Inclusion of EBD students - Essay Example

Eventually, the United States federal government made numerous legislative changes to address this issue and have helped change public opinion to give special needs students many more advantages. Today the goal of the United States’ special education program is to enable children with special needs to become full members of society. One of the problems that the United States faces with special needs programs is that teachers are not preparing all special needs students as several slip through the cracks of an overburdened system.

Students with invisible handicaps have been left behind and pushed aside. For example, students with emotional behavior disorders are not fully included in the school programming. The easiest way to deal with them has been to push them away into specially designed ‘behavior’ classrooms. Lack of funding has prevented many systems from including the kind of real support these students need to help them become successful in the classroom and, in turn, become full members of society. Throughout history the treatment of students with special needs has been troubled with injustice and inappropriate practices.

Many special needs students were placed in asylums and institutions. The asylums and institutions of the early 1900’s were replaced with “special classes” by the 60’s and 70’s where students with disabilities were segregated and labeled. Although these classes were improvement over the asylums, the children in these programs were stigmatized and were given little opportunity to interact with the general population in the schools. These students had little understanding of the social networking necessary for integration into society and therefore had little chance of success.

With time, these special classes gradually began to include students with less obvious disabilities. In these classes students were taught by