Catherine Valantasis Blog Post #3

     According to the article Inclusion: Pros and Cons by R. Thompkins and P. Deloney (1995), there are many opinions and ideas that have contributed to the inclusion debate. There are those in the field of education who feel as though inclusion is a wonderful way to have our children with disabilities be included and educated in the same environment as their peers; however, there are those that feel that total inclusion would be detrimental to the education of both exceptional needs learners and their typically developing peers.
     Advocates and parents of children with disabilities feel as though their child's education might not be as individualized to meet their child's specific needs. The fear is that their child will not receive the specially designed instruction that he or she requires. In addition to this, some people feel as though general education teachers are not trained to adequately teach students with disabilities. According to our textbook, Education For All (page 80), most general education teachers felt as though "...they did not have adequate time, training, or expertise to meet needs of exceptional learners".
     On the other side of this debate, one can see the positive impact that inclusion can have on our students with disabilities. Inclusion has the potential to normalize one's disability and eliminate the stigma that comes with it (Education For All, page 72). Since special education has been viewed as separate from general education, there is often the idea that a student belongs to special education; therefore, our students with disabilities will always have a label that will follow them wherever they go. This separation from the norm tends to lower the confidence of our children with disabilities. It is also important to note that our children with disabilities can benefit from inclusion in the sense that they can learn appropriate social skills from their typically developing peers.
     As an educator who teaches in a setting that is far removed from inclusion, I can see both sides of this heated debate. I believe that the ultimate goal for any child to reach should be full inclusion in a general education classroom; however, I feel as though the continuum of placements should be kept in place. I look at some of our students at The Rich Center and feel that some of them would not successfully learn in a general education environment. We all want to set our students up for success, but we have to put them in an environment that supports their learning. We would not want our students to be placed in a classroom that would set them up for failure from the beginning. That is where I believe that each child's specific needs should be taken into consideration when it comes to deciding what placement would be most appropriate. This does not mean that expectations should be lowered for our children with disabilities. Even though a child may be placed in a self-contained classroom, a resource room, or a special school, they still need to be challenged in every way so that they can learn as much as possible.