Quote:
Originally Posted by lucifer_sam
That is the real world. Not everybody is created equal. I would say across a democratic society (basically anywhere in the Western world), everybody has the same opportunity, but not necessarily the same talents to achieve those ambitions.
The sad reality is that most of those children will never see the fruits of a functional career. It is a school's responsibility to provide those children with the skills they'll need following their departure from school. That's not saying that all "special needs" children should be treated the same way, but pretending they're the same as everybody else won't help them in the long run.
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Not everybody is created equal, but we are part of a society where we all live together in the same community. Shouldn't a classroom echo this kind of diversity and embrace everybody's differences instead of separating them?
Children live up to the expectations you give them. If you believe that they will never see the fruits of a functional career, then they will not. If you believe that they will succeed, they have more of a chance to succeed. A lot of teachers place high expectations on their clever students and low expectations on their at-risk (or developmentally delayed) students. These at-risk students then consequently don't achieve well, because they are not expected to. It's called the Pedagogy of Poverty, a noteworthy teaching pedagogy researched by Haberman and I think it holds a lot of truth.
EDIT: I definitely don't like to treat them as exactly the same as everybody else. Because they are not; it's equity verses equality. All students are different and so have different requirements, you can't treat them all equally because in turn that wouldn't be fair.