Art Of Inclusion Essay Research Paper Full

Art Of Inclusion Essay, Research Paper

Full Inclusion has become a nation wide movement to include more disabled students in regular classrooms. Full Inclusion ignores the issues of the individual child and focuses more on the social issues and aspects of things. While this program has been proven to be successful in some schools, full inclusion has only created problems in others and a change from status quo must occur. Costs, distracted students, and untrained teachers are just a few of the many problems involved. Full Inclusion is an extremely controversial idea involved in the education system today. The opinions concerning this topic widely differ yet not all of these concerns are taken into account. The status quo of full inclusion is a one size fits all philosophy which is greatly opposed for many different reasons.

Inclusion is a term which explains the commitment to educate each child to the maximum extent appropriate, in the school and classroom he or she would otherwise attend. It involves bringing the support services to the child (instead of moving the child to the service) and requires only that the child will benefit from being in the class (instead of having to keep up with the other students). Full Inclusion opposed to inclusion means that all students, regardless of handicapping condition or severity, will be in a regular classroom or program full time. All services must be taken to the child in that setting (Special Education Inclusion). Those who support the idea of inclusion believe that the child always should begin in the regular environment and be removed only when the appropriate services can not be given in the regular classroom.

The Status quo of full inclusion is stated in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The Act states that all students to the maximum extent appropriate, handicapped children, including those children in public and private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not handicapped, and that special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of handicapped children from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the handicap that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily (Villa and Thousand 5). However, because this law never uses the term inclusion, there is a large amount of debate around what is actually required. It is clear that the main purpose of the law is to limit the removal from regular education environment to the largest possible extent, therefore a person against full inclusion would argue that this would mean a regular classroom all the time, after all, what could be less restrictive then the normal setting of a typical classroom with a general education teacher (Mackenzie par.3). Depending on the severity of the disability the law might not be the best thing for the person, yet it s a law and needs to be followed and that is part of the controversial situation. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act it ensures that the placement of every child with a handicapped condition be determined annually, and be based on the child s individual education program, also the school in which they will attend is to be as close as possible to the child s home. In addition to all of these factors, the law includes the idea that unless a handicapped child s individual education program requires some other arrangement, the child is educated in the school which he or she would attend if not handicapped (Villa and Thousand 8-9). All these factors, the law requires bring about a great amount of controversy when applying it to the view of full inclusion.

More often then not, educators look only at the socialization emphasis children receive, in this case being placed with regular kids, and less at the academic benefits the child will receive. This thing about socialization being the most important factor-I don t believe in that, said Barbara DiGiacomo, special education teacher at Wood Park Primary School in Commack (Hildebrand 4). Schools are places of learning. Often the child s social growth improves but, they do not learn as much as they would placed with other special education students (Hildebrand 4). The selective pullout programs that target specific needs do not need these social goals. Such social benefits can be accomplished in other ways throughout the child s school experiences (Crawford par 7.). The primary focus of education is academic and lifetime skills, although it may appear to be that socialization is a higher goal. Some would say that students in general education are already so much different, their needs so diverse that many students are falling behind already. This is because the curriculum and ways of instruction are not meeting the students needs. Thus by adding millions of students, whose needs are even greater, into something that is already struggling to succeed, would complicate things to a great extent (Baker and Zigmond 520).

Inclusion has become a controversial issue among parents, teachers, and school administrators because of the idea of disruption. They believe that by having students with disabilities into the regular classrooms it may disrupt school activities or require excessive amounts of class time. They worry that inclusion slows educational progress both for students with disabilities and for their