Christopher Kwieler... #8

So I am home on a Saturday night thanks to a brutal test this morning. That's right, I took my PPSTs. It really sucked waking up at 530 am. The test sucked more and what sucked even more was that I also missed a very important funeral because of it. 

As a result, I am extremely tired and thought my night would be better spent relaxing on the couch trying to do some homework. Next up, finished my huge advocacy paper. 

NAME OF AUTHOR and TEXT 

Christopher Kwieler and Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome 

AUTHOR’S ARGUMENT 

The main point of the article is that school’s need to stop segregating students with down syndrome or other disabilities. It effects their learning process and development of skills that can be taught regardless of the label down syndrome puts these kids through.  A “citizenship” guided school base allows each and every student to learn through cooperative and interactive education that can enhance the development of every student regardless of disabilities or no disabilities.

QUOTES

“Jason ponders, "How do we erase those negative attitudes?" in light of the fact that "people without disabilities are Judging us" 

- a rule of thumb to live by.

“How absurd to be judged by others at all,especially by those who have never 

experienced a disability or who are unwillingly providing us with support 

or who don't listen to the voices we have.”

- ditto.

“The movement to merge the education of children with and without disabilities is based on the belief that to enter the dialogue of citizenship does not require spoken, or indeed outspoken, language. Rather, communication is built on one's ability to listen deeply to others.”

- here’s a quick recap to the argument on citizenship learning

“As Douglas Biklen (1992) has outlined, society itself is hurt when schools act as cultural sorting machines-locations that "justify a competitive ethic that marginalizes certain students or groups of students ... [that] legitimize discrimination and devaluation on the basis of the dominant society's preferences in matters of ability, gender, ethnicity, and race ... and [that] endorse an elaborate process of sorting by perceived ability and behavior" (p. 183). Such a model may meet bureaucratic organizational needs (Skrtic, 1995a), but it teaches little about the complexity of community membership and carries with it a tremendous intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and economic cost (Kozel. 1991).”

- supports the argument of the need to desegregate schools based on disability.

“Schools have traditionally taken a narrow position when defining and judging student intellect (Gardner, 1983). The presence of a thoughtful mind has been linked to patterns of behavioral and communicative conformity associated with competence in logical-mathematical thinking and linguistic skills. Assessments of how well a student conforms to expectations (measurements through which students come to be defined either as smart or as lacking intellect) tend to focus teacher attention on the child's adeptness at responding to classroom-based math and language tasks. These evaluative instruments supposedly measure either a student's understanding of a transmitted knowledge base (hence, a preexisting one) related to math and language, or the student's ability to discover the knowledge base through carefully contrived activities.”

- While I generally agree that many schools are narrow minded, thankfully more and more schools are becoming less so. Many of my professors and some high school teachers have learned to deal with the incredible differences and diversified learning styles that are present in the classroom.

“Vygotsky found that the culture of segregation surrounding people with disabilities actually teaches underdevelopment of thinking through the isolation of children from socially valued opportunities. As described in more detail below, altering the culture of disability requires that a child be recognized as an active learner, a thinker, and a problem-solver, but this cannot occur apart from relationships that allow for such engagement.”

- how can we as school systems incorporate a better learning institution for every student while instilling competitive skills in our students. 

“uneducable.”

I am pretty sure this is not a word... ineducable is.

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/POINTS TO SHARE

As usual, I have plenty of things to say. I can understand how it feels to be labeled as a disabled student. Have been my whole life. Unfortunately there are too many school systems out there who really don’t give a rotten hoot about how I can succeed in their classrooms. My school years have been a constant anxiety rush from high level of praises to refusing to attend class depending on the classroom. Too many teachers are not able to deal with mixed students and it is incredibly annoying. Yes, yes it is. Several of the students mentioned in the article were lucky to have such great classes. I am interested in seeing how those students in the kindergarten level are doing in the high school level. Obviously integrating students with disabilities need to help students be successful in their endeavors. As a hearing impaired student, there was a huge struggle so I cannot imagine being integrated if I was completely deaf. When I moved to Arizona, there was sort of an attached school of deaf at my school. Several of my teachers could sign and were able to sign lectures and directions as well as verbal cues. I was always mainstreamed and I have yet to decide if it hurt me or benefitted my needs as a person and as a student. Perhaps one of the differences between those with down syndrome and deaf, is the deaf community is large and well, exists. The article mentions several of the persons with down syndrome having huge communication and network holes in their lives that effectively inhibited personal growth in a variety of ways. Perhaps a larger community presence of those with down syndrome would help this. The deaf community vigorously fights to defeat mainstream society who label them as unproductive citizens. They even have a university for the deaf. Ironically I’m an outcast in the deaf community for not being deaf enough and not using ASL for my first language and an outcast in mainstream for having a physical disability. So how does one survive in a world of able bodied people. How do students with down syndrome and cerebral palsy and other  disabled persons find success in classrooms that are so bent on creating robots instead of exploring individuals and their complexities. My issue is how do we create a classroom that will do that as well as impart some very important knowledge that doesn’t necessarily have room for individualitiy such as Math, some history and science. I’m aware that it is very possible to make history individual and science is really easy to apply to life .  But how can we make it so that, until we get rid of standardized testing, our students, disabled and non-disabled can pass those ridiculous tests while expanding personal growth and education. I always talk about how throughout my entire education, the one thing I really learned about more than anything is myself, and those around me. I learned of those around me and their struggles, their beliefs, morals, religions and so much more. I’d have to agree in some ways with the article about citizenship, empathy and the rest of the jazz. How we learn to communicate with others, and create our social network have a huge impact.  While reading this article, I definitely made mental remarks on how this article relates to several of our other articles. Oakes and Carlson and isolation relates because we’re isolating our students with down syndrome. They’re, as a result, unsuccessful and uneducated, and basically deprived of a right. This article also compares well to the tracking article, in defining higher and lower ability students, and its repercussions.

Generally as a disabled student, I try my best to get through mainstream society without any help. I have a 504 hanging around somewhere but rarely use it. And when I need it, it seems the teacher takes a look and ignores it. So it has become useless anyway. Most of my professors though, seem to look out for me and are aware of it in any case. I look back on this article and think to myself about those students with down syndrome, and their right to be educated especially when they have a desire to do so and want to be successful. Equality, meh... How about some “Equity”.