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Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

To be honest I personally have no experience with any developmental disabilities.
1. Such a model may meet bureaucratic organization 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 (Kozol, 1991).

This sentence packs so much, the model that was mentioned was how schools continue to segregate students. Meaning that if you are sitting in a classroom surrounded by other kids who look like you, come from the same neighborhood, learn the same way, and have been taught the same things, you are being denied a vital education. The education of your peers, the lecture of the teacher is only half the lesson, being segregated denies kids the right to learn about their entire community, and not just that little piece.

2. Instead of picking a quote here I want to comment broadly on, Broading the Definition of Valued Intellect.

This part reminds me of what we were talking about last class, about those dittos and how that’s not really the best way to test the intellect of students. In the article the quote by Howard Gardner talks about how some kids can pass the test but they miss the deeper understanding. It is one thing to be smart enough to read through a text book and be able to pick out the things that need to be memorized, or what your teacher will probably quiz you on, but it is completely another to really understand the concept. “What constitutes valued patterns of learning” I love that he mentions this, this also goes back to everything that we have been talking about in class. All students learn differently, some excel at mathematics, some a the civics courses, but there are others as well, here he mentions spatial-representation, musical, kinesthetic intelligence. All of these are valid ways of expressing ones self, and they all need to be recognized in the schooling system. If a student is bad at test taking, that doesn’t mean that they are any less capable they any other student in the school, they would probably ace the test if given the opportunity to orally present the material. And that is just one example. I remember in my high school, the special ed. Kids were not in our regular classes but they were in our physical education courses. P.E. at least where I attended wasn’t about being in shape it was about trying new things and playing around seeing what you were good at, what your body was capable of, seeing what you liked. But the special ed. Kids did not participate they just watched, which I always thought was ridiculous. They could walk around the track but that was it. Here again they were denied an opportunity to learn, about their classmates, and themselves. Because, going back to our last class discussion, people just assumed that they were not capable.

3. I have to stop here because I am sick L and I need to get to bed, I will try to add more before next class though.