Reimagening democracy; Reconceptualizing Down Sydrome

Christopher Kliewer's chapter in Schooling Children with Down Syndrome titled "Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome." was for lack of a better adjective brilliant. I can honestly say this was my favorite of all the readings in this class. It succeeds to in an articulate and impactful manner deliver the message of heightening understanding of the needs of special needs and specifically Down syndrome children in schools and critically analyze the root evil that is rotten and rotting away schools and society as a whole. He expresses this regressive root of apathetic youth as "utilitarian individualism." Going on to say, "It assumes that 'the individual is prior to the society, which comes into existence only through the voluntary contract of individuals trying to maximize their own self-interest'...wherein self-indulgence is cultivated and satisfied" In essence this is the "rugged individualism" that Herbert Hoover diagnosed as the cure to this country's Great Depression; we saw how successful that was. This is a phenomenal expression of the root problem, while its always nice to hear someone openly criticise a system of capitalistic oppression through either class or socio-economic terms, but its refreshing to hear a criticism of the very socio-psychological foundation of capitalistic societies. Even more uplifting is that Kliewer doesn't still into a Poe-like gloomy spiral of condemnation with out offer of retribution and renewal. He makes the claim that when schools accept the role of citizen building as well as academic education (including a redefinition of "academic" then we can create and progress to a society in which democracy is not the long arm of utilitarian individualist whim but as Kliewer references in his piece, the Dewey inspired Democratic realization of society based on "Human reciprocity." (Democracy "is more than a form of Government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience." As such it is Kliewer's judgment that "schools must first reorganize themselves into locations where the three R's are posed as "problems, challenges, projects, and opportunities." This I find to be a wonderful synthesized suggestion for a first step towards a revolutionary change in the essential goal of education. This is also inseparable from the reformation of the definition of knowledge and specifically patterns of learning; to this Kliewer offers some brilliant starting categories: ("logical-mathematical, linguistical capacities, spatial-representation, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal.") These are a starting point yes, but they are a bridge hard built that we as future educators must devote our selves to constructing.