special education

Imagine your a student with a disability, forgotten and thrown into a school where you don't learn mathematics, English or even science do to the thought of not having the mental
capacity to learn... Your constantly bombarded with the thought that you aren't good enough, so you live your life in a place where you eventually die. Well this how life was for a person who had a mental disability until 1975 where all children with disabilities had to be offered a free appropriate education. This allowed students with disabilities to be recognized as people of the United States, equality was almost reached. Well, it was about 20 years later when parents of students with disabilities were not offered the same education as mainstream. Well, they come up with some things that could work... partial Inclusion, where kids with mental disabilities are in the mainstream class are pulled out during class to receive extra help. Well the teachers and parents realized that the special education students were being stigmatized by being pulled out... So the special ed committee decided to go to full inclusion, and receive there accommodations in the classroom.

However, is stopping something that supports special ed students because they are afraid of being portrayed as dumb and receiving extra help? Is that not the true problem? How can America integrate people with disabilities when they are afraid of being who they are in front of mainstream students. yeah, its simple to ignore the stigmatization of special ed students, and move to a program that doesn't stigmatize special ed students or mainstream students. If you want equality, do it right and get rid of the stigmas against a population through education. The realization that special ed students aren't dumb is necessary, or all efforts of equality doesn't exist.

Over the summer I worked at Rockville High School, giving students with IEP's and 504 plans accommodations( special ed services). More than half of the population of that summer school that had these plans denied extra help because they were afraid to look dumb, or felt dumb for requiring extra help on whatever subject they had. Keep in mind most of these students failed the course once already, but still denied the extra help. I asked one of the students "why don't you want me to help you, I can tutor you." The kid said " because I am not dumb." I told the kid, " I have two students one with a learning disability, and one without. they study, but they use different techniques to study for the test." However, both of them score the same on the test. I put the tests in a bag and pick out both of them, would you be able to see the difference? The kid said "no". I told him exactly, certain kids learn differently than others, its not that your dumb, but because you learn differently. I thought to my self, was this child just now learning that he is not stupid at the age of 17?

The flaw of special education system isn't that they aren't caring about the special needs kids, but are lacking the education towards the mainstream students. Once the stigma against special ed is gone, the integration can begin.