"Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome" by Christopher Kliewer

“Those who appear not to make use of these conditions (supposedly open to all), or who appear to lack the potential to accrue privileges, are systematically devalued as less than full citizens – charged as they are with having the differences that matter.”

Basically what is being said here is that people with mental disabilities are not given the right to be full citizens. Disabled people should have the same rights as everyone else. But as far as the classroom goes, I don’t know how effective it is to mainstream disabled persons. It’s like when you put a non- English speaking student in an English speaking class they will eventually catch on and learn but someone who is limited by disabilities may not do so well and just get frustrated which would be a bad thing. I don’t know much about this topic, but I do remember in my high school Spanish class a student with down syndrome attended the class with an aid, but always became frustrated because the teacher couldn’t understand him, most of the time the aid couldn’t understand him. It was too bad and kind of sad, this student left the class halfway through the first quarter. Obviously putting that particular student in the classroom didn’t work for him but maybe it might work for other students with disabilities.

"How absurd to be judged by others at all, especially by those who have never experienced a disability or who are unwillingly providing us with support who don't listen to the voices we have."

A truthful quote, kind of like putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. It’s kind of like school administrators who forget what it’s really like to be in a classroom preaching to teachers on how they should run their particular classroom, my sister is a middle school teacher and she and her colleagues complain about this quite a bit and how it just makes problems.

"As mentioned earlier, people with Down syndrome are joined in their struggle for citizenship by other oppressed groups."

This is a good quote because it goes along with the first quote I wrote about first. I never thought of people with disabilities as being oppressed but after reading this, it does seem as though that they are. When I thought about it, it makes a lot of sense that they do have to struggle, a good example would be that disabled persons get special treatment such as handicap parking spaces, but many people don’t respect disabled persons or just don’t care so they just take the spot or some people that may have a handicap parking pass when they don’t really need it and use it so they don’t have to walk as far, which in my opinion is even worse that just taking the spot.