Citizenship In School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

By:  Christopher Kliewer

Authors Argument:

Kliewer is arguing that people with disabilities, Down Syndrome especially should not be cast away from the average student in school settings.  They should be able to learn at the same level as the other students who do not have disabilities because it alters their learning and deprives them from the full academic experience.

Quotes:

1)  "It's about all of us working together, playing together, being together, and that's what learning is.  Don't tell me any of these kids are being set up to fail."

I picked this quote because I have felt very strongly for awhile of why special education students are shunned off.  They are usually put into their own wing of the building interacting with the same people all the time and through much of their academic career.  Life is really no like that, there isn't a bubble to protect them always.  If we are trying to involve handicapped people in every day life and want to make it normal, their should be equal involvement in the other classrooms.  Students should be together, if special help is needed then that is understandable, but segregating them is not doing anything but teaching more and more that they are different so they don't belong.

2)  "They didn't think it was realistic, that she could handle it, that she could handle the job.  Here they have her educating America's future, but they're scare to let her work at a movie place."

This just shows because a person has special needs or has some handicaps does not mean they are going to sit on a couch for the rest of their lives waiting for people to wait on them hand and foot.  These people have brains, and talents, and understandings of the world and how things work.  I love the fact that someone with special needs can come back and show up by teaching when they doubted their abilities to work at a movie store.  Goes to show to never underestimate people.

3)  "Don't think, she said, 'that those special needs kids drain anything.  That class would not be half what it is if any one of those kids got segregated.  We are all in this together.'"

I hope that my classroom when I become a teacher is like this.  I feel that special needs children being so much more, more innocence, imagination, and creativity, just because things don't look the same to them as to us doesn't mean its wrong, it means its different and wonderful and full of life.  And who wouldn't want a classroom full of life.  And thats what they bring life to a whole new meaning.

Comments:

I really enjoyed reading the descriptions of the children and of Shayne.  The technical stuff got annoying and I tended to skip over it, but I enjoyed learning about a new portion of special needs.  I plan on getting my special education credits and I hope one day I can be a teacher with a classroom with mixed children and it won't matter to me because they are all students willing to learn and I'll embrace it all.