n is that less than a quarter of American teachers know how to teach reading to children who do not get it automatically. Successful mainstreaming would take a huge retraining effort and fundamental changes at teachers colleges. Learning-disabled children tend to do poorly in public schools, and their problems often go undiagnosed. Ashamed of failure, they act out in class, become truant and eventually drop out. The luckiest children are those whose disabilities are detected early and who are sent to special private schools where teachers drill them in the fundamentals of language (http://www.lowwwe.com/ihrt/index.html).Another argument resides in television, particularly in childrens programming. On children's television, the kid in the wheelchair has become a kind of mascot, beloved by all in his gang. But imagine a real-life classroom where all of the children are non-disabled except the one who drools uncontrollably, who hears voices or who can't read a simple sentence when everyone else can. Diversity is a noble ideal. But many disabled children would be marginalized and ridiculed in the mainstream. The mainstreamers argue that special education was never intended as a permanent place for any but the most profoundly handicapped students. For most children, it was supposed to be an educational pit stop where they developed the skills needed for full participation. This is true as far as it goes. But the central goal has always said it would educate children who had traditionally been viewed as uneducable. Integration was an important but distinctly secondary objective. The danger for students lie less in the specialized classes that allow at least some of them to succeed than in the widespread expectation that they cannot learn and are supposed to fail. Society needs to worry a good deal more about what these children are taught and a good deal less about who sits next to them in class.It became a contentious federal issue when the ...
