Disability by Karen and Kye Loon

It is essential for children with disabilities to be integrated into our mainstream education system. DYA?

Some people may argue that mainstream schools provide disabled children with the same expectations to succeed as their peers. They can develop social skills needed to compete in a non-disabled world which special schools fail to do, and toughens disabled children up for the real world. In mainstream schools, disabled children are naturally forced to work harder in order to keep up with their peers and seeing their peers' accomplishments will force and motivate themselves to improve themselves so that they will be on the same level as them. This also helps these children get used to working around non-disabled people which will ultimately benefit them in the future when they leave school into the workforce. In mainstream schools, disabled children will inevitably be bullied and ostracized by their fellow schoolmates. Through studying in mainstream schools, students will learn how to cope with such instances and will be able to cope when they go out into the workforce. Therefore, children with disabilities should be integrated into our mainstream education system.

However, I feel that integrating children with disabilities into our mainstream education system will cause them to be unable to keep up. Children with learning disabilities tend to have difficulties grasping new topics and information and may require special teaching methods to help them learn. In mainstream schools, teachers tend to teach at a faster pace and as a whole, providing the weaker students with only remedial sessions after school. The teachers in mainstream schools may also lack the patience and experience to teach these disabled children and would thus be unable to provide them with a proper learning environment which will thus result in these students being unable to keep up with their peers. For example, people with Dyslexia think in pictures rather than words and are imaginative, creative, and solve problems by looking at the whole picture than working step by step. In mainstream schools, almost all subjects are taught through notes and long passages with hardly any pictures which makes it difficult for Dyslexic children to process and learn. Teachers also teach verbally and provide little diagrams. Even the PowerPoint slides used to guide lessons contain more words than pictures. Another example can be seen from children with muscles disorders. Although they can think and process information like normal students, they are unable to write and copy down notes fast enough. Teachers in mainstream schools usually teach at the pace of the majority of students. These children with muscle disorders will thus find it difficult to catch up with the rest. Hence, children with disabilities should not be integrated into our mainstream education system.