Mainstreaming is one of the most debatable topics in the past and nowadays. Mainstreaming is when students with disabilities and students without disabilities come together in one class and learn things together and the results can be both positive and negative. There are mainly three reasons that make mainstreaming both positive and negative results: social skills, academics, and tolerance.
Firstly, mainstreaming can cause positive and negative impacts on social skills. Kids with special needs can learn with non-disabled kids and by doing so, they can build social skills that are beneficial to their future. However, kids with special needs can cause behavioral issues that disrupt their own class. This can change the perspectives of the way other students negatively view them.
After that, academics can also have pros and cons from mainstreaming. Students with special needs and non-disabled students can learn the same things. This can therefore lead to an improvement in academic skills. On the other hand, students with disabilities can have trouble keeping up pace with other students and slow down the pace of the whole class.
Last but not least, tolerance would lead to positive and negative results. Mainstreaming can help students with disabilities build tolerance in the future because they are already used to non-disabled students. But, non-disabled students can build a negative perspective while being in the same class as students with disabilities. They can think that students with disabilities will never get along with his or her own peers.
In my opinion, in order to solve both problems, the help of teachers may be the key to solving both the pros and cons of mainstreaming: a teacher who has experience in both classes with regular students and classes with students with disabilities. Then the teacher will be able to understand both students with and without disabilities with the help of this method. The teacher will help fix disabled students’ behavioral issues that disrupt class and also help disabled students and non-disabled students get along with each other, the teacher will help teach things that disabled students don’t learn but at the same time help teach things that aren’t too hard for students with disabilities, and thanks to the teacher, disabled students can get along with non-disabled students and the non-disabled students will not build negative perspectives.
In conclusion, there are three main reasons mainstreaming can be both good or bad which are social skills, academics, and tolerance. However, if there is a teacher who has experience in teaching a class for students with disabilities and a normal class, the teacher will be able to understand both students and take care of them. This will be the key for solving the problems of mainstreaming.