Commonly Confused Words Quiz

Once upon a time there was a boy who lived with his family. The boy, whose name is Adam is twenty - three years old and is a single parent to a two year old girl named Austin. Austin’s mother left her there when she was only five days old. When Adam’s father went out that day to get the news paper, he saw the beautiful sight of a little baby and brought her inside only to find out that his son was the father. At first, Adam’s dad did not want to accept the fact that his son was a dad, but he soon changed his mind when he realized that he would lose his son. Adam decided to keep his child because he figured the effect of losing her would be greater then the effect on him and his family. He soon found out that raising a child would alter his life drastically. Once you have a child it is not your life any more, it’s all about your child. Adam decided to start the trek to finding Austin’s mother by writing a letter on stationery and sending it out to see if anyone knew where she was. While he was trying to find her he took Austin to get baptized at his church in front of the altar because he felt it was his rite. One day when Adam was out on the track taking his daily run he became stationary because of what he saw. Standing right in front of him was Austin’s mother. He asked her why she just up and left town and she said because she felt like everyone was having fun except for her so she wanted him to feel what it was like to be strapped down by a baby. Tonya who’s Austin’s mother came back to see her and Adam said she couldn’t because she was at day care and Austin doesn’t know her in principle too. Tonya said that she would go to the site of the day care and speak with the principal about picking up her daughter. By this point Adam was getting pretty upset and said that this is just not fair, you come back into her life and do care whether it is going to hurt her or not. By now the weather was starting to look like it was going to rain so the two of them went back to his car and he told Tonya that he would give her all of his loose change and bills that he had on him to pay for her air fare, if she would just leave and never come back. Adam knew that all Tonya wanted was money, because he cited her once saying “ I never want kids, it's too much of a hassle”.

When

Throughout the years special education has gone through a lot of changes. It has gone from segregation to inclusion. It all started back in the 1800s when people were afraid of others that were different. They would treat people with disabilities very badly. So they came up with the idea of making special schools for them so they would not have to worry about teaching children with special needs. They also just wanted to get them out of the society. If it were not for the advocators and the parents of the children with special needs, they would probably still be taught in different school. The advocators and the parents were able to get laws passed stating that their children have the right to an education that is in the least restricted environment as possible. Now since the no child left behind act of 2001 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) children with special needs have been able to receive special services that help them learn better and be educated with there peers. Because of these laws more children with special needs have been able to graduate and get jobs out in society. Which for people who have a disability it is their dream to be able to function in a non-disabled world. By having students with special needs learning with their peers it also allows there peers to see that some people are different. Overall, there has been many changes, but they have all improved the way the world treats people with disabilities.

Who

The first schools for people with special needs where developed between the 1800s, and 1900s. While these schools were forming there were two goals that were hard to achieve first to provide human treatment; and second remove the disabled from society. According to Sacks “in 1817 Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and American minister and educator, established the first American residential school for the deaf” (3). Samuel Howe formed the Perkins Institute for the blind and supported public financial support for teaching and providing help for people with special needs. A man named Eduoard Seguin helped create the first home for the mentally challenged.

During the mid 1800s, a woman named Dorothea Dix, an educator and social reformer, helped people to view mental institutions differently. She got them to see them as hospitals for people who are ill rather then a prison for the criminally insane.

At the end of the century Alfred Binet invented an intelligence test named Binet-Simon. This test measured the intelligence and determined peoples mental status. Lewis Terman made improvements on the Binet-Simon test and named it Stanford-Binet. He also invented the first Longitudinal test for gifted children.

Nationwide compulsory school attendance in the early 1900s, flooded schools with thousands of new students, and policymakers had to find ways to deal with children who did not fit the mold. A lot of the students stayed in school until they could withdraw. There were many jobs available to someone who dropped out of school so there were not many consequences.

Why?

For years students with disabilities were excluded from schools due to the lack of educators who had the knowledge to teach children with special needs. Before the 1800s, the public feared people with disabilities because they did not understand why these people were different and because of this the public treated ones with disabilities in cruel ways. A lot of children with special needs were deserted and left to die. Witch hunts, burnings, and exorcisms also were common means to an end for such “problem” children (Sacks 2). There were not may people willing to support children with disabilities.

In 1933 parents started forming special education advocacy groups and ultimately were the main people in improving education opportunities for their children. The Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Movement extended equal protection under the law for minorities and paved the way for people with disabilities to receive the same treatment. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act was passed in 1975. It is also known as the Public Law 94-142. The Public Law 94-142 required schools to provide students with a any range of disability with a “free appropriate public education.” It also requires school districts to offer education in the “least restrictive environment” possible. These laws were put into affect because people started to finally realize that children with special needs deserve an education also.

What and How

When people think about special education I think the most important question that pops into their head is, “Is inclusion effective?”. I think this is the most important question because not only does it affect children with special needs it also affects the typically functioning student. So even though inclusion affects everyone in school, the average person may not know what inclusion is exactly. The word inclusion can be a very frightening word to someone if they do not know much about it, so at the end of this paper I hope you will be able to come to your own conclusion about weather or not inclusion classrooms are effective.

Inclusion in school require a shift in the paradigm, instead of getting the child ready for the regular class, the regular class gets ready for the child (Tomko par 4). In an inclusion classroom there are a lot of things that need to be done in order to accommodate for a child with a disability. Some of the things that need to change in the classroom is the way the teacher teaches, different equipment needs to be available for the student with the disability, expectations of the student and keeping a list of what goals have been meet. The teacher may need to change the way they teach because the student may learn slower than the other children. The teacher also needs to have high expectations for the student to strive for, but low expectations when it comes to the activity that the child can perform. If the teacher does not teach to the students level then that student will not know what is going on. If they do not know what is going on then they have a tendency to act out in order to get the attention they want. The typically developing children and the teacher also have to adapt to having an inclusion teacher in the room. An inclusion teacher is a special education teacher that comes into a regular classroom for a few hours a day to make sure that the child with the special needs is doing alright. While he/she is in their they may also help a student that is typically developing just to give the regular teacher some extra help. In an inclusion classroom the teacher is the one that has to change the most, but it does effect the typically developing student also.

Pros and cons of Special Education Classrooms

Some of the pros about keeping children with special needs in a self-contained classroom is the child can get more attention from the teacher. If they need any special equipment to help them learn it would be available. They provide structure and routine for students who need them in order to concentrate. In a segregated classroom the students also have a teacher that is qualified in teaching students with a disability. There are not that many positive things about students with special needs being in a segregated classroom, but it all depends on what the parent is looking for in there child’s education.

There are a lot of negative reasons to put someone with a disability in a self-contained classroom. For starters they would not be with their peers, so when it would come time to live in the community on their own they may not know how to handle knowing that not everyone is like them. The same goes for their peers, when they go out into the community to work they may not know how to work with someone with special needs. Children that are not in a special education classroom may have difficulty getting the equipment they may need to learn because general education classrooms do not always have they tools they need. Also even though there is a special education teacher that comes into the regular classrooms to make sure that the special education students are doing ok they are with the regular education teacher and he/she usually has not been trained in how to teach to a student with disabilities. The student sometimes does not always get as good of an education as what they might get in a special education class because the regular education teacher can not slow down every time they need him/her to.

During the 1800s

While I was looking for sources I found a book called History of Special Education in Ohio and in this book it talks about the development all the way to the compliance and provision of full service. This book does not have any new information on special education, but it does have information starting back to the 1800s and going only until 1985. It has information on the development of programs for the handicapped like the blind, deaf, crippled, and mentally retarded. After, it informs you about the state leadership and program refinement. It tells you about the first schools that were made for people with disabilities. In part three of this book it informs you of more expansion of programs for the disabled. I believe that this book can come in handy when I am writing my paper on the history of special education because I do not have a lot of information on what it was like in the 1800s. I just have a few things here and there. This book spends more time on the programs that were made for people with special needs so this way I can elaborate on them some and not the law as much. At the very end of this book it tells you about the legal foundations for special education. This may be nice to know in the future. Over all this book looks like it can help clarify anything that may have been confusing in any of my other sources.