In my opinion, inclusion is a very important part of special and general education. There are many things that are beneficial about inclusion of special education students into a mainstream classroom, but just for the exceptional student, but for their normal learning peers as well. Social skills are imperative to living an independent life, and if an exceptional child is taught in a special education classroom all day everyday, they may not learn these necessary life skills. They need to have time with a large group of their peers so that they can practice the social skills that they are learning, and then need to be given the opportunity to live and interact with the general population.
Students in special education classes need to feel like they are included in the lives of their peers, they need to be given an opportunity to make friends. They need to feel like they are "normal" children. Keeping these exceptional students in a room away from their peers gives them the impression that they don't deserve to be with the "normal" kids.
Having exceptional students in a general classroom teachers tolerance and acceptance to not just the students, but to the teacher as well. In the world today, we all could use a little more patience for diverse populations, so why are we teaching our kids that it's ok to discriminate against special education students, that it's ok for us to put them in a separate room and keep them out of our "normal world"?
There have been many studies that have proven inclusion to be beneficial for all parties. The normal learning students can help the special education students when necessary. This increases the concept understanding of both parties, because if you can teach it to someone else you clearly know your stuff, and it never hurts to get another take on the material when you don't understand it.
The whole point of the IDEA legislation is to give equal opportunities to ALL students and I feel that inclusion is the best way to do this.
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2 comments:
I agree with you for the most part, the only thing that I can say against it, is that without more money, most schools simply can not afford the extra help. I would love to see all special education students in the general education classrooms, but this is not possible without the personnel. I really hope that the government finally realizes this and gives more money to the schools.
Jenny,
Thanks for your comments on this complex issue. I, too, believe that including all students in the regular classroom is the way to go but it does require expertise and support for the regular classroom teacher to accomplish this in an effective way. Clearly an inclusive classrom with a total of 18-20 students is manageble but one with 30-35 would make the job very difficult. There are also some students who I feel may be best served in a one-on-one situation depending on the skills being taught. This would make an excellent topic for a research paper.
Thanks for your efforts on this blog. I look forward to reading your ideas.
Dr. Langholz
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