Should My Wordless Kid Go to School with Your Normal Child?
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.
