Segregation and Self-Perception, Part 2

As parents, teachers and administrators, we all need to be mindful of the message we're sending to students.  In instances where students with special education needs are set apart, or segregated, from their typically-developing peers, we have to understand the perception of the students involved: Those with Individual Education Plans (IEPs) who are sent to an alternate placement should know it's for their benefit, or they might begin to feel inferior to their peers.  Those who see their peers with IEPs in separate classrooms should know those students are just as worthy of respect, compassion, and attention as they are.

We teach by example.  If a general educator consistently deflects the needs of a student with an IEP in her or his class to the support person (i.e., a educational assistant or a special education teacher), or groups the students with challenges together and separates them from the other students within the same classroom, social habits are likely to follow suit.  These students will become isolated from their peers on the playground, in the cafeteria, and on the bus.  They will not be included in a homogenous population.  Or worse, they could become targets of relational aggression.

Consider what happened with Jane Elliott's blue eyes/brown eyes exercise more than 40 years ago.  In the wake of the 1968 murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and in an effort to get her 3rd grade students to understand the injustice of segregation and/or racial prejudice, she conducted a two-day psycho-social exercise.  The impact of this role play, and the one captured on film two years later, has resounded for decades.

On the first day, she convinced her class that the children with blue eyes, like herself, were superior.  The brown-eyed children were asked to wear identifying collars so they would be recognized from a distance as having brown eyes.  Before long, the students with brown eyes felt inferior socially and academically.

The second day, Ms. Elliott flipped the rules, confessing to the students that she'd lied the previous day about blue-eyed people being better than those with brown eyes.  The latter gave their collars to the former; and while the brown-eyed children were more merciful on day two than the blue-eyed children were to them on day one, it was still an awful day for everyone.  By the end, when Ms. Elliott told the students the truth, that they were all equal, the students despised the collars, the lesson, and prejudice altogether.

If this alteration in self- and peer-perception happens in a matter of hours, what do you suppose happens over months and years when we separate children with special education needs?  Of course, we have to provide the kind of support that will help our students to learn best; but can we provide it more seamlessly?  Can we design an environment that provides universal access to learning opportunities, without some of the barriers to those who process sensory input differently?  Can we start a club based on a student with ASD's passion that allows him to showcase his core competency -- even expertise?  Can we encourage educational assistants to act as social bridges, sharing practical tips to foster interaction between students with ASDs and their typically-developing peers?

I know we can.

How will you improve the culture in your community to be more inclusive of students with ASD?

The Silence of Our Friends

As we were doing the research for our middle school film, Choosing To Be a GFF, we noticed a heart-breaking trend.  Typically-developing students who were friends with a child with special needs in elementary school treated their differently-abled peer as if he or she were invisible in the great chaos of blending friends in middle school.  From the point-of-view of the "regular education" adolescent, this new school was not a time to stand up and stand out, but a time to take a big step back and decide who was going to be included in the new friendship mix.  Reaching over to draw in a child from the "special education" co-hort took a measure of character that had not yet developed.

Yet from the point-of-view of the student with a disability, he or she was rejected at a time when social support was most needed.  This new school was bigger and less predictable, and the only thing he or she figured was reliable was the smile of a long-time buddy.  How awful when that buddy chose to cast her eyes down when her friend with Asperger's passed in the hallway; or when that pal kept his hand in his pocket when his friend with Down Syndrome lifted his for a high-five.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a favorite quote of his rings in my ears: "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Sometimes that silence is the reason for a friend's feeling of rejection. Perhaps that friend saw disability harassment taking place right in front of him, and he chose to remain silent. Maybe that friend could have offered a word of encouragement when her friend ran by in tears, but decided that was too risky. And maybe that silence caused a child with special needs to despair of his or her own life.

Were Dr. King alive today, I'm sure he would see that America's battle with discrimination on the basis of disability is the frontline of inequality in education and the workforce.  And he would have a dream ...