down syndrome

Reading this article made me think about all the portrayals I've seen on Down syndrome and how that compares to how people with this disorder really are. I've seen a video going around Facebook about how people with Down syndrome shouldn't be labeled as special needs and a lot of people seemed to miss the point of it. It wasn't that they were trying to deny that they had these needs, but that they wanted society to stop placing labels on them and deciding what those labels mean for them. I've attached that Facebook video as well as a boy with Down syndrome being integrated into a classroom effectively.

Herbert article reflection

In Bob Herbert's 2011 New York Times article, the author brings to light the issue of how lower performing, less successful schools are often most attended by poor hispanic and black kids who can't afford to go to a better school. This raises so many other issues and causes us to question why we allow such a large achievement gap to exist between minority children and white children. As Herbert explains, many white children are middle class and have the privilege of going to school with their peers who succeeding in school. Teachers would rather work at these middle class suburban schools that at a school with mostly poor kids in the middle of the city. Another point that Herbert makes is that we need to work on integrating more low performing students into better schools to create more diversity and to make sure that the minority students can improve. Once story I remember from the This American Life podcast, is that the woman, Nicole, was a product of integration in schools. She was a black girl from a poorer neighborhood who was bused to an almost all white school where she ended making friends. They got along well and she told a story about her white friends always invited her to the pool on the white side of town in the summer. This was all fine and good, but whenever she wanted her friends to come to her house or the pool on her side of town, her friend's parents always said no.