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  • Essay / Education: from segregation to inclusion - 2522

    If every child has special needs, which children have special needs? Cade is a child with special needs. Cade is also energetic, loving, friendly and helpful to his comrades. The school he attends has a program called "Getting Caught in the Act" where students are rewarded if they are caught doing something good. Cade plays with Legos, licks cupcake frosting, can beat just about any video game, and regularly gets "caught red-handed" at his school. He's like any other kid except Cade has Williams (Gorton) syndrome. Cade is also integrated into general education classes and will one day be fully included with the rest of his peers, where he belongs. Although the terms integration and inclusion have been used interchangeably to describe the educational approach to teaching students with special needs, the philosophy of the two methodologies are very different. It is generally believed that educating students with disabilities who are well suited to a traditional classroom setting helps these students emerge from school better prepared for life, both educationally and socially. Proponents of inclusion also note that failing to meet students' educational needs will make their learning difficult and, most likely, also lead to behavior problems. Additionally, familiarizing conventional students with disabled students in neutral and standard classrooms helped bridge the gap of misunderstandings. As more schools recognize the benefits of teaching students with special needs in the "least restrictive environment", the "inclusion" procedure is becoming the preferred method for helping these students achieve their better educational level. But this has not always been the school of ...... middle of paper ...... and Company, 1993.Sacks, Arlene. Special education: a reference manual. Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2001. Sindelar, Paul T. “Full Inclusion of Students with Learning Disabilities and Its Implications for Teacher Education.” Journal of Special Education 29.2 (1995): 234. Academic research completed. EBSCO. Internet. March 2, 2011. Tom EC Smith, Edward A. Polloway, James R. Patton, Carol A. Dowdy. Teaching students with special needs in inclusive settings. Pearson, 2008. Winifred Anderson, Stephen Chitwood, Diedre Hayden. Negotiating the labyrinth of special education. Bethesda: Woodbine House, 1997. Winzer, Margret A. The History of Special Education. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1993. Vandergriff, Jim. “EDUC 201 School and Society.” June 13, 2002. Grinnell.EDU. April 20 2011 .