Posted on 06/23/2016 10:44:35 PM PDT by kathsua
Young people with Down syndrome are constantly surprising their communities by showing how much they can achieve. They are learning to read and write, graduating from high school and college, and becoming fashion models and business owners.
Now, a Washington, D.C. teen made history last week when she became the first student with Down syndrome to graduate with a full high school diploma from the D.C. Public Schools, The Federalist reports.
Madison Essig graduated with 3.7 GPA and National Honor Society honors, but her mother had to fight to ensure her daughter had that opportunity, Fox 5 News reports.
Madison’s mom, Kimberly Templeton, said doctors told her that Madison might not ever read or write. But Templeton refused to give up on her daughter.
When Madison began attending school, Templeton said she wanted her daughter to have the same opportunities to achieve as any other child. She worked hard to convince school administrators to keep Madison in the same classroom and teach her the same materials as other children, according to the report.
“Until she proves she can’t do it, let’s not stop her now,” Templeton said.
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Madison proved that she could.
Now, she is headed to college where she plans to study disability and advocacy policy through George Mason University’s LIFE program, according to the report.
Her story is an example of the potential to succeed in every child. Tragically, some do not see the value and potential in children like Madison while they are still in the womb. Parents frequently report that doctors pressured them to consider aborting their unborn child because of a disability like Down syndrome.
One mother recently wrote an emotional letter to her doctor after he suggested that she abort her unborn daughter with Down syndrome:
I came to you during the most difficult time in my life. I was terrified, anxious and in complete despair. I didn’t know the truth yet about my baby, and that’s what I desperately needed from you. But instead of support and encouragement, you suggested we terminate our child. I told you her name, and you asked us again if we understood how low our quality of life would be with a child with Down syndrome. You suggested we reconsider our decision to continue the pregnancy.
That mother chose life for her daughter, but research shows that some families give into the fears and prejudices about people with disabilities, and have abortions. Studies have found up to 90 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.
Several states also are passing laws to protect unborn babies with disabilities from discriminatory abortions. This spring, Indiana became the second state to pass a law banning abortions based on a genetic disorder like Down syndrome, race or sex. North Dakota was the first in 2013.
Not only is she thriving but new therepies are improving the lives of people who have downs.
Oh noes, this is going to completely destroy the new leftists Nazi’s eugenist’ plans and pro-abortion arguments about children with Down’s syndrome who according to them should never have been born.
The average IQ for Downs is 50 - 60, the mental age of an 8- or 9-year-old child. I am ferociously pro-life, but people should know what they should expect and be ready to give the child up for adoption if they think they can’t handle the situation. IQ varies widely, but stories like this are just meant to prevent abortion and sometimes mislead.
NEVER ABORT!!!! But it helps to know the facts ahead of time to prevent heartache when your child obviously can’t be a National Merit letter of commendation holder.
Wow!!
I am sure that this was a great accomplishment for this young lady. However there are many stories about persons with minimal reading, math and other basic abilities being graduated. I am wondering if this is also some sort of confirmation about the quality of our schools when someone with a very low IQ can be an honor student. I do believe that this would have been possible during the era that I graduated. And how good of an idea is it really to encourage those with very limited intellectual capacity to go to college.
We have friends who have downs kids, now grown. College would have been a waste of effort and resources for their kids. My wife was even on the board of directors of a facility for persons with cognitive disabilities. People should be encouraged to reach their highest potential, but common sense should also have a role in deciding what is appropriate.
Your question: “I am wondering if this is also some sort of confirmation about the quality of our schools when someone with a very low IQ can be an honor student.”
FTA: “from the D.C. Public Schools”
I’d call that ^^^^ a clue.
No, never abort...never, never. After that, each person should be encouraged and supported in stretching to reach their best potential. That said, I observed Downs up close as a child in small town Kansas where I grew up on the same block as a Downs boy, played at his house occasionally, and attended the same schools in different classrooms. He was definitely mentally and physically impaired by the chromosome issues. His parents didn’t even have him circumcised until junior high because the health care professionals of the 1950s didn’t expect him to live long. According to the article, this girl’s impairment was nowhere close to what I observed when growing up. Chromosomal testing can prove Downs to a certainty yet I wonder about the level of the usual associated effects. The article doesn’t give much info.
This girl probably had a minimal amount of trisomy.
Trisomy 21 can be cause by anything from a full duplication of chromosome 21 to a duplication of part of the chromosome, which is seen as an extra-long chromosome or as an extra bit of 21 stuck in another chromosome.
The level of disability is related to how much extra chromosome 21 there is, as well as the specific part being duplicated.
The girl in this story probably had a duplicated region that did not include the gene(s) most involved with intellectual development.
All of this said, I do not advocate the abortion of a child even if its particular trisomy would indicate profoundly impaired intellectual development.
” I am wondering if this is also some sort of confirmation about the quality of our schools when someone with a very low IQ can be an honor student.”
You don’t have to wonder. It’s not an experiment. Did you know that Wayne State University (Detroit) has proposed dropping its Mathematics requirement and would replace it with “Diversity”?
More on this subject here:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3441509/posts
Good to know and thanks for the info. Obviously, I never personally observed that nor did my wife, a career professional in special education and speech therapy. She certainly never related any story about working with such a child to me. Perhaps they just didn’t require her services so she never interacted with them.
Quoth Hillary:
“When are they going to get those ******* retards out of here?”
Either she is especially high functioning or the standards in the D.C. schools are pretty low. Maybe both. Either way what does this say about the kids in the district that don’t do as well?
Agreed. Downs children become Downs orphans when their parents pass on- they don’t do well on their own
If there any in the human race who did NOT have the “Sin” gene passed on to them, it is those with Down Syndrome.
They are thoroughly transparent and honest, without guile or ill will toward any.
In many ways, they demonstrate to the rest of us what we should be like: childlike as Jesus said, and sincere, loving and kind.
In God’s eye’s, intelligence is not a virtue. It’s what you do with the intelligence given you.
Those with Down Syndrome are models for the rest of us.
Mason Life is a special education program at George Mason University for students with “intellectual and developmental disabilities”.
https://masonlife.gmu.edu/
Early in my career I worked with a plastic surgeon, James Fox, who had a special interest in Downs patients. He had a series of small surgical procedures to revise the eye folds and some of the other facial markers of Downs syndrome in higher functioning children. This is life changing for Downs children with normal or above average intelligence (as can be the case with mosaics).
Indiana Boone Feek, just turned 2 in Feb. She can already sign simple words, is learning to walk, and goes to a special school. She would have been home schooled if her mom hadn’t died of a third bout of cancer since her birth. Look at the side stories and videos. Indy is a Down’s child that will succeed in life.
Well said.
I formerly ran a business that required frequent delivery of materials from a nearby supplier. The owners hired a fellow with Downs who was a great asset to the business. He knew all his walking and bus routes, customer's names, their preferences for how they wanted to accept deliveries (front door, side door, knock, ring, etc) and was always cheerful and joyful as he went about his work. Praises to him and his wonderful employers. This was back in the 70s and 80s, when understanding of the capabilities of Downs people was still tentative. The Jewish supply company proprietors had taken Rocky on through a Jewish social service agency.
When I was growing up my mom’s best friend and co-worker from the doctors office where she worked had a downs kid. And he stayed with us much of the time. My sister was officially his baby sitter, but the rest of us spent a lot of time with him as well. He was a handful even when he got older.
Even though he was severely mentally challenged the school system used an incredible amount of resources catering to his every need. His mom was constantly threatening to sue the school system if they didn’t provide anything she thought he was entitled to.
At that time they didn’t mix the mentally challenged kids in classes with normal kids. One of the reasons public schools are so bad these days is that they basically teach at the lowest common denominator in many classes. You constantly hear the theme “no child left behind”. What this really means is that the quality of the education of the normal kids is sacrificed so that the slow kids can keep up.
The downs kid that we grew up with is still alive and still living with his mother who is now 80 years old. Most don’t live that long. Despite a fortune being spent by the government on his “education” he never had a job that wasn’t some type of “subsidized” job where he was actually producing anything or really doing anything constructive.
His cuteness kind of peaked when he was about seven or eight. I remember as a kid cringing when I watched people fawning over him at church and him hugging them and getting poop on the back of people’s best Sunday clothes. My sister caught pink eye from him about half a dozen times because he was constantly getting his poopy little fingers on her face.
I don’t know what the answer is... I do know that sending Downs kids to college is a stupid waste of resources. And after seeing what I did growing up, a career in fast food is also not a good idea. Even after constant reminders and training, and who knows how much money spent on his education, the kid we knew constantly had poop on his hands. If someone is thirty and they still can’t keep their fingers out of the back of their pants, they shouldn’t be going to college. Even at 30 if someone didn’t tell him to go and wash the poop off his hands he wouldn’t do it. That is just the way that it is.
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