Is Full Inclusion of Disable Students Desirable? Disabled students represent an important minority in our social educational system; they require extra care and attention during all their period of study. As federal legislation envisages, more and more disabled students are being educated in regular classrooms. But can such an inclusion be effective way for them? Full inclusion means the assignment of disabled students to attend regular schools and participate in all the school activities during the day. It provides disabled students with the opportunity to receive education along with the other students, to use the same programs, classes, trainings, schools facilities and resources, to learn and understand the principles of individual and group behaviors, to develop as a personality and a member of society. The issue of inclusion is a very controversial point because it concerns not only educational, but also ethical, moral, individual and other social aspects. There are many opponents and supporters of this idea, who debate over it in mass media and publications. A range of advantages and disadvantages of inclusion can be analyzed from different points of view: pros and cons for disabled students, for normal children and for academic personnel.
First of all, full inclusion brings a great deal of advantages for disabled children. Studying together with normal students brings to disabled children a feeling of being involved and being equal in abilities to receive knowledge to usual students. Separation or segregation can result negatively in developing of childs individuality and can bring to depression, under-esteem, selfishness, timidity, etc. One more advantage is that disabled students can take their successful classmates as competent examples to follow. Studying among normal students can challenge and fasten the development of personal characteristics, it can be a good background for disabled children to learn how to use own unique skills and abilities. Such environment is exceptionally good for disabled students to succeed, and statistically there are more chances for them to graduate from usual public school, then from a special one (annually about 43% of disabled students fail to finish the school in non-inclusive setting).
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Besides, inclusion is a very important issue for development of social and adaptive abilities of disabled children; it is a good possibility to experience realistic situations of group behavior and activity, to obtain practical familiarity with social laws of communal life. The most important is an opportunity to make friends with normal students, to be in a company of non-disabled children, to find and to realize own place among the classmates, to learn to be a good, tolerant and reliable member of such group. There are also advantages of inclusion of disabled students for normal children of the classroom. First of all, this is a good opportunity for them to learn more and to get familiar with disabled people, to observe their life and problems, to see the way they are struggling and trying to reach success. Therefore, disabled children can become also a sort of model for normal students, showing their insistence to overcome challenges of nature or fate. Studying together can help non-disabled children to develop tolerance, understanding, sympathy, and kindness towards their disabled classmates, to learn how to satisfy their special needs. Close collaboration between both groups of children can result in increasing of responsibility of normal students, and stimulate their understanding that disabled people require additional help and concern.
Moreover, inclusion can assist non-disabled students to develop positive approach to people, who are different, and not to take differences (not only as to health, but also by race, nationality, social position, etc.) as something bad or negative. Studying together with disabled children, normal students will learn how to appreciate their own abilities and skills, how to become hardworking and persistent to achieve success in life. But there are also some negative moments in inclusion. In the majority of cases, disabled children feel uncomfortable in regular schools among normally developed children. There is a great deal of negative reaction and attitude, first of all, from non-disabled classmates (like teasing, indifferent or ignoring behavior, making fun, etc.), and even inadequate approach from the side of teachers and administrative personnel, making the study process unbearably hard and far than unpleasant. Besides, increasing of psychological and mental responsibilities of disabled children can cause stress and nervous tension. In anyway, a child understands own disability. That is why he or she chooses own special realistic aims to achieve and directs all the strength and skills to advance in that direction, though sometimes the efforts can seem absurd and ridiculous from the point of view of normal children.
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Understanding of own natural disadvantage and disability together with natural fear of human differences from other students, can damage psychology of a child very much. More important is the fact, that in public schools many disabled students suffer from the absence of specially trained teaching personnel to guide and to assist them in studying along with normal children. Besides, in regular schools there is an obvious lack of special services and facilities, which are required for disabled children. In case of inclusion, non-disabled children can not receive proper attention of their teachers, because studying together with the disabled requires a lot of additional efforts and time from the educators. Often teachers feel stressed and anxious with the presence of disabled students, expecting some disabilities and slowdowns in their comprehension also. It results with problems in educational process for both groups, but especially for usual children, and it causes distractions and losses of attention.
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There are more disadvantages of inclusion for teaching personnel. Undoubtedly, inclusion requires some special training and preparation for teachers, and in the absence of it educational process can hardly be successful, regardless to the experience or talent of such a teacher. That is why teachers of public schools are prevalently against inclusion. They underline that some additional support and improvements of existing educational system are necessary to make inclusive education more prosperous. Behavioral problem becomes primary for teachers of inclusive classes. As a rule, disabled students are selfish and introverted, as they have limited social skills, so it takes a lot of efforts from teachers to make such children more opened and communicative, and at the same time to make non-disabled students more attentive and understanding.
It considerably distracts from normal educational process and affects negatively. One more pessimistic moment of inclusion of disabled children is cost. It can be really expensive for parents to educate a disabled child in a regular public school because of relatively high requirements from such a child, absence of commodities and services, necessity of additional support and care. There are a lot of viewpoints on the matters of inclusion. Supporters of it consider that in any case a child has to start education with regular school, and to be removed only when proper positive effects could not be achieved any more. Many people (parents and mostly school academic staff) are against inclusive education, because psychological and behavioral problems considerably interfere with the process of learning.
The idea of inclusion is very good, but it must benefit for all the participants. Therefore, to make inclusion of disabled children more effective and successful, some proper sufficient steps, like arranging of teachers trainings, providing public schools with proper facilities, supplementary services and aids, must be taken. Teachers must learn, how to prepare both groups of students for collaboration, how to build educational process and keep everybody involved, how to choose correct behavioral strategy and stimulate it among the children, how to satisfy needs of special students in the classroom. In such case nobody would feel stressed or abused, and inclusive education would become efficient, helpful and exceptionally challenging
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September 1, 2004. Backwell-Synergy. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from the World Wide Web: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111 /1475-5661.00050/abs/ Inclusion: Pros and Cons. n.d. ChuckIII Colledge Resourses. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from the World Wide Web: http://www.chuckiii.com/Reports/Education/Inclusio n_Pros__Cons.shtml Land, D. Inclusion Technology for Online Learning.
n.d. Adaptive Technologies. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from the World Wide Web: http://www.computerteacher.org/adaptive_learning.h tm Stout, K. S. Special Education Inclusion. November 5, 2001. Wisconsin Education Association Council. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from the World Wide Web: http://www.weac.org/resource/june96/speced.htm Summer, C.
Teaching Students with Disabilities. August 30, 1999. The University of California Berkley. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from the World Wide Web: http://dsp.berkeley.edu/TeachStudentsWithDisab.htm l Zubal, L. Inclusion in Education: a Choice for Your Child. n.d. The Syracuse University. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from the World Wide Web: http://soeweb.syr.edu/thechp/incdoc2b.htm.
