Should My Wordless Kid Go to School with Your Normal Child?
If you are fond of cliches, then you might embrace the concept that raising a special needs child can feel like fighting a war. If that’s true, however, the metaphor has to accommodate a battle fought on two fronts. We fight the monster itself, whatever it is that internally afflicts our loved ones. Beyond that, however, and perhaps more frustratingly, we fight an exterior war, not against the disabilities themselves but against some vestiges of an earlier age, still very much alive in a society that is tasked with making a place for these people whom it does not always understand.
I write about the issues involved in raising my disabled daughter Schuyler, both in my blog and in my upcoming memoir, and I get a great deal of feedback as a result. I recently heard from an anonymous reader (do I ever hear from any other kind) in response to some things I’d written about mainstreaming special education students in public school. While it’s unusually blunt, it nevertheless represents a viewpoint that I’ve heard many times before, in some form or another.
Every special ed kid costs schools more money. They are incredibly expensive. Wealthy parents get lawyers and game the system for millions, and all the rest of the kids get inadequate educations that still cost more money.
They should be removed from the system and their education funded differently. Public schools should be reserved for the “neurotypical.”
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t receive funding; it should just come from a different pool of money-health care, probably.
When I think back to my elementary school days, and even later, the thing I don’t remember is ever seeing any kids with disabilities in my classes. If you’re about my age or older, you probably don’t, either. They were sent to different places, special schools or institutions or other “alternative facilities” where they wouldn’t interfere with the fine education that the rest of us received.
As with anything, there are extremes to be avoided. I’ve written in the past about the warehousing of special needs kids and how their curriculum needs to be more specific to their disabilities, rather than just dumping them into the mix and wishing them good luck. But I think it’s clear that this kind of individualized education needs to take place within the context of mainstream schooling.
My daughter Schuyler suffers from a rare neurological disorder that requires her to use an electronic speech device in order to communicate. She spends much of her day in a mainstream second grade class, and so does just about every other kid in her Assistive Technology class. Most of them have more serious physical impairments than she does, and cognitively, at this stage it’s still anyone’s guess for most of them, Schuyler included. And yet, most of them appear to be thriving in their mainstream environments.
I’ve seen the looks they occasionally get from a few other parents, and I suspect they get the same thing from some teachers as well. And the thing that I am 100% certain of is this: when people advocate sending special needs kids away to “special schools,” they are not thinking about the welfare or comfort of those kids. They are thinking of their own.
Yes, special education is expensive. Good education of any kind is, for that matter. But no matter what your politics, nor how extreme your position within those beliefs, a little socialism isn’t going to hurt you, and it’s going to help Schuyler and millions like her.
This is my opinion, but one in which I believe so strongly that as far as I’m concerned, it is a Big-F Fact: a society that doesn’t take care of its own least fortunate, whether that’s the poor or the disabled or whoever, is a society that does not deserve to survive. If we as a civilization can’t do better than “Public schools should be reserved for the ‘neurotypical’”, then we deserve nothing less than to implode on our own selfish appetites and our own primping narcissism. I’ll be the first one at the barricades when the revolution begins.
If you believe that as a citizen you have a right to decide that every penny of your tax dollars should go to providing your neurotypical child with the best education possible, and that you shouldn’t be expected to help fund programs that do not directly benefit your kid, I’m not sure what to say to you.
Well, yes I am. I hope you take a moment out of your self-absorbed life every so often to thank your God (if you have one) that your kid didn’t draw that card, the one that twists their genes or gives them an extra chromosome or stirs their brain chemistry or breaks their bodies. As you ponder your own child and your perfect world where they shouldn’t have to share funding with or even look at kids who did draw that card, I hope you understand that inside every one of those unfortunate bodies and minds is a human being, one with aspirations and dreams and abilities just as big as your own kid’s.
Bigger, probably, because when you have to fight as hard as these kids fight just to be able to sit in a classroom with neurotypical children, you learn not to take those dreams for granted. And as much as most of them would like to be just like everyone else, I’m proud to say that for most of these kids, there’s not a thing about them that is “typical.”
I lost out by not being able to attend school with special needs students. Mainstreaming critics and their little darlings would be just as diminished as human beings if they had their way. Fortunately, I have no intention of allowing anyone to have our kids “removed from the system.” And I am not alone.
Robert Rummel-Hudson’s book, Schuyler’s Monster: A Father’s Journey With His Wordless Daughter will be published in February 2008. He blogs at Schuyler’s Monster.
“…a little socialism isn’t going to hurt you…”
Spoken like a person who will directly benefit from said socialism. Frankly, it sounds a little selfish. Like when Christopher Reeve suddenly became a big advocate of the government spending money on anti-paralysis research once he became paralyzed. It’s even kind of humorous, since you call others self absorbed
.
It is important for us as a society take care of our least fortunate, but even more important that the government not be involved in it in any way. The schools can help, but it’s up to you to get your child the special help she needs. There exists tons of support for every disability if you make the effort to find it (and I bet you have). There is even charity available if you need it.
But not the government. Never the government. You’ve seen what kind of damage they do when they take action in schools, haven’t you?
Sanctimony is a terrible thing.
“…when people advocate sending special needs kids away to “special schools,” they are not thinking about the welfare or comfort of those kids. They are thinking of their own”
“I hope you take a moment out of your self-absorbed life every so often to thank your God (if you have one) that your kid didn’t draw that card”
I wonder just how much consideration and thought you gave to children with special needs before you were personally affected? It seems to me that you are a bit too keen to grab the moral high-ground because it now suits your own personal circumstances. Maybe its because you are guilty of the very thing you accuse everyone else of in your sweeping statements – just thinking of your own….
If that is unusually blunt then your usual commenters must be so subtle as to be intangible.
A note on your “Big-F Fact”: any sentence that includes the word ‘deserve’ is highly unlikely to be a statement of fact. What you have there is an opinion.
Also, you speak of costs only in terms of money. What you ignore (willfully or of ignorance) is the cost to the other students in terms of teacher time and, therefore, rate of progress. The time that a teacher must spend solely on a ‘special needs’ child in excess of what would normally be spent on an individual student does, in fact, come at the expense of the other students. Time is not elastic.
A note on your “Big-F Fact”: any sentence that includes the word ‘deserve’ is highly unlikely to be a statement of fact. What you have there is an opinion.
Also, you speak of costs only in terms of money. What you ignore (willfully or of ignorance) is the cost to the other students in terms of teacher time and, therefore, rate of progress. The time that a teacher must spend solely on a ‘special needs’ child in excess of what would normally be spent on an individual student does, in fact, come at the expense of the other students. Time is not elastic.
When I was on the school board of the very small town I live in there were three special needs children that we knew were about to enter the school system and we spent a lot of time getting the funding together for them. Quite frankly, none of them should have been in the schools and we knew it but we also knew that any effort to turn them away would be met with a lawsuit.
One child had severe cerebral palsy and was also so retarded that she was almost in a vegetative state. School for her was free babysitting. We not only had to hire two minders for her but also had to do some extensive classroom renovation to accomodate her. The other two children were also severely retarded but only required one minder each. One of them eventually was taken to a public facility because she was so violent with the other children. NONE of these children benefited in any way from attempts to educate them or interaction with other children but we were forced to accomodate them at the cost of about $60,000.00 to $75,000.00 per child per year.
The case with your daughter is obviously quite different but the fact is that there are more special needs children like the ones I just described than your daughteer.
My nephew is (now mildly) autistic, and benefited from his parents’ early and aggressive efforts to limit his “monster’s” control over his live. Research into and strict adherence to a special diet made a huge difference in his ability to function. Intensive help during his pre-school years allowed him to be mainstreamed, at first with a full-time aide. With many neurological problems, I think that early intervention makes a much bigger difference than later remedial efforts.
I saw my nephew perform in a play with other students in his second-grade class last year. He sometimes seemed to lose focus, but still pretty much “stayed with the group”. He plays baseball and also last year performed with other fiddlers at a benefit concert for an autism association, organized by (and featuring) his mother. He had not even been brought to her previous benefit concerts, when his condition would have made him an object of sympathy. He still needs a lot of special help, especially with homework. But he will grow up to be productive, rather than a life-long drain on society.
On the other hand, I have also substitute-taught in a classroom with profoundly impaired children. There was about a 2.5 to one ratio of students to teachers and aides in this classroom. I think it is good that they are on the same campus with “normal” children, but none of these particular children would have benefitted much from being in a mainstream classroom, and attempting to mainstream them would have decreased focus on education for other children. In some cases, it would have been medically (or in other ways) dangerous to try to mainstream them.
I don’t know how long intensive educational efforts remain helpful to students like these. I like the idea that they are now seen as part of society, but I wonder if there is not a point where intensive focus on educational assessments, when little or no progress is made, makes their lives less happy.
I think that much of the resentment toward special education comes from the way some parents use special education laws as a legal cudgel. Where I have seen resentment by teachers and parents, it is not really clear whether the child’s impairment stems from nature or nurture. Often, it is probably a combination of the two. It seems that the parents who are continuing to contribute to their childrens’ impairment through their own behavior are the most aggressive and demanding of the schools.
One example from a mainstream middle-school classroom where I substituted was a boy who suddenly jumped up and started running around on the other student’s desks. He also “acted out” in other ways which were highly disconcerting and which suggested to me that he could become physically aggressive at any time. He seemed to be carefully gauging his disruptive behavior to make sure tht he didn’t cross the line into actually endangering other students (which could have triggered his removal from the classroom). The other students reassured me that this was typical of his behavior, but it shut down focus on mathematics. They seemed to accept this, too. They didn’t take mathematics very serously. How much the learning environment contributed to their apathy I can’t say.
This boy comes from a “problem family” in the community, with a brother convicted of murder and other relatives in and out of jail a lot. I can imagine why both parents and teachers would be worried about “normal” students being hurt by him, either academically or (especially when he’s older) physically. Mainstreaming becomes an issue in cases like these.
As a side note, I am also dismayed by the jargon-filled assessment reports, required for each special-needs child. They are intended to help parents understand if their children are making progress. But the vocabulary is so obtuse that clear assessments are difficult. And translation of this specialized jargon into other languages so parents can understand the reports is a real problem.
Interesting bunch of comments.
So far, there are those that skewered the original post and deservedly so for its facile and snarky perspective. But there are also those that show a far superior grasp of the problems and ramifications of “mainstreaming” so quickly and easily waved away by the post’s author.
You seem to be a little bitter.
FWIW I am for practical mainstreaming but it has to be practical. Children in the severe-profound category should not be mainstreamed and must be educated as best possible in a separate envirionment. Putting them in a class with other normally developing children does them no good.
It is extremely expensive to have a separate classroom with one aid per student to basically babysit kids. They’d be much better off in a special environment.
This is unbelievable.
I grew up in a public school system where the special needs children went to school with the rest of us “normal” kids. We grew up with these kids and learned to respect them as human beings, not drooling vegetables that were costing more than their fair share of our parents’ tax dollars.
I honestly don’t know if the money spent to care for these children was taken from education or health funding, nor do I care. It was an invaluable lesson for all of us to see what these kids were capable of and I cannot imagine them being warehoused in some off-site “special” school.
Our “special” school was located inside the “normal” school. We interacted with these members of our community every day. You know – just like in real life. Most of these kids are now working local jobs, doing what they can at a grocery store or gas station.
There is no stigma with these kids. We all know them and repect them. They are not idiots who deserve to be kept out of sight, out of mind so that our perfect children don’t have to be bothered with them. They think, they feel, they understand when they are being treated like crap.
I suspect many of the critics of public funding for special needs either got lucky and had “normal” kids or don’t even have kids and really don’t have a clue what being a parent is.
And I’m guessing that those same critics would have no problem with their own child receiving special attention if they were gifted and could benefit from (more expensive) advanced education. Or would that also be “socialism”?
Well, that’s the thing, rouxdsla. The scary-boo “what if” of mainstream classes being overrun with profoundly impaired special needs students is largely a bugbear.
Every special needs student is entitled, by federal law, to an Individual Education Program that is agreed upon by the teachers (special ed and mainstream), support staff and administration of the school. The IEP is developed by all the parties involved to create a educational environment most appropriate for that student, in the context of the entire school’s learning environment.
Mainstreaming is not the automatic right of every special needs student, obviously. But it is the right of every student to have that option on the table and to have its appropriateness as an educational option decided by the teachers and parents, looking out for the interests of both the student and the entire school community.
The IEP is mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; if it’s not being followed, either by the parents looking after their kids or by the school looking after the integrity of its entire student body, then the law is being broken. The solution should be to fix the system and address those violations, not ghettoize special needs students en masse.
“And I’m guessing that those same critics would have no problem with their own child receiving special attention if they were gifted and could benefit from (more expensive) advanced education. Or would that also be “socialism”?”
You’d be guessing wrong. Gifted children often need special attention to achieve their full potential as the learning disabled to. No one (other than you) is suggesting that the government fill that role. It’s the parent’s job. Be a good parent. Get your child the special attention he/she deserves.
@Kevin: No government, right, because privatization works so well? Let’s just spend government money on programs that help no one, or blow it out on a war.
Also: people who are personally afflicted by some life-changing situation are selfish and self-absorbed for wanting to do something to help others in a similar position? Screw that Christopher Reeve! Where does he get off?
Hi Robert,
I found your essay through a link on Speak Softly, my long time friend Vick Forman’s blog. I am not a parent of a child with special needs, but I am a parent with special needs with a “neurotypical” son, now grown. I have mild cerebral palsy which affects the right side of my body and balance and coordination, and for the last 12 years I have also lived with MS. I am 51. Your thoughts about those who wish to “sanitize” school so only “neurotypical” kids attend reminded me of a valuable memory I have of my own experience with inclusion, long ago in kindergarten, and it was one of those moments which made all the difference in an otherwise constant, as you say, battle. In my kindergarten classroom, someone pulled the chair out from under me as I was about to sit down in it, and landed hard on my tailbone on the hard floor and burst into tears, physically hurt and emotionally humiliated. My teacher, Mrs, Jagla, after sternly admonishing the child who pulled the chair, and comforting me, saw this as a teaching moment for the whole class. Once tears were dried and we were all seated in circle, she asked the whole group why it isn’t a good idea to pull the chair out from under someone. I think someone said “because you could break someone’s leg.” Then someone said, “Well, isn’t her leg already broken?” She was able to correct that, and it also allowed her to ask me if I would like to answer that as well, and talk about my brace and why I wore it. The upshot of this experience was that the same boy who pulled the chair out from under me, escorted me home and became my friend and protector. I’ll never forget what it felt like to have that fog of fear lift from the group as they got to ask me questions, and I got to explain how things really were, at least as I understood them. I still get tears in my eyes even now to think of it. Of course all my school years were not like that, and even now, I note people-and their “neurotypical?” children giving me long, uncomfortable stares as I walk by them with the walking stick I must now use, although the leg brace is now gone. In fact, now I consider it one of those unlikely spiritual gifts that now when that happens I can look at them and feel pity or compassion for them that even a little difference like a walking stick can make them so afraid, and that these parents who stare are teaching their kids to stare, too. Of course, it’s not everyone. Both my son and I have had many positive experiences knowing and/or working with families who have kids-and adults– with special needs in our lives. Without those, where would there ever be an opportunity for people to learn otherwise if those of us who are “different” are separated from those of us who are not? So bravo for inclusion in all its forms, even with all its imperfections, since it may, after all, be Schyler, swimming in that mainstream, who, just by being herself, is doing some pretty powerful teaching in her own right.
All the best to you and your family.
This liberal is full of beans.
I engaged him for a while on his threads after his last article appeared here. No one posted anything like what he just wrote, unless it was in the last week, or he wrote it for a convenient straw man. He Even wrote on his blog that he was just glad to receive hits from “right wing nuts” who clicked on his links since posting here.
Mr. Hyphenated- You are dishonest, and I hope few people are foolish enough to click to your sight.
Not Buyingit:
Is this what you’re looking for?
At least you’re not calling yourself Mr. Smarterthanyou anymore. Talk about not buying it…
Like almost all the other problems of our schools, this problem could be easily solved if parents like Rob were the ones who directly controlled the public money spent on their kids.
Parents should be able to designate which schools receive the public funds used for their kids.
The local school board should in many cases not actually operate schools at all, it should merely determine the appropriate funding level for each kid based on an individual assessment, then assist the parents in its district to find a suitable school for their kids and audit the funds.
If a local government wants to run schools then that’s fine, but the government schools should compete equally with private schools.
The parents need to be CUSTOMERS, not supplicants.
If we ran grocery stores like we do schools in the US we’d all be starving.
Robert,
Before we started homeschooling, my eldest was diagnosed with ADD and an IEP was developed. After reading the materials, I said to the principal, “If I’m understanding this correctly, I can make you do anything I want.”
He allowed as how that was basically the case.
This is the fundamental problem — parents have far more power than they merit, since few of us are experts in the various fields that have bearing on the relevant issues. (Of course, some of us wonder if education is sufficiently rigorous a field to admit of expertise, but that’s another issue entirely.)
If a parent takes it into his head that his child should be mainstreamed, that child will be mainstreamed, no matter the effects on either the handicapped child or any other.
It is hardly unreasoning bigotry to object to this.
Dear Robert,
I too came by from Vicki Foreman’s blog, Speak Softly.
Cal’s ignorance and hostility made my jaw drop the first time I read his comment, but I didn’t respond. I did finally get around to it.
Well, yes and no. IDEA mandates that the federal government dispurse money to fund special education, and that the states . School funding is an arcane and complicated subject, however, students classified as “special education” in fact are funded at a higher rate than general education students. For a highly-readable discussion of the subject, I refer you to Lisa Snell’s article, “How schools use the “learning disability” label to cover up their failures” in in Reason Magazine,.
Again, yes and no.
Some points for Cal, your ignorant commenter:
1. The majority of students in special education are there because of specific learning disabilities, which can be remediated. Figures vary by state, about 13% of schoolchildren ages 13-16 are in special education; of those, somewhere around 60% of students have specific learning disabilities, according to the Center for Secondary Education and Transition.
2. Failing to remediate learning disabilities has a very high social cost. Those who exit the education system with poor reading and math skills are more likely to committ crimes. According to The JFA Institute’s April 2004 study, The Impact of Ignoring Dyslexia and Reading Disabilities in the Criminal Justice System (downloadable from this page) , for every $1 invested in remediating dyslexia, the state can expect to save $12 in later criminal justice/corrections spending.
3. In some states, “Special Ed” also includes services for the gifted and talented (see for example, Colorado
4. Students with ADHD are also often in the special education system, under the category of “other health impaired”. According to several studies, inmates in the correctional system have much higher incidence of undiagnosed/untreated ADHD. To my knowledge, no studies have yet been done on the social savings of successfully treading ADHD in school-aged children, yet the evidence from the JFA study suggest that the savings will exist.
5. Children with severe disabilities are expensive to educate. However, the numbers are quite small. According to the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, Given a population of 10,000 school children, about 39 will be in the “severe and profound” category.
.
Marcus Winters and Jay Greene addressed this popular myth in the Spring 2007 issue of Education Next, in their article Debunking a Special Education Myth
I’d like to ask Cal to expand on this notion a little bit. Who determines what is “neurotypical”? Is it the child with the 155 IQ and some behavioral issues? Is it the child with normal cognitive capacities, but with mobility problems caused by cerebral palsy?
Good luck with reforming education funding, Cal. Those of us with kids with special needs are doing all we can to get our kids educated to the extent of their abilities, today. We can’t wait around for funding reform, while our kids languish.
My wife is a public school teacher (1st grade for 17 years) and has seen it all, as mainstreaming AKA “inclusion” waxes and wanes. There are many “special” kids who need just a little extra help, who can benefit from the regular classroom — and who can genuinely broaden the others’ horizons — and then there are those who are *major* distractions whose presence negatively impacts the actual learning of academic *content* (ya, know, wht they’re there for) as opposed to warm & fuzzy life lessons.
Unfortunately, when the PC bleeding hearts are in charge all common sense goes out the door in terms of deciding which kids are in the first group and which are truly in the second.
P.S. As a practical point, the use of the PC term “neurotypical” instead of “normal” instantly rubbed me the wrong way. It’s one thing to ask/demand special consideration for one’s special needs child, and quite another to simultaneously semi-deny there’s anything wrong.
Of course, I remember the days when you didn’t want your kid near a bunch of “hooting, feral retards” yourself, Mr. R-H. Yes, I know you’ve moved past that, but apologizing might have been nice.
A little history for some of us: until the 1970′s, under the Ford administration, children didn’t HAVE a right to a free and appropriate public education. So some of those kids weren’t off at special schools: they were home, not getting educated at all, or in institutions.
BTW, mainstreaming critics: the research has mostly shown that typical kids benefit from mainstreaming. Apparently development of empathy is correlated with academic achievement.
I have a problem with mainstreaming when it isn’t in the best thing for the kid with special needs.
There’s a boy that’s been with my daughter since kindergarten. He’s Selectively Mute meaning he won’t speak to anyone except for his parents and a couple of kids.
He has had a full-time aide for 6 years that he has been in school. He leaves the class once a day for special therapy. If there is an issue where he absolutely needs to communicate, they grab one of his friends from another class to speak for him.
The kid is in the exact same shape he was in when he started school 6 years ago. I don’t know if a special school would help him. However, I know that mainstreaming isn’t doing anything for him.
The $25,000 a year for the aide would be better spent on something else.
As far as my “normal” child goes, I think it’s fabulous that she sees different kids. It’s been nothing but great for her to see differences in people.
Robert,
Just out of curiosity, how many “special needs” adult friends do you now have? Considering you missed out as a kid and all.
@Omar G
“people who are personally afflicted by some life-changing situation are selfish and self-absorbed for wanting to do something to help others in a similar position?”
No, they want everyone else to do something for them, i.e. spend other people’s money on ways to cure themselves. That’s a pretty substantial difference from what you are saying.
And don’t say ‘screw Christopher Reeve’. He was a very good person before his accident, and only became self-obsessed after his accident. I would be the same way if I got paralyzed. I’d be clamoring that all medical grants should be about curing paralysis. It’s still plain old selfishness though.
Of course, I remember the days when you didn’t want your kid near a bunch of “hooting, feral retards” yourself, Mr. R-H. Yes, I know you’ve moved past that, but apologizing might have been nice.
Do I really have to explain sarcasm to you?
@ Fred Bartlett, your school principal was actually wrong. Parents do NOT have the power to make a school do “anything they want.” In fact, it is up to the IEP *team* to determine the best classification, placement and services for the child. If the parents are not in agreement there is an appeals/due process system which places a significant burden of proof on the plaintiff. Meanwhile, the child must remain where they are placed and with whatever services, no matter how inadequate, until a hearing officer makes a ruling. It is *extremely* difficult to get a ruling in favor of families unless the school/district is egregiously violating the law. For more information, I suggest you check out the following excellent resource: http://www.wrightslaw.com
@ Newscaper, who determines what physical or neurological differences are “right” versus “wrong?” My child may be different in many ways but ther is nothing “wrong” with him; he’s a fine human being with humor and love and determination -qualities found lacking in any number of “normal” people.
Sadly enough, people seem to want to make the issue about “mainstreaming” versus “segregation” when it really should be about finding the best fit for placement and resources, and training today’s educators better to teach to children of varying abilities and differences. And it is also very much a matter of geography and political climates.
Of course, I remember the days when you didn’t want your kid near a bunch of “hooting, feral retards” yourself, Mr. R-H. Yes, I know you’ve moved past that, but apologizing might have been nice.
I found the entry you are referring to, Emily.
No, I was not in fact stating my feelings about my own child in any class. To be accurate, I was writing sarcastically, theoretically quoting a theoretical statement by the theoretical parent of a theoretical neurotypical child when given the opportunity to have their child “mentor” a special needs student, in the very class that my own child attended, which would make her one of those “retards”. (“Surround my impressionable child with hooting, feral retarded kids? Go for it!”) Which is sort of ironic, being called to task on a statement taken out of context that might very well have been made without a trace of sarcasm by any number of the folks who have posted on here.
If the only way you can make your point about me is to take a phrase from an old entry and quote it out of context so that it says the exact opposite of what was intended, well, I’d say your point must have been exceptionally poor to begin with.
I don’t normally respond to personal remarks like that, and I’m already regretting doing so today, but emily’s remark was obnoxious and morally bankrupt. Anyone else who wants a response from me can solicit it via email.
I guess I’ve been very lucky as the parent of a special needs child never to have encountered people at my son’s school that are like some of the people who have commented on this post.
Of course schools should educate special needs kids. Isn’t this obvious? It isn’t socialism to expect this, any more than it’s socialism to expect the police to provide equal protection to all citizens, even if some of those citizens live in a high-crime neighborhoods and require more than their share of police protection. If you have public schools, then the schools are there to educate children. The idea that we have public schools but they’re only available to certain children is, let’s face it, disgusting. Yes, some children cost the schools more than other children, just like some people cost the police department, or the fire department, or the department of sanitation, more than other people. And people without children still pay property taxes to support public schools, because we as a society have decided that public schools benefit society as a whole. If schools don’t have enough money to provide services to all their students, then the schools need more government support or alternative sources of funding. But the answer isn’t to deny education to certain students because of the expenses involved.
I have my own concerns about mainstreaming. It’s not the answer for every special needs child and concerns about which setting is the most appropriate for which child should be dealt with on an idividual basis. But anyone who thinks IEP’s are an opportunity for parents of special needs chidren to get whatever they want from the school district is living in an alternate universe.
And by the way, not every wealthy parent games the system for millions. At my son’s first school, my wife and I funded a playground because there was no place appropriate for the special needs children to play. And guess what? The whole school got to use it, not just the special needs kids. Every year of my son’s education, we’ve purchased supplemental materials for the classroom, paid for field trips, and helped the school financially in whatever way we could. I know many many parents of means with special needs children who have also helped out their schools or have helped fund outside programs, and I’ve never heard a single one complain that other children benefited from their generosity.
Wow, there is a lot of animosity on this thread! I guess I fall in the same category as Charlie on this one: of course you educate special needs kids. Yes, there will always be people who take advantage of the system, but you target them for shame, not the entire concept of special-needs education!
I went to a very small, privately funded Christian school. Now when I say privately funded, that means that we used the back of milk reports that parents donated for scrap paper and we had one computer lab for the whole school. You know what–we managed and we managed well.
We even managed to educate the few special needs kids we had at our school. There weren’t a lot, but there were some. It wasn’t an issue of mainstreaming, there was only one room for all the 2nd graders, including special needs kids. Most often it was a parent or other relative that acted as the “aide” if one was needed, but the school did employ one if no one from the family was available.
Did they have to pay more than any other kid? Nope. Did other parents bitch about it? Maybe, but not in public, that’s for sure! They would have been ashamed. All of the children in our school were taught that they were made in the image of God and that all were equal before God, so the “issue” of educating or not educating a child with special needs wasn’t really an issue at all.
It seems to me most people did not grasp the point of this post. RRH was not talking about the isue of the cost of educating our children with special needs. But let’s talk about the money- American education is in a sad state and it is not simply because of a lack of money. Other countries do better with a lot less. Some parents of special needs kids do abuse the system. Some, not all, probably not even most- and we all know that abuses of any system happen all the time- it is wrong and disturbing- but no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
But that’s not what this post is about- let’s pretend cash was not an issue- what RRH is saying is that there are a lot of parents and educators who do not want their “normal” kids exposed to the handicapped. They act like it taints them. RRH makes a good point about many of us not having exposure to the handicapped as we were growing up- it means many adults are uncomfortable around those who are different -physically or mentally. Hopefully today’s kids will not suffer the same anxiety about interacting with their challenged bretheren. Some handicapped kids will do better in a self contained environment- but most benefit from inclusion. Studies prove this. And the “normal” kids- well, most of them benefit also- they learn kindness. It is a sadly underated virture in our society – as you can see from many of the comments here.
Just chiming in to say that reading some of this comments are really disturbing.
The last school I attended had a strict policy for including disabled kids. And it was a great experience to all of us, I must say. We learned a whole lot about these people, and also I must say, about life itself. It was a valuable experience, for sure.
You could also see clearly how much these kids learned from living and interacting with “normal” kids on a daily basis.
And yeah, most of the founding were public. Scary, or what? But then again, I´m living in a country that most of you guys would probably consider to be deeply communist. And our conservatives (I voted for them) you would probably label as socialists. Wonder how we survive over here.
Let me take a middle ground here. I’m by no means an expert on special needs, but I feel I do have some authority in the area: I have a cousin with Down syndrome, a niece with fetal alcohol syndrome (due to her biological mother’s drinking, not my sister’s), and friends who are teachers, including one who taught special needs students.
Regarding the mainstreaming of special needs kids, I would only say: it depends. If the problem is only a physical one (ex. child in a wheelchair), then I don’t have any objection to mainstreaming him or her as long as certain accommodations (ex. wheelchair-accessible classrooms) are there. Intellectual and/or emotional difficulties are a different story, in my view. Sometimes putting a child who can’t keep up academically with the other students and/or who constantly disrupts the teaching into a regular classroom doesn’t benefit the teacher, the other kids and least of all the special needs child him- or herself.
However, I don’t necessarily think sending such children away to special schools is the answer either. Maybe the best solution is to place them in special classrooms with a lower teacher: student ratio so that they could get the individual attention they need, with teachers who might be specially trained to work with them (as my above-mentioned friend was). Or perhaps they could take their more academically oriented subjects (ex. math) in a special needs classroom but participate in classes like gym with the so-called “normal” kids. In this way they wouldn’t be isolated from society but they still would be served in terms of their specific needs.
Schuyler gets a mixture of special education and mainstream, as do most of the kids in her class. She spends part of the day in a special class for kids who communicate using Assistive Technology, and gets some reading and math in there. She then goes to a regular second grade class for the rest of the day and gets the bulk of her academic subjects there, as well as PE, music, etc. Her homework is adapted for her communication issues (no oral reports, etc.). She is still expected to meet state requirements in order to move on to the next grade, with a small amount of accommodation for her disability.
Will she get held back at some point? It’s possible, especially as the verbal components of her class material increase. But only three years ago, we were being told by her previous school district that she’d be mostly isolated in a special education class for the rest of her school years. Now she’s performing with other kids her age, at their level. There are plenty of neurotypical kids with all the advantages in the world who can’t say that.
Schuyler and her classmates are success stories, and they are not unique. They stand in undeniable contradiction to the scary boo (and almost entirely anecdotal, “I have a friend who…”) stories that form the backbone of inclusion opposition.
I would like to weigh in as both a grandmother of twin grandsons who have severe disabilities and who go to separate public high schools with some inclusion, and as a chief executive of a non-profit agency with a non-public school for moderate to severely disabled children and youth with autism, without speech and with “behaviors”.
I agree with many of the posters here that it is not one-size-fits-all for special needs children. We believe that mainstreaming is best for most children and our goal is to work towards returning children to public schools wherever possible, but it is not often achieved. Our school is in the local community, not “away” nor an institution. Children are referred by the public school districts and children are transported by the “little yellow buses.” The children that we serve are the ones that the schools cannot serve or do not want to serve on their campuses. Our children need a range of ancillary services from speech to occupational therapy to one-on-one education aides besides a highly qualified teacher in special education. Our mission is to provide a caring program to fit the individual needs of each special needs child in a small classroom setting – and to work with their families. I do think that most public schools, whether in mainstreamed/inclusion or separate classrooms, do not provide quality services for our level of special needs even with IEPs.
Robert, my heart goes out to you having seen many families, including my own, go through the accepting/loss process of a special needs child through each life stage. Our special needs children are a gift to us all to remember our humanity.
when people advocate sending special needs kids away to “special schools,” they are not thinking about the welfare or comfort of those kids. They are thinking of their own.
How dare those parents of “neurotypical” children have the temerity to think of their own kids! The audacity!
It seems to me that they want only what The Hyphenated One wants for Schuyler–the best education for their children, yet they get derided as being bigoted against the handicapped for raising the very real concerns that the resources devoted to special-ed children reduces the amount of resources available for educating their children.
I suspect many of the critics of public funding for special needs either got lucky and had “normal” kids or don’t even have kids and really don’t have a clue what being a parent is.
I don’t have kids, but I do pay taxes, which gives me every right in the world to insist that I have a say on how that public funding–read tax dollars–are spent…
Wow! Some people here seem to fit the definition of ‘extreme libertarian’. You know the ones; they rant on and on about how parents of the disabled expect everyone else to pay for them.
I have a message for this type of person. Go and focus your efforts on stopping the government’s military adventures, shrinking the military industrial complex, ending corporate welfare, and ending pork-barreling, because these are MUCH MUCH MUCH higher on the libertarian hit-list than taxpayer’s money being used to help educate disabled kids.
Once you’ve achieved this, and everyone’s tax bills have halved (or even quartered), ONLY THEN can you rant and rave about not wanting your tax dollars to support the disabled (which would reduce your tax bill by an insignificant amount).
Perhaps while your ranting about all of these damn selfish people with their disabled kids and their sense of entitlement, you can rant and rave about reducing policing of high crime areas; after all, it *should* be up to those who live in a high crime area to do something about it, right? I mean, they chose to live there, didn’t they. How dare they expect that society pay for armed men to protect them? In a free society, they’d just move.
What about all those rich people in the Malibu fires. I mean, our tax dollars went to save their houses, when they damn well knew they were living in a fire-prone area. Freeloaders!
(Note, I don’t agree with the ‘less policin’, ‘no fire department’, etc… attitudes that I posted… I posted them to demonstrate that this extreme approach to libertarianism, when consistently applied, would change society enormously; some say for the better, but when taken to an extreme, I say it’s as damaging as any other form of extremism).
Frankly, most of these extreme libertarian types (note that libertarianism is OK by me, just not the extreme form) would be the first to scream blue murder if what they wanted came to pass, and they had a disabled child.
If a school system believes that any child with special needs doesn’t belong in school or treats his/her education merely as free babysitting, then that school system is failing its community.
A free and appropriate public education is not limited to the 3Rs. Not every child is on a college or high school diploma track– that doesn’t mean that he/she is undeserving of an education.
The development of social and communications skills is essential across the spectrum of abilities, as is the preparation for participation in the community– development of these skills is the goal of all curriculum, regardless of ability. For some students that means preparation for college for others it’s the development of life skills.
The child with special needs may develop skills more slowly and his/her proficiency may not be what some deem as worthy, but those skills are nonetheless essential to the child and his/her family and community. Cognitive abilities and academic proficiency are not the measure of a human being, his/her worth as a human being or his/her contribution to society.
Of course we should educate every child that can actually be educated, but there’s a problem here that all the advocates seem to be glossing over:
The problem is that the dividing line between those who are entitled and those who are not is completely arbitrary! Or, to put it another way, is there any student at any level who wouldn’t benefit from the individualized attention of an IEP? Of course not!
So what we’re really arguing about here is where to place that dividing line (and, secondarily, some are using egregiously offensive terminology in their arguments.) So maybe the author could drop his tone of moral superiority, and Curtis could do away with his outrageous slur terms, and we could discuss the actual question of how much individualized, customized education is due to what kind of students, as the adults and citizens that we presumably are.
[Ed. note: 'Lilymoonchild' is responding to a comment that has been flagged for inappropriate content]
Curtis, it truly frightens me that you are walking around like a real member of society.
Can you seriously call someone’s child feeble-minded and idiotic when you have never met said child?
You really have no idea.
But you know, the feeble-minded children aren’t the ones who need the mainstreaming.
It’s the children who simply have physical impairments, but are fully capable of comprehending educational material, who really get lost in your idea of an educational system.
Children with cerebral palsy, deaf children, blind children, etc etc. Should we really deny those children a mainstream education, simply because they may need a little extra help?
There is nothing wrong with teaching normal children to have empathy for disabled or abnormal children.
There is something wrong with sacrificing the needs of normal or gifted children to abnormal children who have no academic potential.
It is also a fundamental attack on objective reality to obfuscate the terms of normal and abnormal.
All this is done on a daily basis in our government schools by the edicts of altruism and nihilism so prevalent today.
The problem with criminality of people/children with diminished mental capacity would be remedied by simply holding them to the same high moral standards as normal children. Special needs children need clear boundaries even more than normal children.
Full inclusion programs should be limited to only children with academic potential. Anyone knows that a group, or class, is only as strong as its weakest member. Too often it seems that the disabled are not raised so much as the able are brought down. And the gifted are forgotten and their needs are dismissed.
Anyone knows that a group, or class, is only as strong as its weakest member.
Yes. A group, or a class — or a family, or a nation — is only as strong as its weakest member.
What hogwash. As the sibling of a woman with disabilities at least as profound as Schuyler’s, I can tell you that my sister’s presence in my life has strengthened me. She is a vital part of the lives of my own children for a hundred reasons — not least because their relationship with her makes them better, more thoughtful, more caring people.
Academic mainstreaming isn’t always the solution for kids with serious disabilities — after a while it became clear that it wasn’t the best solution for my sister. But to suggest that the presence of a child with disabilities in a classroom necessarily “weakens” that class is preposterous.
Rob
This is an interesting article that stirs up all sorts of thoughts in me.
One way ‘out’ of the challenge of mainstreaming the education of children with any type of special needs would be homeschooling. And that would probably be beneficial for almost any child. But before anyone hoots and hollers let me just point out that one of the regular comments we heard while homeschooling our children was the “what about socialization?” one.
My guess is that if someone homeschools a child with special needs they don’t hear this comment too much, except from people who know about the importance of mainstreaming. And I do understand that there are children whose needs are such that mainstreaming is a challenge for everyone involved: teachers; school administrators; fellow students; and (other) parents.
I do have a slightly different concern. If mainstreaming children with certain disabilities suddenly became unacceptable what might that mean for…children with diabetes or epilepsy? Or children with peanut allergies. After all aren’t these also special needs that require some accommodation by the school system that educates these children?
Interesting. I remember reading an early blog of yours (before Schylar’s diagnosis) where you referred to the disabled children in your daughters’ class as “feral retards” and you were offended by her placement in the same class with them. Change of tune I see.
Valeri,
See my above response to that idiotic remark, Genius.
I’d like to clarify couple of things that other commenters wrote:
Kirk wrote: “The problem is that the dividing line between those who are entitled and those who are not is completely arbitrary! Or, to put it another way, is there any student at any level who wouldn’t benefit from the individualized attention of an IEP? Of course not!” Actually, it is NOT arbitrary at all. Federal code actually stipulates certain classifications of disabilities (and defines them) which make one eligible for an IEP. The states have some leeway to expand upon those categories if they choose but may not limit them beyond the scope of IDEA. (See 20 USC Section 1401 for Definitions)
Bernard F, your point about home schooling doesn’t carry throughout all states. In *most* states a child may be home schooled and still be eligible for funding for services mandated under IDEA 2004. Please note that the funding comes directly throuhg the school district or through federal and state grants. There is no separate “pot” of money for home schooling. In addition, some states have gone so far as to legislate the classification of home schooling as “non public” which means anyone choosing to home school their child with special education needs (requiring an IEP) are not eligible for any funding guaranteed as part of the “Free appropriate public education” (aka FAPE) mandated by law. So parents such as myself are left to determine how much they are willing to fight with the school districts or the state for that **appropriate** education or if we must simply “suck it up” and do it ourselves.
Captain Reality:
Frankly, most of these extreme libertarian types (note that libertarianism is OK by me, just not the extreme form) would be the first to scream blue murder if what they wanted came to pass, and they had a disabled child.
Speaking as a libertarian, I doubt that very much.
@Kevin:
“And don’t say ‘screw Christopher Reeve’. He was a very good person before his accident, and only became self-obsessed after his accident. I would be the same way if I got paralyzed. I’d be clamoring that all medical grants should be about curing paralysis. It’s still plain old selfishness though.”
So he became a BAD person after his accident? And you’d do the same. But it’s wrong? Dude, you’re like… blowing my mind here.
Well, Mr. Hummel, it seems that if Schuyler doesn’t have any cognitive disability, she should be able to be in the so-called “normal” class as long as she has her assistive technology with her, just like a child who can’t walk would always have his or her wheelchair.
I don’t think funding is a big issue, but we should use the funds we have in an appropriate manner so that they are not wasted but used in a way that benefits everyone (disabled child, other students, teachers, school as an institution, etc.). For instance, it would be a waste of money to have my cousin with Down syndrome sit in an advanced grade 11 physics class just so she could be with the “normal” kids: she couldn’t understand anything, and the teacher would use valuable time trying to explain things to her. So funding might be better spent on a class with a lower teacher: student ratio where she learned skills she could actually use. On the other hand, I wouldn’t view the use of funds to help a child in a wheelchair attend the same physics class, because he or she would learn something in there.
Again, the solution depends on the individual child and the individual disability.
..when people advocate sending special needs kids away to “special schools,” they are not thinking about the welfare or comfort of those kids. They are thinking of their own
When people advocate sending regular kids to school with those who have been mainstreamed, they are not thinking about the welfare or comfort of those regular kids. They are thinking of their own.
While mainstreaming may be reasonable in some circumstances, the fundamental question in mainstreaming should be whether or not the special needs child’s presence will be disruptive in any way to the normal functioning of the class. While the special needs child has a right to an appropriate education, so do the other children. To diminish the quality or rigor of the academic experience of the other children in order to meet the needs of a special needs child is every bit as wrong as failing to give the special needs child an appropriate education.
Perhaps the best way to deal with this, as well as meeting the needs of all children to the extent of their abilities, would be to track kids according to ability from an early age – identifying the very bright and pushing them to the limits of their abilities, separately pushing the average kids to the limits of their abilities, and separately pushing kids with disabilities to the best of their abilities.
My daughters had to put up with mainstreaming in their elementary and middle schools, with severely disruptive special needs students who acted out, were physically violent, verbally violent, soiled themselves, and otherwise destroyed the learning environment.
When I was a child in the 1950s, we had severely retarded kids in our classes in the early grades before the extent of their disability fully manifested itself. In high school, I worked with the severely retarded. There is no way mainstreaming them would have been in their interests or in the interests of any of the other children.
Rob -
I’m a long time reader of your blog and I’m a huge cheerleader for your daughter.
That said, I wanted to offer a teensy bit of criticism, which I hope you will take in the manner I intend (helpful) rather than taking offense.
You seems surprised by the negative reactions from some of the readers here, but I wonder if you didn’t cultivate some of that reaction? The entire tone of your post seemed to assume that your readers were jerks. You assigned us the belief that mainstreaming was bad and then called us self-absorbed for thinking that way. (I agree that your exact words didn’t say that, but the tone sure came through.)
The problem? It gives people an excuse not to take you seriously. Heck, I was on your side at the beginning of the article, and by the end of it I found myself mentally arguing against your points, just because I was so annoyed by your tone.
I think some (not all) of your beliefs are valid, but presenting them in a less aggressive, in-your-face manner might do more to help people see your point than merely castigating us for disagreeing with you.
Best of luck to you.
niksmom,
Uhhh, and you think what’s in 20 USC Section 1401 is somehow an inherent force of nature rather than… wait for it…. arbitrary law written by our very fallible and ordinary human legislators???
Brooklynite said “after a while it became clear that it wasn’t the best solution for my sister.” Isn’t this an admission that the interests of the class were sacrificed to the needs of your sister whose needs in turn were not met.
I know of many successful examples of full inclusion stories, but yours proves my point that the interests and needs of normal children are sacrificed to the needs of abnormal children.
Destroying a productive classroom environment with full inclusion students who don’t belong in a regular class is a real problem.
This author’s attitude reminds me of that new saying:
“When whiney kids grow up, they become conservatives.
“When they don’t grow up, they become liberals.”
A suggestion: When you need to feed your ego at the expense of those you (wrongly) consider your moral inferiors, don’t use your disabled daughter as a prop – it lacks class.
Below are some descriptive words that could be worked into an appropriate response to this sententious and tendentious moralizing — if it were worth the effort:
Abrasive, arrogant, bellicose, buffoonish, callow, childish, churlish, conceited, facile, fetid, flatulent, foolish, ham-handed, harangue, hyperbolic, inane, infantile, invective, juvenile, lame, manipulative, narcissist, nugatory, pathetic, patronizing, petulant, posturing, preening, puerile, risible, sanctimonious, scold, self-righteous, tripe, trope, vacuous, vapid. (NOT a complete list.)
@ Kirk Parker, your first comment re: arbitrary appeared to be in the context of an individual school setting. The implication was that ANY child at ANY school could be set up with an IEP. Thus my inclusion of the definition in the US code. If I misunderstood, I’m sorry. No need for condescension, thanks. Yes, of course our legislators are arbitrary and fallible, but we put them there and entrusted them to do the best they can. Sometimes they don’t always get it right…how many billins of dollars wasted in overseas politicking that could better be spent on helping to improve our own economy and educational system. But that’s an argument for another day.
No, my statement was that ANY child could benefit from the same attention that only some children are currently entitled to. But of course we can’t afford that, hence the arbitrary dividing line between those who qualify and those who don’t.
And far from putting that argument off for another day, that discussion would be a far better use of our time than trading insulting terminology like some here, including the author himself, did.
To the author,
I’m glad you are advocating for your child. I wish you cared about other people’s children, too.
Tom Paine,
Very well put! This particular author asks readers to do what he cannot which is to include children who are different from his own. I quit reading his blog because of his bitter attitude toward “neurotypical” children and their parents. ALL children need a perfect education that is customized to meet their individual needs. Wouldn’t that be nice? The author asks a lot from the “system” and returns very little.