Carr-Garrity 1

Kiera Carr-Garrity
Ropko
UWRT 1102-40
17 March 2016
Best Kept Secret. Samantha Buck. Janet Mino and Senator Robert Menendez.
Danielle DiGiacomo. The Orchard, 2013. DVD.
This Documentary is based in Newark, New Jersey at JFK High School,
where Ms. Mino has taught a class of young men diagnosed with autism for
four years. In Best Kept Secret, Ms. Mino is helping these young men
transition into the real world upon their high school graduation. Many of
them enter the workforce, some into a recreational center, and others
continue to spend endless days at home with their parents; all of Ms. Minos
efforts are to prevent her class from sitting at home, becoming
institutionalized, or even ending up homeless on the streets. This
documentary records Ms. Mino battling the dead-end system before her
students are no longer allowed to attend high school. The director, Samantha
Buck is a graduate of Tisch School of the Arts and has either acted in or
directed about five movies.
Pathos is used time and time again in this documentary. Due to the fact
that it tracks the lives of these students for the course of a year and a half,
you cant help but feel emotionally connected to them. They want to find a
place in society as much as Ms. Mino wants them to yet they quickly find out
that there isnt much that can be done. This documentary is useful in

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supporting inquiry projects about Autism, special education, and even
teaching. Best Kept Secret is especially helpful in supporting my inquiry
project because it shows challenges faced by mentally challenged students
when seeking higher education. It also teaches me about what higher
education options they have.
Eugene Edgar. Secondary Programs in Special Education: Are Many of them Justifiable?. The
Council for Exceptional Children, 1987. Print.
According to Gene Edgar, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and
book author, the link between special education programs and the transition
into adulthood has caused scrutiny of special education programs. Huge
amounts of special education students have dropped out of their programs
and earn very low salaries. Edgar suggests that secondary programs need to
be changed into vocational programs for theses students in order for them to
succeed. The impact of secondary education special education programs is
very small due to the fact that many of these students arent completely
moving from high school to independent living. Many trends were used to
determine the low impact of special education such as low salary levels and
very high dropout rates before the completion of a program. Logos was used
by providing bar graphs as a visual aid to compare salaries of all students to
those with mild retardation; the weekly salary of workers with a mental
challenge was less than half of that earned by a so called normal person.
Ethos was also used when inferring throughout the whole article that this is
unacceptable. This article may be useful in supporting topics about special

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education development, high school drop out rates, and including the
mentally challenged in our society. I personally believe that this article is
good in supporting my inquiry project because it directly discusses higher
education opportunities.
Holcombe, Susan. Rion Holcombe gets a special letter in the mail. Online
video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 6 Dec. 2013. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
Susan Holcombe posts a video of her son, Rion Holcombe, reading his
acceptance to Clemsons LIFE program; a college program for special needs
students. Like any other family, college acceptance time is an exciting time
and that is why Susan has posted this video. In the clip, Rion is beyond
excited when he finds out that he actually has a shot at college. In the
comments, Susan explains how the Clemson LIFE Facebook page is full of
pictures of her son, Rion, having a wonderful time at college.
This video falls under the pathos category. Rion is so emotional
that the viewer cant help but to feel the same emotions. You can hear Rions
father and mother become excited as well. This video not only vouches for
the fact that those with mental challenges are human beings just like you
and me, but also has taught me that Clemson LIFE is a program I can talk
about in my inquiry project. This video would also be a useful source
concerning parenting.
Kirk, Samuel. Research On The Education Of The Mentally Retarded. Illinios: The Slow
Learning Child, 1955. Print.

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Samuel A. Kirk was a pioneer of the special education field at many of the countrys
leading universities such as Arizona and Illinois. In this particular scholarly article, he is focusing
on the education in which younger people impacted by mental challenges receive. Samuel
preforms research to target the pros and cons of specialized classes for the mentally challenged in
order to inform readers of the findings.
According to Samuel, many people think that having specialized classes for the mentally
challenged is undemocratic and not necessary. Those that think raising the mentally challenged
with other normal children will cause them to adjust in a normal society have been proven
wrong. A study conducted by Samuel shows that those who dont receive specialized education
classes are rejected by peers and set apart by teachers, however, those who do appear to make
gains and progress.
The article was originally published in 1955 and made its way to the internet in 2006.
One thing that really struck me about Kirks writing was the diction in which he used. He
repeatedly referred to the mentally challenged as retarded. Kirk used logos to write the paper
through doing research primarily through surveys. Certain subjects that will be beneficial to my
project are statistics on previous options for education for the mentally challenged. This source is
helpful in giving me something to compare todays options to those of the past in order to track
the direction of education.
Rusch, Frank, and L. Allen Phelps. Secondary Special Education and Transition from School to
Work: A National Priority. Illinois: The Council for Exceptional Children, 1987. Print.
As stated in the title, this article really discusses the difficulties to adjusting to life after
primary school for the mentally challenged; in particular the economic, educational, and
community adjustments. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1989s the United States passed

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many acts to improve secondary education, also known as college, for the mentally challenged.
The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and Job Training Partnership Act
(JTPA) both focused on meeting the training needs of the mentally challenged so that they could
improve the unemployment rates of the mentally challenged; both of these acts are just examples
of the many efforts to improve secondary education within this certain article.
Rusch and Phelps used ethos by informing readers about the high unemployment rates
amongst the mentally challenged community and even went as far as to say that over sixty
percent of those unemployed would like to work. This article would be helpful in supporting
research about unemployment rates and the difficulties of transitioning into adulthood. I plan on
using this article for my inquiry project because it discussed life after high school for the
mentally challenged. The high unemployment rate among this community directly correlates to
the lack of higher education options for them and thats what I will use to tie it into my essay.