At 11:42 PM 2/6/97 +0000, you wrote:
 
>When this first happened, the teacher spoke to the class, explained how the
>child's appearance was different and why.  There was only one incident and
>this child went happily to school each day (without the hat her mother had
>purchased to hide her baldness).  She was accepted for the way she was.
>Could you perhaps enlist the help of the teacher or even talk to the class
>yourself--explaining that your daughter is sad and hurt when treated
>differently.  I believe most children will be compassionate when they
>understand something.
 
I remember learning about some research in this area that was done at some
University.  As I remember it, standing up in front of the class and saying
"Don't tease Susan because of her differentness" gave the children the idea
and increased or started the teasing.  What worked was making sure the
teachers treated the differentness as being perfectly ordinary and taking
it in stride.
 
My memory of this is a bit vague, and I don't remember whether it applied
to children in wheelchairs or of a different race.  But, I'll bet you can
track this stuff down in a psychology newsgroup or some website somewhere.
It was fairly prominent research as I remember hearing about it on some
documentary or news show on television.  The whole point was that the most
effective methods were not at all obvious, and naive teachers tended to
make things worse.  Of course, there is no guarantee that these scientists
were right.
 
 
        Warren Seltzer
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