In the past centuries, school was not available for everybody. School was a luxury only few could afford, not necessarily because it was expensive but because it was selective. Minorities were not aloud to go to school, nor did women in some places, or peasants in others and in some places not even people belonging to a certain race, such as the Afro-American people. School was only for royal descendants or for the high class.

The contrary is what happens today. Almost everyone willing can go to school and moreover, there are also special schools, such as schools for blind people, schools for minorities, schools for girls or schools for boys. Is this way of specializing schools efficient? It may be for some categories, but it surely isn’t for other.

In the first place, schools for moderate special needs children have proven their inefficiency. They seem not to stimulate enough the cognitive resources of the children and in addition they don’t contribute to the socio-emotional development of these children. Being in a special school puts a permanent stigma on them and they also fail to integrate those children in the community later on. Of course, special schools are needed for severely affected children who represent a menace to other children or who are too impaired to be solely under the supervision of non-psychiatric or physical specialists. But in these schools one can find also children which have less serious impairments or problems. These are those who have physical disabilities, learning disabilities, ADHD, the Asperger syndrome or other mental impairments which the psychologists consider to be light and under control. Read the rest of this entry »