Special Education in Public Schools
In America, every child is entitled, in fact, required to receive an education. Fortunately, through state funding, children can receive that education for free from public schools. What happens, though, when that money runs out? Someone is bound to suffer from that, and most recently it has been the Special Education department. These kids, for whatever reason, need special help from teachers that is often on a one on one basis. That in turn means a lot of teachers, meaning more money. Recently, Michigan schools have decreased funding to those programs, forcing the schools to integrate special needs students into mainstream academic classes with general population students. Doing this put the children, their peers, and the teachers all in a lose/lose situation; Special Education kids do not belong in mainstream academic classes. Some may feel that this is a good solution, and that it gives these children important interaction with the other areas in the school. This is true, but a Science or History class is not the place for them to get that interaction. It is necessary for a child with Down Syndrome or any other mental handicap to be able interact with other kids; however, they don't get to do that in academic classes. They
spend all of their time trying to understand what's going on in the classrooms, and in reality they never will understand. What these kids need is to receive this interaction in non-academic, hands on classes. Classes like gym, art, and music classes allow special needs children to have time with other kids, while learning from it. They can learn how to play games with others and work together while understanding what's going on around them. Those classes are perfect places for them to be able to intermix with other students and be a part of their school. That way, no one is suffering from it. With special needs students in their classes, mainstream students and teachers can suffer a great deal. To have a kid with Autism in a Science class, they need a lot of personal attention. Teachers have to make special assignments, and find new ways to teach them with easier concepts. Of course, the child deserves that and a teacher should be able to do that, but with 29 other students in the class, attention must be divided. While the teacher is helping the one or two students, the others a left without getting the attention that they may need. Now, this may sound selfish, but every student deserves an equal education and some may feel neglected from the lack of attention. Also, there is a potential for these kids to cause a real disruption in the class. So, not only does the teacher have a class of 28 talkative, rowdy and sometimes obnoxious high school students, they have one o
Some common words found in the essay are:
Autistic Down's, Autism Science, Science History, Special Education, Recently Michigan, , academic classes, mainstream academic classes, mainstream academic, special education, understand what's, special students, spend trying, students class, cut costs, school students, classroom setting,
Approximate Word count = 998
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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