"Citizenship in School" Kliewer quotes

"I started to notice that I didn't like the classes I was taking called special education.! had to go through special ed. almost all my life. I wanted to take other classes that interested me. I had never felt so mad, 1 wanted to cry"
This is a quote mentioned in the article from a self-advocacy news letter by a girl with Down Syndrome about her experiences in school. This quote made me very emotional and made me feel bad for her. I can't imagine going to school everyday feeling like that. It is a great argument for why schools should integrate special education students into mainstream classes when possible.

"children are not mere receptacles of knowledge transmitted to them by teachers"

I think that this quote is saying that there is more to a student than what they learn in school and I think that this is so true. There are so many other things that define who a person is.

"Educating all children together reconfigures the representation of Down
syndrome from burden toward citizenship. "
I think this is another great argument for why schools need to be integrated. There is a stigma that goes along with having a disability. Many people think that people with disabilities are just a burden and they don't want to deal with them. If more classrooms were integrated, this stigma would go away and people would realize that there is more to a person than their disability and that disabled people really aren't much different than everyone else.

Here is an interesting post about ways to integrate special education students into mainstream classrooms.