In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed a law called Education for All Handicapped Children Act. The signing of this law placed students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment and gave students with disabilities the opportunity to be included in a classroom and not isolated.
Mainstream schools allow students to compete with other student in a “regular classroom”. Services are included to the students such as; interpreters, notetakes, and tutors.
Advantages of mainstreamed school include the opportunity for students to remain living at home, and they are still being exposed to American Sign Language. Students interact with the hearing and deaf community and they are able to compete with hearing students.
Disadvantages of mainstreamed schools include student being able feel excluded from social grouping because the individual is being viewed as being disabled. Many deaf students suffer from low self esteem due to competition and comparision to hearing students in mainstreamed schools.
Scheetz, Nanci A. "Chapter Four: The Educational Environment." Orientation to Deafness. Second ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993. 78-106. Print
Emily,
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the things that I struggle with. I am kind of on the fence and do not know which side to take. Like you stated above, mainstream schooling could be great because the children get to interact and compete with hearing students, but I feel that a deaf student is at an disadvantage in a school like this. I guess if the school offered a sign language course of had some type of way to help the deaf students communicate with other students, mainstreaming would be great. I feel that it is really important that any child feels safe and comfortable in their environment. I wonder what studies have done on deaf students in mainstream schools and what the findings were.