My Corner for Education

The other day while I was surfing on the Internet, I happened toread an article about children with reading difficulties. Childrenwith learning disabilities or ESL students are often integratedinto the regular classes. The writer thought it was awful to putthose children who couldn’t read well in a regular classroom. Thosechildren apparently were totally lost in that classroom and endedup being ignored by their teacher. People in our society simplyblame those children for being lazy, their teachers for notteaching them properly or giving enough homework, or their parentsfor not spending enough time to work with them. There are manyreasons for a child to experience difficulties in learning;however, regardless what the difficulty is, there is only oneultimate goal for teachers, which is to help the students succeedin their education.

Many thoughts and debates have run through my mind about how tomeet the needs of children who require extra support because I haveseen many of them fall through the cracks in the education systemyear after year. Children with reading difficulties lag behindtheir peers in many subjects that require adequate reading skills.Do we stream these children and put all children with the sameabilities in a class? Or, do we integrate these children into themainstream classes?

The truth is there are benefits to integration as long as extrasupport is provided to these children for their specific needs.These children remain in a regular class so they can interact withtheir peers and to learn the regular curriculum. Cooperativelearning encourages children to help each other in the classroomsetting. I personally think streaming or ability grouping can bringshort term benefits to ESL students who newly arrived with zerolanguage skills. A small ESL class can prepare these ESL studentsto obtain basic language skills to communicate for their immediateneeds. These students, however, eventually require opportunities tointeract with their peers in order to further polish theircommunication skills. I could see the benefits of ability groupingin the beginning and gradually release and integrate them back tothe regular classes.

Unlike the ESL students, students with learning disabilities may beable to communicate for their day to day needs, but they haveproblems working at the same level as their peers in class. Somepeople, however, believe that streaming these children to a classwith similar abilities is really the answer for helping thesechildren read. The classroom teacher only needs to plan forchildren within a small range of abilities and a reducedexpectation. It is a good idea to put them in a small group as longas the program design is based on their ability levels, andintended to help them return to the mainstream program. Once thechildren have developed sufficient skills to function in theregular program, they should be integrated into the mainstreamclasses to be with their peers. These programs, however, are oftencriticized for labeling the children and not being able to providesufficient support to ensure the smooth transition back to themainstream classroom. In fact, many children end up remaining inthe special program for years with no way of catching up to theircounterparts in the regular program.

As you know, children in the primary years are learning toread and developing reading skills. Once they have stepped into thejunior years, they are expected to apply their reading skills toacquire knowledge through reading a wide variety of materials. Forthose older students who still can not read at the appropriatereading level, it could be very degrading for them to learn in thesame class with their counterparts. Children are cruel sometimes toeach other, imagining the teases and jeers ones have to endurebecause they are slightly behind their peers.

Any programs that can help the students “catch up” would be a greatidea as long as there are no labels attached. Many people in my agegroup had been through the nightmare of streaming or abilitygrouping in our early years based on the test scores of IQ tests oraptitude tests. We know first hand how much damage of abilitygrouping or streaming could have done to destroy a child’s esteemand confidence. I believe all children are able to learn at theirown pace as long as teachers are able to understand each child'sunique way of learning and cater to their needs accordingly.

The bottom line is that children with disabilities require specialprograms designed for their needs whether the support is providedin the integrated classroom setting or a small group setting. Ifthe integration is implemented, special attention and supportshould be provided to meet the individual child’s demand. If thedecision is to put the child in a small special class, theindividual plan should be thoroughly specified and carried out. Theteacher to students ratio should also be very low in order providesufficient attention to each student. It is absolutely necessary toprovide a detailed education plan designed with great care andattention.

Children with special needs demand special attention from all ofus, parents, teachers, and the education bureaucrats. In order tooffer adequate service to these children, it obviously requirestremendous manpower which is translated into “money” required tofund these programs. It is easy for us to criticize the expensivecost of education, but we need to acknowledge the importance offunding programs to serve the needs of these children. I look at itthis way, whether we pay for it now, or we pay for it later as asociety. I believe education requires team effort as the oldAfrican saying once stated, “It takes a whole village to raise achild.” The global village is just getting bigger each day.