in an intellectually stimulating environment. Many are the success stories of isolated children who appeared to be intellectually bereft who came out of their shells and proved to have great intellect once they were removed from isolation and challenged intellectually by concerned, caring educators trained to find ways to communicate with the uncommunicative. Finding those lost souls is one of the duties public schools have, even if it "drags down" the quality of education for others, which it does not. I haven't been talking about people with physical disabilities. I have. I know you'd like to limit the debate, but I'm not going to play that game. Obviously there's no reason why a student with a physical disability who has the same or higher intellect than the other students in the Grade 12 chemistry class should not be a competent and contributing member of that class just like anyone else with those intellectual abilities. Even if they are disruptive and like to pick their nose and pull their puds because they are angry and frustrated at being denied the necessary assistance to succeed? CP is a *physical disability* just like quadriplegia, and you can't judge a book by its cover. and in fact, you probably could not come up with a more cruel environment. Learning to deal with peer cruelty is also a necessary skill. Spend some time talking with kids who have been through it and see if they learned that skill, or if instead they developed mental health issues that ended up being more of a barrier for them than the intellectual disability itself. Talk to the parents of those kids when their kids are in their 30s and 40s and still haven't recovered from the damaged suffered. You mean like me? I was an outcast in high school because I grew up on an isolated farm and because I was intellectually superior to most of my peers and was bored to tears with the dearth of educational stimulation (except for math, which I just never got...my brother, an aeronautical engineer who works for Burt Rutan and helped design Spaceship One, got the math genes...I'm the artistic one) and was one of those students who could finish all the coursework and reading in a given class in the first month of the session. Of course, the teachers wouldnąt *let* me prove I'd learned what they set out to teach me and thus allow me to either move on or do something else entirely, so I was bored most of the time and did my share of "acting out." That's one reason I never completed college. Professors hate it when their students won't play the game of "Academic Fellatio." I gave up on them after a while, recognizing that many of them weren't nearly as smart as I am, and that they didn't react well when that was demonstrated to all in class. I associated mostly with adults when I was a child, many of them college professors, actors, writers and prominent scientists, including Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Heinlein, Vladimir Nabokov and Leo Zilard (one of the inventors of the atomic bomb) so I learned early how to communicate at an adult level. I spent my summer vacations at the Mary Rippon Theater at CU, soaking up Shakespeare, wiring lights, selling cookies and tee shirts and learning stage-fighting. I got my first kiss under the house left stairs into Hellems from an actress several years my senior. My intellect and my unique upbringing made it difficult to get along in school, which was exacerbated by my physical appearance, and I suffered at the hands of a number of bullies and bigots throughout my school days. Remember your high school days? There was always at least one kid, either fat or skinny, who wore hideous orange plaid shirts and green slacks and either carried a briefcase or had a pen-protector in his pocket, and almost always wore glasses. He's the guy like "Sheldon" on Saturday Night Live that was always being pushed around and rejected. That was me, until my senior year in high school, when I discovered fashion, learned some useful self-defense techniques, and finally found a girlfriend who was something other than a vacuous bimbo who couldn't hold up her end of an argument. Turns out she was bisexual, but hey, that didn't really bother me because whatever her other proclivities, she liked me...and so did her girlfriend. Ah, the Seventies! I know first-hand exactly what you're talking about, which is why I'm arguing that such social dynamics are a necessary and desirable part of every child's school experience. It prepares them better for life, where there are many more assholes and bigots around than in school. School trauma is unfortunate, but it's just part of life, and I soon learned to deal with it, as most people do. While ostracism in school is hurtful, it's also part and parcel of learning social skills and coping mechanisms. Do you want to know who the *most* damaged high school students are? It's usually the prom queens, head cheerleaders and jocks, who have their whole identities tied up in the acceptance and adulation of their peers. When they get out of school, and fall from that pedestal, they sometimes fall all the way down and never really recover. "Those of us who knew the pain of valentines that never came, and those whose name were never called when choosing sides for basketball" are stronger, better people for the experience, because we learn our own value, and the value of true friendship and how to cope with rejection and cruelty, all lessons that serve us well in adulthood. (with no apology whatever to Janis Ian, one of my comrades in arms) I wouldn't choose to go through it again, but I'm a better person for having done so. The really strange thing to me is that for being such a social outcast in high school, as recently as three years ago, THIRTY YEARS LATER, from time to time people I would swear on a stack of bibles I had never met before in my life will approach me in public and tell me that they went to high school with me. Weird in the extreme! I must have had a much greater impact on my peers than I ever knew. The high school environment holds little relevancy for life after high school. It's not worth deliberately forcing suffering on people just so they can experience the suffering, given that they aren't going to experience the special brand of high school suffering ever again. I disagree completely. The suffering of high school is *nothing* compared to the suffering in the "real world" they will experience if they don't learn how to cope with rejection and peer pressure in school. I submit very little is being taught about socialization either. That may be true, but that is the fault of the educators and the people who oversee them (like the parents) not the student. So fix the problem. You could fix the problem by changing the purpose of high school for all the kids, accomplished by elminating post-secondary education and competitive employment. I imagine there are other, better ways as well. Costly perhaps, but hey, it's worth it, right? What is happening is the kid with the disabilitiy is picking his nose and playing with his pecker, which is in my view a toally appropriate response to being in an environment that has absolutely no relevance, and an environment where everyone else there can see that you are totally out of place and is reaching all sorts of disparaging conclusions about you. I find the way that you stereotype all "kids with disabilities." Very diverse of you. I'm talking about students with intellectual disabilitiesin high school, and have been throughout. Yes, you've been trying manfully to divert the discussion, but I'm not playing. To develop a friendship, mutual respect is required. It's hard to develop the respect of your non-disabled peers if you are sitting in algebra class doing self-stimulation to pass the time as concepts totally irrelevant to you and of no benefit to your future are discussed, and the rest of the class points at you and comes up with insulting nicknames. Stereotyping. What about the "disabled" kid who is perfectly normal intellectually Obviously that's not who I am talking about. Give me a break. Nope, sorry, no breaks for you at all. but was paralyzed in a car accident and can't move anything below her neck? Do you think she is going to be "self-stimulating" rather than learning algebra? You really need to examine your anti-disability prejudices a bit. You need to stop being disingenuous. You know that's not who I am talking about. Aren't you? I think you're trying to evade the issue by attempting to divert the discussion. Hiding the disabled away is also harmful to non-disabled children. I agree. Don't hide them. Give them a curriculum that meets their needs and make sure that their achievements are celebrated as loudly and proudly as anyone else in the school. You falsely presume that the only curriculum that they "need" is specialized life-skills training. I never said that. That's the implication of your statements. You don't want them in classes with "normal" children because they might be disruptive, and you harp continuously on your presumption that they "need" specialized training that "meets their needs" while all the while ignoring the fact that one of the most pressing "needs" they have is to participate in society and learn to socialize with their peers. Disabled kids need to learn math, science, english and all the things any child needs to learn. Yes. Yes, they may need MORE help, and specialized life-skills training *in addition* to their regular schooling, but that doesn't mean they should be excluded from mainstream society. I want them included in mainstream society. This is accomplished by having a curriculum that meets their needs, rather than sitting them in a Grade 12 chemistry class that is going to be of no benefit to having a better quality of life when school is out. How do YOU know it's not going to be of any benefit to them? Are you omnipotent? Hell, I didn't think that I needed to know the rules of grammar, sentence structure and parsing or punctuation in junior high, so I bailed on a lot of English classes. Now I'm an editor, journalist and a writer who still has to refer to the Chicago Manual of Style more often than I should. What the hell do YOU know about what every individual disabled child "needs" by way of education? If they can't go anywhere because they can't use the bus, can't buy anything because they can't use money, and have no social life because they have no friends, then I submit that whatever else they were doing was a complete waste of time. You suggest that they should learn these things to the exclusion of academic achievement merely because they might "drag down" the system if other students were forced to cope with their presence in school. Nobody but you is suggesting that disabled students don't need specialized instruction in life skills unique to their disability. That does not preclude their need for an ordinary academic education and school-based socialization. It only exacerbates the "green monkey" syndrome and makes it much harder for non-disabled children to accept those who are different. It is to everyone's benefit that children be required to associate with and create relationships with disabled children as early as possible. The earlier the better, before prejudices, bigotry and bias rear their ugly heads. This works quite well in elementary school, but starting in middle school and by the time of high school it doesn't work, I disagree. How well it works in high school depends entirely on how much importance parents, teachers, students and the community as a whole puts on tolerance, diversity and empathy for the disabled. None of that helps a bit. How wrong you are is astonishing. There is no way to make Grade 12 chemistry relevant for a person with an intellectual disability who still needs to learn how to make change for a 20. Nice bigoted categorization there. It doesn't do a thing for either the "regular" student or the "disabled" student to share a classroom environment where it is obvious to all concerned that the student with a disability is just filling up space. Well, it's their space to fill, or don't you get the fact that they have a RIGHT to fill that space, even if it doesn't do them one damned bit of good. That's the mandate of public educational systems. Besides, there's more to school than rote learning. and part of the reason is simply that for the non-disabled students, the purpose of high school is to move on to the next academic step (university or college) which is not the destination for students with intellectual disabilities. Most high schools are little more than a 4 year holding pattern wherein children go through puberty and learn social skills. That being the case, one of the skills they need to learn is how to get along with the disabled. If they don't learn it then, they will grow up to be bigoted, intolerant "abilitists" who stereotype, demean and marginalize the disabled. That's exactly what they learn through mainstreaming, which is forcing the person with a disability into an environment that does not meed their needs, and puts them through 4 or 5 years of humiliation as everyone pretends they are included in a curriculum that is totally irrelevant to their needs. You don't understand what their needs are, so you are hardly qualified to judge. They need a curriculum that is focused on giving them the most tools possible to enjoy a meaningful and contributing existence in the post-school world. Sitting in classrooms and spacing out while someone else's curriculum is delivered won't accomplish this. Stereotyping. If you were reading at a Grade 2 level and still learning how to break a 20, what would you do during algebra class? I'd space out as far as I could. Or worse, I'd act out and do whatever I could to communicate "get me the hell out of here." And that's what happens, one or the otther, or both. Does wonders for socialization, yessir. You're the only one here insisting that someone who has yet to learn to "break a 20" be placed in an algebra class. -- 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 |
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Scott incorrectly states:
=============== You falsely assume that all disable students are equal, and that all of them are incapable of comprehending chemistry and that all of them do nothing but pick their noses. This is merely ignorant bigotry. ================ KMAN does nothing of the sort. You just keep reading it that way. Surely from everything he's said thus far, you can't believe that of him. frtzw906 |
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