Diversity Attitudes Summary

The article “Diversity: Attitudes” lists three different cultures viewpoints on disabilities and how understanding these perceptions could better help their home to school interactions. Most Americans in the education system understand that each individual student with a disability needs a bit more care and patients in order to receive an opportunity for equal education. American culture is taught a scientific approach to explain why some individuals are born with certain disabilities. A common example would be Down’s syndrome which is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21 and not because of some bad karma like the Pacific Islanders and Philippine would like to believe. Just like any culture there several different viewpoints on any subject

but most Americans view any child with or without disabilities as a gift from God and try to shelter our youth from the negatives that the real world has to offer similar to the Chamorro. Although the Chamorro culture out all the culture discussed in the paragraph has the most similar viewpoint to Americans they view disability as a gift from God and the entire community shelters and protects these individuals. Although this would be the perfect situation for families with a child who has a disability but unfortunately most community besides their schools most do not offer any assistant. Many Filipinos and Pacific Islanders view these individuals with a disability as a curse and Pacific Islander blame their ancestor’s wrongdoings as the cause while Filipinos reject these individuals. Although Americans should be doing more to provide a support to families who have a child and especially children with a disability. It could be something like giving these individuals better health coverage, affordable forms of therapy, training seminars for first-time parents, reduce the cost of medicine and wheelchairs, creating more job who are friendly to those a disability are just a few ideas.