Into the Mainstream

Apart from busing, perhaps the most controversial public school issue of the day is "mainstreaming," the growing practice of integrating physically and mentally handicapped children into regular classes. Until the past few years, most such children, if they received any formal education at all, did so only in special classes or schools, segregated from their normal peers. In part because of the efforts of parents' organizations, all but two states now have mandatory "right to education" laws, and Congress last fall passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, authorizing funding of $200 million this year, rising to $3.1 billion by 1982. Besides granting every child the right to some form of public education, the new law favors integration into regular classes as soon as is feasible for all but the most severely handicapped.

The new law, warns Careth Ellingson, an authority on learning disabilities, "will change the American public school system more drastically than the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on desegregation." That is an exaggeration, and many of the changes will be slow in coming. Still, there are a staggering number of physically and emotionally handicapped, disturbed or mentally retarded children in the country: according to the U.S. Office of Education, nearly 8 million school-age children, or 12% of the six to 19 age group, can be so classified. Of this number, say USOE officials, almost half are being denied appropriate schooling.

Few would deny them some sort of training. But why should they go into regular classrooms? According to proponents of integration, 1) handicapped children can achieve more academically and socially if they are not isolated, 2) a regular school setting can help them better cope with the "real" world when they grow up, and 3) exposure to handicapped children helps normal children understand individual differences in people.

In some states, including New Jersey, Illinois and Texas, some handicapped have been going to school with normal children for years. In many schools they go to regular classes only part time; in others, specially trained teachers visit their classes daily. In Los Angeles, state funds have enabled the school district to hire 80 extra nurses, psychologists and supplemental teachers. Danny Kodmur, 11, who has cerebral palsy and had been attending a special school until last year, was elected president of the student body by his new classmates at L.A.'s Cheremoya Elementary School this fall.

Flagrant Misuse. But the other children sometimes make it terribly difficult for their handicapped classmates to fit in. Such was the case in Alexandria, Va., when, after two months of taunts and loneliness at Bishop Ireton High School, hyperactive Bobby Gorman, 16, hanged himself in the basement of his home last November.

The taunting of classmates, however, is only one problem with mainstreaming as perceived by teachers--the people who have to make it work. The two powerful teachers' organizations, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, support the new law in principle but are attempting to set a number of conditions before fully backing it. They want more special training in dealing with the handicapped as well as additional support from child psychologists and social workers. Moreover, funds have to be found in state and school district budgets to install elevators, ramps, special bathroom fixtures and playground equipment. Charlie Walker, associate director of the New Jersey Education Association, charges that some school boards "flagrantly" misuse mainstreaming "to throw handicapped kids into regular classrooms and cut back previously existing special-education services."

Contractual Limits. Teachers also want to limit the number of handicapped children placed in each class. The teachers' worry is that with class sizes rising in many systems because of budget cuts, the addition of handicapped children will add to their burden and take time away from the normal children. Already teachers' groups in Pittsburgh and Detroit have included limits on mainstreaming in their contracts.

NEA President John Ryor finds the integration of the handicapped in the nation's classrooms "as American as baseball and hot dogs." But, he warns, "vigilance must be the watchword if mainstreaming is to provide a favorable learning experience both for the handicapped and regular students and if the teachers are not to wind up as fall guys."

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