Back in second grade, my family went out to eat at a fancy restaurant with some friends of my parents and their children. My mother told me and my siblings that we needed to be on our best behavior. My closest sister and I weren’t allowed to sit next to each other because we often provoked each other to the point of a tantrum. Once we sat down to eat with the others, one of the girls at the table started crying, screaming, and running around the restaurant away from her parents. The girl’s name was Maddie. She was five years old and was born with a mental disability called Down syndrome.
I didn’t understand at the time why she got so loud and upset. I thought it was strange, since nothing had occurred to provoke the tantrum. I didn’t understand until later that night when my parents explained to me why Maddie had reacted so strongly. I had never heard people could have mental disabilities. I knew about sickness beforehand, and thought it could only be physical, not mental or even psychological. I had seen children on the playground being lined up outside a portable building, which I had never been inside of. The rest of us lined up outside the main buildings. I later learned that this unseen room was the special education classroom. These other students sometimes came into our classrooms with an aide, but the teacher acted as if they were not there. They didn’t participate like my classmates and I did. And if one of these students began disrupting the class, they had to leave immediately.
Nearly six million school-age children have learning disabilities in the United States. In a rising debate, claims have been made that children with special needs only distract other children, distract the teachers, cause the school to require more resources, and raise the demand for teachers with a more expensive knowledge of child development. These claims are accurate. Special needs students can distract other children and the teacher, just as a general education student could. Special needs students do cause schools to require more resources and more educated teachers, but only due to current special needs resources being dismal. During the school year, special needs students are given basic goals - like: telling time, using a computer, reading 300 words, and even basic math - but aren’t given the resources needed to accomplish these goals. Most students don’t meet these goals, so they are just added onto the next school year. Public schools need stricter guidelines when funding a mainstreaming program, so that each student can receive the attention they need to grow.
The main problem with current public school special needs programs occurs in the social aspect of school. Children with special needs require interaction around all children and must not be forced to interact only with other special needs children. When special needs children are involved in a regular classroom, they learn important life skills. Accurate mainstreaming will allow the special needs children to understand how to behave in a social environment. They learn by seeing and do by mimicking. They need to be around their greatest role models. Watching other children will show them and teach them how to act in a socially responsible and respectable manner. With a better-implemented program, all students will learn to communicate with each other effectively and build friendships that see past ignorance and disrespect.
If special needs programs continue as they are, they will continue to affect the social aspects of children’s lives, by ruining chances to learn and build new friendships, and affect special needs children, by diminishing their mental wellbeing. Prevention of accurate mainstreaming from a classroom will bring forth many unsettling feelings. Major psychological effects like feelings of not being valuable, low self-esteem and a sense of unfairness will rise in the special needs students’ minds. From an early stage in their lives, all students are being taught that special needs children aren’t as important of a priority. When general education children spend time with special needs children, they build friendships that see past mental capability, and teach them diversity and empathy. These friends will see past ignorance and become more sensitive and understanding. They will see that their new friend might be a little behind sometimes, but still fun to have in their lives. This positive atmosphere helps all students learn tolerance and understanding that will prepare them to deal with disability they may have later on in their lives. And they’ll learn that throwing around a word such as “retarded” as an insult, is just rude and disrespectful.
Mainstreaming can also bring higher academic achievement and improved long term behavior. Many children with special needs are slower learners than other children their age. Basic motor skills and balance are the biggest obstacles to overcome at a young age. However, with early intervention and mainstreaming into regular classrooms, these special needs children will easily be able to develop to their maximum capability, especially when they are surrounded by other children. Privately funded mainstreaming programs already exhibit higher academic test scores and behavior improvements than public school mainstreaming programs have, because they use the extra funds to help their school’s mainstreaming program.
Special needs programs should receive more funding to allow all students the opportunity to reach their maximum potential. Mainstreaming has benefits and drawbacks, as any solution does, but with a well-funded program, special needs students will improve their social skills, their behavior, their academic achievement, and their self-worth, and general education students will learn tolerance and sensitivity towards others.
One reason why I am so passionate about this topic is my youngest sister who was born with Down syndrome. Over the past ten years I’ve researched and learned a lot about Down syndrome but what surprised me was finding a study I read in the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health. According to a variety of surveys “89-97% of women who receive a positive diagnosis of DS during the prenatal period” decide to abort. I am so grateful that my parents are in the 3% that allowed one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met to come into my life. Without my sister, I could have become a part of the unlucky 97%.
