I don’t think preferences have much to do with the main topic of this thread, though. The OP is a moral question, where you ask us to morally defend inclusion in a situation which you propose moral arguments against. It’s not a question about what we would prefer.
The purpose of schools is a moral question as well. And people have already answered it to the extent that makes sense in this context. It’s not about winning competitions, but about doing what’s best for the students. Competition is a secondary goal to help one strive to do their best. It would be like only teaching math so your kids can win the Math competition. That’s not why we include it as part of the kids’ education.
Given this, it doesn’t make sense for resources to be allocated based on which students are the most skilled, but to prioritize helping as many kids as you can.
And, from a practical standpoint, I note that every extracurricular activity at my school had (1) fundraisers and (2) things that all but the poorest kids were expected to buy. So I’m not sure that funding is a significant issue on a per-kid basis.
Of course, they have to have the resources to provide the class in the first place. But once you have that, the costs to also have another class or accommodate more students drops very quickly.
In my experience, there generally isn’t a fixed cap on how many students can be in any particular extracurricular activity. Also, in my experience, special education and disabled students get extra funding, because they need it more.
The OP is, after all, describing the way things already are. The school already has the disabled girl doing cheer. Limited resources do not seem to be an issue. Hence it’s not something that was heavily considered in answering the question.
I’m not sure the OP is a moral question rather than a question about preferences. This
Does this “add” to or “detract” from the performance?
has nothing to do with morals. And whether it’s a moral question or not makes a big difference. If it’s morally wrong to base participation on skill, then it’s morally wrong whether we are talking about 1 kid or 50, how much it costs to add that one kid, and whether there are enough resources ( financial and non-financial) to add another group ( not class) to begin with. Because while adding one kid doesn’t cost anything, adding twenty usually will , even if that “cost” is finding a couple of adults willing to supervise. If it’s morally wrong to base participation on skills, then it would be morally wrong to ever have a competitive team unless there was enough interest to have a second one, which there isn’t always.
My experience differs - in my experience, most extracurricular activities do have a limit. It might be possible to add a couple of kids but if you have 50 kids who want to play baseball, you can’t have them all on one team with two coaches. You need more coaches and more fields. There are some extra-curricular activities with no limit on participants , but those tend to operate differently - when I was in high school, there wasn’t a set time and place for everyone on the newspaper or yearbook to meet. Maybe there was for the editors but not for everyone. Of course, your work might not appear in the publication, so in some sense that’s like letting the less-skilled player on the team only to have them sit on the bench.
But if it’s not a moral requirement then you can have competitive teams. You can make a different decision when you are talking about “just one kid” than you would make if it were twenty. You had have that one kid participate in exhibitions or in the original form of cheerleading ( at a game) but not at competitions.
But might people define education differently, as well as define it differently WRT differently situated students?
Yes - please point out where in my OP I was asking for moral defenses and proposing moral arguments. I wasn’t aware that I was.
I agree that the question as to the purpose of schools - which appeared well downthread - has significant moral aspects, as well as reflecting different preferences.
My brother, you asked to be “educated” so that you could “understand” the “situation” of a girl who isn’t good at pom poms being allowed to be on the zero-stakes homecoming pom pom squad.
Of course the issue of “expanding the range of activities available to those less able” is a moral issue. It doesn’t necessarily have an easily attainable moral consensus viewpoint in any particular case, but of course the reasons that we as a society are concerned about it at all are fundamentally moral/ethical in nature.
Of course the questions of whether disabled students are or ought to be regarded as team “mascots”, and whether school team performances are or ought to be presenting “social statements”, are fundamentally moral/ethical questions.
How could you have asked such questions in the first place without recognizing the centrality of moral/ethical issues in them? For goodness’ sake, you even put the term “inclusion”, in its specific socioethical sense of making more situations more inclusive of more different types of individuals, in your thread title.
What do you think “inclusion” is even about, if not the conscious attempt to make social behavior more moral/ethical in particular ways and in accordance with particular moral/ethical principles?
I had never thought of school inclusion as primarily reflecting morals. Add that to the huge (and growing) list of my cluelessness.
Instead, I thought of it as an allocation of resources to offer what was deemed the appropriate education to less advantaged students. In the process, it involves a weighing of the benefit of cultivating increased sensitivity towards different people, while potentially affecting the pace/range of subject matter that could be covered. I guess that second part necessarily involves “moral” choices, and differing determinations as to what the purpose of the school is. Is it to produce meaningfully contributing members of our economy (however you define each of those words)? Is it to produce well-rounded, compassionate adults? Is it to offer each student the best opportunity for growth they are capable of? Something else? A combination?
In some ways I envy the certainty and clarity so many of you present.
There is always potential for disagreements in approach and there are mechanisms to resolve these differences. I am not sure exactly how this relates to your OP? Or what your concerns are?
Are you concerned that someone was cut from the team to make room for this student? Or that a another cheerleader wants to be on a really competitive HS team, but can’t because of this student?
And like I said, these moral choices don’t necessarily have an easily attainable moral consensus viewpoint in any particular case. Moral/ethical people can and do disagree about many of the specific choices made in such endeavors.
But yeah, with all due respect, I think that just being aware that these are fundamentally choices of a moral/ethical nature that we’re talking about here is a fairly low cluefulness bar to clear.
Hmmm, that sort of remark is usually a backhanded compliment with a subtext along the lines of “you self-righteous pecksniffs don’t even realize how closed-minded and judgemental you are”.
Giving it the benefit of the doubt, though, I will say that I don’t think most posters here are refusing to recognize the existence of moral/ethical shades of gray in the details of how and how much to mainstream disabled kids into school activities. Good people can disagree on a lot of the policy specifics.
Merely recognizing that these are intrinsically moral/ethical questions we’re talking about, as I said, doesn’t require any unusual degree of certainty or clarity.
I’m not really “concerned.” Tho the discussion has morphed somewhat, I was just seeking insight to help me understand a situation that appeared quite different from when I was a HS student 40 years ago, or when my kids were HS students 15-20 years ago.
Back then, previously not everyone got to participate in cheer and poms. Participation was competitive reflecting (I presume) appearance, social status, and the ability to learn/perform the routines. In my ignorance, presenting some coordinated routine was the primary goal. I’m happy to learn that cheer squads currently pursue purposes other than allowing the prettiest, most popular kids to show off.
Hell - if it were up to me, high schools would do away with competitive sports, and make everything as all-inclusive as possible (tho I can imagine some situations where - for example - wheelchairs might be difficult to mix.)
I appreciate the responses I’ve received - tho my impression is some posters took the opportunity to presume and criticize my mindset and flaunt what they consider their moral superiority. Nothing new around here.