Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

Kliewer talks about how children with disabilities are excluded from the community when they are segragated in schools. He makes many good points about how segregation doesn't allow for children with disabilities to grown linguistically and socially. When "abnormal" children and "normal" children are separated, the "abnormal" children, all the children miss out. Special needs students feel defective, and "normal" children never get a good understanding of special needs people.

"Those who appear not to make use of these conditions (supposedly open to all), or who appear to lack the potential to accrue privileges, are systematically devalued as less than full citizens-charged as they are with having the differences that matter."

Kliewer uses many examples from peolpe who have written about society and democracy and says that citizens who are unable to make full use of their rights as citizens and do not contribute to society as much as other citizens do are devalued. They are seen more as a burden to society and their community rather than an important part.

I think that some teachers feel that way about children with special needs, especially if they have inclusion in their classroom. I don't think anyone would deny that it's harder to have an inclusive classroom than a segragated one. It's going to be hard, because a lot of people don't have patience for people who have special needs and because the teacher always needs to think about ways to make all the children feel included. I think inclusion will be easier once more schools start making it a priority.


"Those students who exhibit the canonical mind are credited with understanding, even when real understanding is limited or absent; many people . .. can pass the test but fail other, perhaps more appropriate or probing measures of understanding. Less happily, many who are capable of exhibiting significant understanding appear deficient, simply because they cannot readily traffic in the commonly accepted coin of the educational realm."

This seems like it's a big flaw in the way that schools assess their students with special needs. Students with disabilities may have an understanding of what they're being tested on but fail a test on it. The same can be said about students without disabilities, they may be able to pass a test on a certain subject but don't understand it well.

Shayne Robbins did not hesitate in her response when asked why she devoted so much energy to creating a classroom community where all were afforded citizenship. "Don't think," she told me, "that those special needs kids drain anything. That class would not be half what it is if anyone of those kids got segregated. We're all together in there."

I really admire that teacher for all the work she does with her students in her inclusive classroom. When she was talking about how she had a special needs student in her class who loved the book Where the Wild Things Are, and how she had the class put on a play so that he could participate without feeling frustrated. But at the same time she sees the good that those kids with special needs are doing in her classroom.

I wish that I had gone to a school that had inclusive classrooms. To this day I still feel a little awkward around people with special needs. I think it's because the only experience I've ever had with a person who has special needs was when I was a kid. I met my friend's sister who was autistic and she had a sudden fit and she was screaming and thrasing and her dad had to hold her down.

It scared me a lot, and ever since I feel like I don't know how to act when I meet people with special needs. I think that it's definitely easy to see people with special needs as an "other". Maybe it's similar to how racially segragated schools were, kids were seperated so they saw each other as the "other" kids. This unease that I have tells me that I need more experience working with people with special needs. I think that I need to be able to see the humaness in them and look past their disability. Disibility shouldn't define who a person is.