Schooling Children With Down Syndrome - Kliewer

Kliewer makes a lot of really great points in the article Schooling Children With Down Syndrome. I never thought much about what pulling out students from their classes to work with other teachers for extra help really did to those students. I couldn't imagine sitting with a bunch of my friends, working on a paper handed out by the teacher, and then being torn from my class because I'm not at the level of my friends. I'm not ready to work with them because I need to work on myself first. I would be demotivated, and very upset about it. It would be one of the worst feelings in the world, especially at a younger age. This made me think of the LGBTQ issues we talked about and how excluding students can cause them to be less motivated to learn.  To be categorized the way some schools do into different groups with different animal names can be just as bad. When society places you into the group of "mice" and your friends are the "owls" are you supposed to believe you're equal? Are you supposed to believe that you just need a little help? No, what this does is makes children feel inferior. The owls are the stronger, hunters of the school and the mice are supposed to flee and live secluded with each other.

Students with disabilities, including down syndrome, deserve the equal opportunity to learn and interact with other students. Keeping students with disabilities with other students without those disabilities can be beneficial to all students. "Vygotsky found that the culture of segregation surround people with disabilities actually teaches underdevelopment of thinking through the isolation of children from socially valued opportunities..." (Kliewer) The students with disabilities are able to interact more and learn different things from the students without disabilities, and the students without disabilities are able to gain experience through helping the students with disabilities.