Education: Segregation to Inclusion

2522 Words6 Pages

If every child has special needs, what are special needs children? Cade is a special needs child. Cade is also an energetic, loving, friendly, and helpful to his fellow students. The school that he attends has a program called “Getting Caught in the Act” whereby students are rewarded if they are caught in the act of doing something good. Cade plays with Legos, licks the frosting off of the cupcake, can beat just about any video game and regularly “gets caught in the act” at his school. He is like any other child except that Cade has Williams Syndrome (Gorton). Cade is also mainstreamed into general education classes and will someday be fully included with the rest of his peers where he belongs. While the terms mainstreaming and inclusion have been used interchangeably to describe the educational approach to teaching students with special needs, the philosophy of the two methodologies are vastly different. Educating students whose disabilities are well-suited to a traditional classroom setting is generally thought to help those students emerge from school better prepared for life, both educationally and socially. Inclusion supporters also note that not meeting the curricular needs of students will make it difficult for the student to learn and most likely, lead to behavior problems as well. In addition, familiarizing conventional students with students with disabilities in neutral, standard classrooms has helped bridge the misunderstanding gap. As more schools recognize the advantages of teaching special needs students in the “least restrictive environment,” the procedure of “inclusion” is becoming the preferred method to help these students reach their educational best. But that has not always been the school of ... ... middle of paper ... ... and Company, 1993. Sacks, Arlene. Special Education: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2001. Sindelar, Paul T. "Full inclusion of students with learning disabilities and its implications for teacher education." Journal of Special Education 29.2 (1995): 234. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Mar. 2011. Tom E.C. Smith, Edward A. Polloway, James R. Patton, Carol A. Dowdy. Teaching Students with Special Needs in Inclusive Settings. Pearson, 2008. Winifred Anderson, Stephen Chitwood, Diedre Hayden. Negotiating the Special Education Maze. Bethesda: Woodbine House, 1997. Winzer, Margret A. The History of Special Education. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1993. Vandergriff, Jim. "EDUC 201 School and Society." 13 June 2002. Grinnell.EDU. 20 April 2011 .

Open Document