Failing Schools

Torey's class is referred to as "the garbage class". While Torey says that this is an affectionate label, the reader fails to see the love. The truth of the matter is that the school dumps the more severely disabled children into a classroom of their own, cut off from the rest of the school so that no one has to be inconvenienced by their presence.

The issue of how to handle disabled children in the school system is a constant debate. Standards change each time a new theory is broached by the latest research. For years, the thought was to keep disabled children isolated from the rest of the school, and then mainstreaming became the fashion. Many schools mainstream the child for the majority of the day, but send him to a special class based on his specific needs. Other schools insist that the child receive additional...