The Social Integration of Handicapped Children.

Abstract

One of the major reasons for main streaming handicapped children into regular classrooms is to increase their contact with nonhandicapped children and decrease their isolation. The contact, we are told, will give handicapped chil dren a better chance to live successfully in the mainstream. However, studies of mainstreaming have found problems in the social integration of handicapped chil dren into regular classrooms.1 As a group, handicapped children are not chosen as friends as often as other children in the class. Even though they are physically in the mainstream, they often continue to be socially isolated. The educational system has placed handicapped children in the mainstream and hoped they would swim, or at least tread water. What can we do to promote their acceptance by the non handicapped? Of course not all mainstreamed handi capped children are socially isolated. Some fit right in. For example, Richard Iano and his colleagues found that al though many mainstreamed educable mentally retarded (EMR) students were not chosen as friends, some of them were more popular than some of the nonhandi capped students.2 Roger Elser's finding on the social acceptance of deaf children by nonhandicapped peers was similar: The degree of acceptance was based on in dividual characteristics, not just on the handicap.3 Certainly some handicaps are greater barriers to friendship than others. A child with severe emotional and physi cal handicaps is more likely to be friend less than a child who has only a slight physical handicap. But even in extreme cases, handicapping limitations are just one factor in social acceptance and the development of friendship. For most handicapped children, enter ing a regular class promotes minimal and unplanned social contact with nonhandi capped children. Teachers have no train ing in promoting friendship in their classes