Did I miss something here? Did we forget about our promises we made to the parents of these children? I understood that the “mainstreaming” of students was proving to be in the best interest of the autistic child. I do realize that children with disabilities or special needs can be disruptive to class at times. Our teachers need to have some tolerance and understanding when dealing with these students.
What does this action say to the other students in that class? To me it says only one thing. We as adults tell our children to show kindness, consideration, and understanding to others who may have special needs. But when it comes down to actually practice what we preach, we are failing miserably. As soon as this teacher suggested the vote, it told the students that the autistic child was somehow not as valuable as the rest of the class. This single action shows how prejudice some people/teachers still are.
We have made the commitment to bring our special needs students into mainstream class rooms. We now need to make sure that our teachers are properly trained in handling this sort of situation. We try to take our culture a step forward by providing all we can for these students. When the people who are supposed to be in charge act in this manner, it can only be counter productive for the other students. So instead of taking the right step forward, we took a couple of steps back today!!
4 comments:
Thank you Kurt for this awareness post. I would never had known how "Backward" some things still are today and will give pause for thought to others for certain because you got the story out and maybe the situation will present itself again and it will be handled differently because of you. God Bless you and thanks again :)
RIGHT ON! --- This is a time that we are living in. Let us Pray that those who are in a position to make a difference will take the opportunity to do so.
Much Love,
Miss Julia
Well, forget about the promise we have made to his parents. What about the promise we the people have made to him as an indiviual. The pursuit of happiness, I believe that is a right that our society or country guaranteed to all of us as individuals. So this means that if the person needs extra help to keep up with the class then it is part of the governments, societies and the teacher's responseability to help them out. Not vote them out of the class room. I think the true violation has been on the indiviual and all of us. Not the lazy teacher or students.
Google Me Douglas Gorden Jr
Hi Kurt:
Great post. I have a daughter who is a teacher and she teaches children with Autism and some of her stories of how these children are treated are really sad.
Connie
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