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Comment by tdba | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any evidence to back that up? I see no reason why students need to literally be in the same classroom all day with disabled people to learn empathy for them. There are many other ways they could interact with them without forcing students with vastly different needs into the same box (consider how home schoolers do it).

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I don’t have evidence in the form of research or empirical data but I’m happy to talk from my own experiences. Genuine empathy comes from a place of understanding and is almost impossible without seeing one’s struggles. I also think students who aren’t exposed to racially diverse populations struggle to emphasize on racial issues. If you don’t have exposure it’s something novel and foreign. Our first intuitions are often incorrect. These aren’t things that one magically gets correct from principles but rather that one slowly accumulates by interacting with diverse populations.

If your evidence is only anecdotal then I think you need to go find some better evidence or go back and rethink your argument. Calling voucher systems a "scam" based on this reasoning is a big stretch. There are lots of other ways for "low cost" students to accumulate interactions with "high cost" students that don't require them to all be educated in the same manner e.g. out of school activity clubs, local community groups, religious organizations, boy/girl scouts. Why not give students a say in how they are educated and make those opportunities more accessible / subsidised?

I have evidence on the main point of the argument which wasn't what I thought you were asking for. It sounded like you were asking about a specific niche use of vouchers for disabled students. There can be merits to a specific voucher program for disabled students. That doesn't make voucher programs that take money from disabled students for non-disabled students any less of a scam. It's a completely separate point that is orthogonal to the main one.

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