EXIT

SPECIAL EDUCATION

In every school system there are pupils who deviate from so-called "normal children" and require special education.

The main task of special education is to provide treatment, training and instruction for the handicapped children.

Special education to planned to make use of highly specialised methods in order to provide all exceptional children with specific type of educational service they need. These special services may include a radical modification of the curriculum, special methods of instruction, special equipment.

Consequently, special education is applied to each type of exceptional children who are handicapped physically, mentally, socially. These children cannot follow the regular school program because of their handicaps but they can profit by a restricted and adjusted program.

Now all handicapped children are called exceptional children. In America special education is called "the edu­cation of exceptional children". The term "exceptional" in­cludes the various types of physically handicapped children such as: the crippled, the blind and the partially sighted, the deaf and the hard of hearing (partially deaf), the speech defective and those with special health problems, the mentally retarded and the socially handicapped.

Each type of special handicap presents its own, particular problems and needs. Handicapped children present learning difficulties, their sensory and motor impairments require careful study in order to adapt instruction successfully as they cannot adjust to the ordinary school program.

Special education presents a wide variety of medical, social, vocational and administrative problems for education. With universal compulsory education the special education be­came a necessity. Special education implies the development of a healthy and well adjusted personality who can adapt to a society in which he can know success.

Children with particular handicaps must be placed in spe­cial schools and classes, where they get additional services and special instruction. At such schools children are given knowledge habits and abilities according to the normal training course but the applied methods are specialised.

I. TERMS:

exceptional; handicapped; educational; services; adjusted; various types; physically handicapped; the crippled; the blind; the partially sighted; mentally retarded; socially handicapped; learning difficulties; sensory and motor impairments; adapt; medical and vocational problems; a healthy and well adjusted personality; habits; abilities.

II. WORD COMBINATIONS:

1. to deviate from

2. to require special education

3. to provide treatment

4. to make use of highly specialised methods

5. exceptional children (handicapped)

6. a radical modification of

7. to be applied to

8. to be handicapped physically (mentally, socially)

9. to follow the regular school program

10. to profit by

11. a restricted and adjusted program

12. special health problems

13. to present one's own particular problems

14. to present learning difficulties

15. to become a necessity

16. to adapt to a society

17. to get additional services

18. according to the normal training course

III. ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

1. What children require special education?

2. What is the main task of special education?

3. What do special services include?

4. What program can handicapped children profit by?

5. What children are called "handicapped"?

6. What does a restricted and adjusted program give handicapped children?

7. How are exceptional children classified?

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"UNADAPTED" CHILDREN - OBJECT OF GOVERNMENT CARE.

M.Robert (France) asks about conditions for "unadapted" or defective children in the USSR, their education, employment opportunities open to them, salaries of teachers of such children.

His questions are answered here by N.Morozova, Master of Pedagogics, Senior Scientific worker on the staff of the Defectology Institute.

In the USSR, as everywhere, there are children who cannot go to ordinary school because of physical or intellectual deficiencies caused by illness. Even when their treatment is completed and the illness has been checked, some children are left with defects as a result. Such children need special education, bringing up, training for work and ordinary living, and remedial assistance to correct and compensate for their deficiencies.

On the basis of the study of abnormal children by various specialists – physicians, teachers, psychologists, defectologists – the peculiarities of each child are determined and the type of the school for it is decided upon.

The Defectology Research Institute of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences has worked out in conjunction with the Ministries of Education and Health Protection the types and structures of various special schools according to afflictions: 1)deafness 2)defective hearing 3)blindness 4)defective eyesight 5)mental retardation 6)speech defects 7)physical handicaps a)poliomyelitis b)cerebral paralysis and 8)complex deficiencies, e.g., blind deaf-mutes, deaf or blind children; mentally retarded etc.

Special curriculs have been worked out for these schools, as well as methods of compensation and correction of deficiences, methods of education, bringing up and occupational training; special text-books are being compiled, as well as study and visual aids with account taken of the peculiarities of the development of each group of abnormal children.

Besides there are schools and forest-schools, away from the cities, for nervous or physically rundown children. At these schools which are run by the Ministry of Public Health (but which in questions of education are under the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences) the children receive medical treatment and study at the same time.

Children who are absolute invalids are thus are not adapted for professional training and general education stay in special institutions at the expense of the state until the age of 17.

Then they are either transferred to special welfare institutions for adults or return to their families and receive invalid pensions.

Children who cannot go to school and whose parents do not wish to put them in welfare institutions study at home. They are visited by state-employed teachers who give them special instruction according to individually worked out curricula.