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