Inclusive education - Essay Example

Section/# Disabilities, Perception, and the room Experience With regards to perceptions and the inclusion of children with disabilities in one’s own classroom, there are a host of knee-jerk reactions that the author would necessarily experience. The first of these is of course the innate human belief that by including children with disabilities within the classroom, the overall quality of the education that the other students will be engaged with will necessarily decrease. This is born out of the faulty logic that the learning process itself is only as fast or as good as its slowest student.

The reason that this is faulty logic is due to the fact that the student with a particular disability is deemed to somehow be inferior in one form or another. Rather than viewing the situation in such a way, the educator would do better to view the ultimate diversity that such a situation could bring to the table and work to make it beneficial for all involved. Secondly, with regards to the perception that a teacher has with relation to a student with a disability, this has a prominent role with regards to whether the student himself/herself will achieve a level of success.

In this way, the reader can be made intimately aware of the way in which perception of disability has a unique and powerful effect on the level of educational attainment that can be realized (Morsink, 1984). As such, the educator must be made aware of their engrained prejudices that exist so as to seek to identify these and work to lessen their effect on the application of education and the approaches that they exhibit both inwardly and outwardly with regards to the students with disabilities within their classroom.

Not only is such an approach to disability disheartening to the child himself/herself, it also is oftentimes outwardly visible; although the educator may wish to conceal this, to the other students within the classroom. In this way, the preconceived notions of whether or not a student is able to integrate well with the other students, the course, and/or the material is oftentimes of far greater importance than whether or not the student is truly and innately capable of integrating with the material.

Ultimately, what the reader can infer is that the approach to the situation is what is most important from the educator’s standpoint. If one seeks to push back against the inclusion of children with special needs, they should only do so based upon concrete facts and/or evidence and not due to any preconceived and unsubstantiated beliefs with regards to the overall effect that such an inclusion will have with regards to the ability of the educator to integrate key knowledge and concepts to the remainder of their students.

If such preconceived biases are buried, then it is then possible to attempt to integrate such individuals into the class in the most efficient and equitable manner possible and seek to maximize the utility for all shareholders involved in the process.ReferenceMorsink, C. (1984). Teaching special needs students in regular classrooms. Boston: Little, Brown.