Special Education (3)
DYSLEXIA AND MENTAL HEALTH
Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty which makes it difficult for a student to learn how to read and write in the conventional classroom environment. Many of the learners with dyslexia are unable to master the basic alphabets or even write their names. This is contrary to the expectations of the society. Teachers and parents exert pressure on the student hoping that this will remedy the problem, but, oftentimes, the pressure only worsens the situation.
The learner is pushed to do something that they don’t have the capacity to do. Researchers have pointed out that even with poor performance, the brain of people with dyslexia work five time more than that of people without dyslexia. To make the matters worse, the person who pushes them is an authority which they trust. There is always this question in these young brains--why cant I do what everybody can do? This kind of thoughts drain the self confidence. The learners feel abnormal, inferior, alienated and misunderstood, and to make the matter worse, the pressure does not stop. The teachers and parents push even harder. Sometimes the learners reach the breaking point.
Their sunshine of happiness stop shining. They become sad, anxious,irritated. They feel guilty and empty. They loose interest in their hobbies, and lack the ability to concentrate.
Another direct consequences of pushing the learners, against a wall that they cannot break through, is extreme behaviors. According to the American Society of Suicodology, people with dyslexia are four times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than people without dyslexia. The University of Toronto found that people with dyslexia have a 46% chance of committing suicide than people without dyslexia.
Another common trait in the young learners who cannot read is inferiority complexes. When you cannot do what every other person can do and you are rebuked by every grownup around you, you must feel inferior to other people who can do what you cannot do. This inferiority manifests in how these students act among other people. Their initiative is broken and they learn to imitate what their peers are doing.
Teenagers fall into drugs trying to escape stress. It is now know that more than half of all people in Juvenile Correction facilities have unidentified specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia.
People who cannot read are also disadvantaged because there is a lot of useful information in print which they cannot understand. They cannot read the bible, stories, novels and history. This limits their avenues personal development and limits their ability to lead despite having exceptional talents.
Even when they have useful ideas, they cannot be able to share them with a wider audience because they cannot be able to write them down. This limits their ability to contribute to the society.
There are two things which the society can do to support the learners who have dyslexia. Creating public awareness about dyslexia and accommodating students who have dyslexia in the education system.
Accommodation can be done by ensuring that every student is screened early enough for specific learning difficulties including dyslexia, and if the students is diagnosed, and a remedy is introduced early, pupils with dyslexia can catch up.
Statistics indicate that as many as twenty percent of the students may have dyslexia. Among this, only two percent are identified. Most of the remaining unidentified end up in penitentiaries. There are shocking statistics which indicate that a very large number of prisoners are dyslexic.
The current system of education where learners are ranked by grade is inappropriate for learners with dyslexia. This is because, in the current system, stragglers are not accommodated. Structured Literacy Programs, which are absent in regular schools, ensures that pupils learn at their own pace and not according to the expectation of their grade or age.
The problem of dyslexia is not only a problem of literacy. It is a problem that affects the mental, social and developmental well being of unidentified learners.
It is completely unfair to have a system of education which is not tailored to accommodate and give equal chances to all learners. The government should act quickly because more of this creative brains are being condemned into penitentiaries because we did not identify that their brains are wired to learn differently. Educators from all over the world should commit themselves to educating all the students and not a portion of them.
Phyllis Munyi is a director at Dyslexia Organisation Kenya
TRANSFORMING EDUCATION AND TRAINING THROUGH INCLUSION
Worldwide, there has been an increased emphasis on the need to extend access to education to all children. The ratification of a number of international conventions has made this possible. This includes: the Salamanca statement on special needs education, UNESCO, 1994, the UN convention on the Right of the Child, 1989, and the UN international convention on the Right of the Persons with Disabilities (2000).
Education, according to (Grubb and Lazerson, 2004) is a tool that can be used to reduce poverty, to improve the lives of individuals and groups, and to transform societies. Providing an inclusive education is therefore closely linked to human, economic, and social developmental goals. As such, failure of an education system to provide education for all children not only leads to an educational underclass, but also breeds a social and economic underclass which will have serious consequences on society now and in the future.
In this regard, the development of policies that support inclusive education at all levels of education is essential. Unfortunately, around the world, and here in Kenya, children are being excluded from learning in community, public or private schools because of disability, race, language, religion, gender and poverty. This should not be the case because every child has the right to be supported by their parents and community to grow, to learn and develop. Children should be allowed to join or go to any school of their choice. And the schools should welcome them and make them feel appreciated. They should also get an opportunity to be included in all learning and play activities where their peers or teachers are involved. When all children, regardless of their differences are educated together, everyone benefits - this is the cornerstone of inclusive education.
What is inclusive education?
Inclusive education means different and diverse students learning side by side in the same classroom. The term inclusion here captures, in one word, the all-embracing societal responsibility - to secure and provide opportunities to students with disabilities so that they can to learn alongside their non-disabled peers in regular classrooms.
In an inclusive setting, every student should feel safe and have a sense of belonging. Parental involvement is critical, as they assist teachers set learning goals and decide learning approaches. The school community including teachers and all other staff members should be trained and supported to respond to needs of all students.
Why is inclusive education important?
An inclusive education system provides a better learning environment for children because it helps reduce discriminatory tendencies by promoting empathy and understanding for each other. In this regard, it is important that schools adopt inclusive education, because schools provide the context for a child’s first relationships with the world, outside their families. It is in and through schools that they learn to interact and establish social relationships. Respect and understanding grow when students of diverse abilities and backgrounds play, socialize, and learn together. When education is inclusive, future concepts like civic participation, compassion and community life, become a reality.
What are the basic elements of inclusive education?
The basic elements of inclusive education are;
• Inclusive education must accommodate the use of teaching assistants or specialists: To deliver inclusive learning a multidisciplinary team is required and which may comprise of, teachers, therapist, specialists, assistants and other support staff.
• Inclusive curriculum: the learning syllabus should avoid binary narratives of good and bad, and allow for the adaption of learning styles of children that will include special education needs. As such a curriculum that fosters for a broadened concept for inclusive education is urgently needed. This will allow for the development of pedagogies that will support the involvement of children with learning disabilities. .
• Parental involvement: Most schools strive for some level of parental involvement, but it is often limited to emails home and occasional parent–teacher conferences. In a diverse school system, inclusion means thinking about multiple ways to reach out to parents on their own terms.
The Challenge
Often the greatest challenge of inclusive education is the children with disabilities themselves, because they face a multitude of barriers in terms of attending, participating in and ultimately benefitting from school. In addition there is always the issue of learning gaps – particularly because most children with disabilities either start school late or have never attended school. Issues of bullying, ostracization and negative attitudes of regular teachers make it even more challenging. Nonetheless effort should be made to overcome these challenges through constant communication and engagement, in addition to implementing the following recommendations.
Transforming Education and Training through Inclusion
How can we advance inclusive education?
The push to improve the delivery of education, which has become a worldwide phenomenon, forms the basis for the demand to accommodate inclusive education. This has been brought on about by the necessity to focus on what the students with disabilities need to help them learn and grow. This is echoed by the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) learning framework, which focuses on the student as the center of learning. In the same vein there is the need to accommodate children with disabilities so that they are not left behind. As such to make inclusive education a reality we need to do the following:
• We need to ensure that educators have the training, flexibility, and resources to teach students with diverse needs and learning styles. This includes strengthening the teachers knowledge, skills, and attitudes so that they can embrace the inclusive ethos, because they are at the heart of ensuring that inclusive initiatives and practices in schools succeed
• In addition it is important that the government and school owners provide adequate and sustainable financial support so that there is the necessary infrastructure, services and activities that will fully support inclusive education
• Parents need to assert their children’s right to education in inclusive settings, schools and the government should support this. However for this to be effective the whole community within the school setup should participate. This includes — the regular and special educators, social workers at school, other parents, and the able students—together the community should participate in the designing, delivering and reframing inclusive education as a shared responsibility
• Finally we must continue to hold the central government and county governments accountable for implementing antidiscrimination legislation, legal mandates for inclusion, and policies to remove barriers.
In conclusion, the move to entrench inclusive education policies worldwide based on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be a game changer. For it will give the government and the other stakeholders the impetus to push for the adoption of inclusive learning as part of the core curriculum. Currently inclusive education is still fighting for its space at the table. As advanced discussions are taking place on how inclusive education can be accommodated not just as a ‘special needs’ class, but as part of the education framework, proponents of inclusive education must continue engaging education stakeholders at all levels. So that even now children with disabilities and special needs are not left behind.
Reference:
Grubb,W.N & Lazerson,M.The education gospel. The economic power of schooling. (Cambridge: Havard University press,2004).
UNESCO The UNESCO Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education.(Paris: UNESCO, 1994). (1)
By Eva Naputuni
MSc. Special Education
Acorn Special Tutorials
BLENDED & E-LEARNING AS A SOLUTION TO ACCESSIBILITY IN EDUCATION
Let us start with the biggest issue in education for all stakeholders: cost. Almost every issue canvassed, discussed or debated comes down to matters closely related to cost. We can also expand the meaning of cost to include all resources such as time, money, human resources, space, equipment and infrastructure. To add to this debate, there is always a significant discussion of who bears what cost, how much of it and why.
In many cases, whatever comes of the cost debate or the attendant discussions, the final figures are divided up among student populations of several hundred per school. Whether apparent or not, this significantly reduces the unit cost per student for every teacher, equipment or infrastructure employed to deliver education services. We can surmise that the students enjoy positive economies of scale.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for learners with accessibility issues such as those with learning difficulties, physical disabilities and other social or psychological challenges. Information from the Kenya Institute of the Blind website, for instance, estimates about 750,000 learners who are visually impaired and 100,000 being legally blind. It is also estimated that approximately 5% of all learners have hearing impairment in the country.
Because these learners are distributed across the country, each school will enroll a small number of them. The government policy is that all schools should provide and facilitate learning for all learners enrolled in an integrated manner. The main challenge here, under the traditional learning setup, then becomes the lack of economies of scale earlier demonstrated.
However, e-learning and blended learning, leveraging on emerging digital technology can help the education systems beat the scale challenge. In a country where we have hundreds of thousands of learners with various learning difficulties, available digital platforms can help bring those students under one virtual roof. By bringing all these learners together digitally, we dramatically reduce the cost of delivering education per student.
For instance, it would be a tall order to post deaf instructors to all schools that have deaf students for all subjects and all classes. Nonetheless, these instructors can be facilitated to log in via a pre-set schedule onto a learning platform where the students can follow. The more the students are enrolled into the platforms, the lower the cost per student and the higher the likelihood that all subjects will be covered.
Access to school will then mean provision of the special smartphones, computers and devices needed for the learners to participate in the special classes. It will also mean that the learners go through normal childhood socialization in school while attending carefully crafted lessons within the same school. When they are all under one roof, it is possible to have full classes by students joining from across the country. This alone, could bring down the unit cost of delivering special needs education while getting the best out of it.
Of course, I hear the voice at the back of my head questioning whether we have the infrastructure to pull this off. I respond by stating that every child has the right to basic education. This is enshrined right in our well-established constitution. Secondly, almost all the infrastructure needed would be a multi-use installation, thus reducing the direct cost of providing special education. A school that connects to the Internet in this arrangement would use the same Internet access for many other functions. Thus, the connection to the Internet would be couched in a bigger budget, not just the special needs education one.
Kenya is probably one of the best-connected countries in Africa and those areas without commercially viable connections will get access through the Universal Service Fund. We therefore have a base to build on. Our innovators are also highly skilled and talented. They will be able to develop the necessary technologies to assist in this one-roof concept when they get the right prompts from the education sector.
Whereas today this article might seem far-fetched, it is the realization that accessibility issues suffer from a unique cost challenge that helps us to start pushing the proverbial envelope. We must seek to serve all the people affected in a high-density fashion so that we can bring down the unit costs in other areas.
Digital platforms that leverage the Internet do this very well. Combined virtual classes for learners with identified challenges would mean concentrated costs for distributed benefits. If the classes can hold forty students as usual, then the cost per teacher per learner would be normal. If the teachers can teach from wherever they are stationed then we would not have increased logistical costs.
If learners can access these devices at the schools nearest to them then they would not miss out on normal growing up by physically going to far-off specialized schools. Where the schools invest in the associated equipment and connectivity, then these would mean fewer expenses over the long-term with most of it being used for multiple functions. Overall, blended learning and e-learning would deliver education to learners with accessibility issues in a cost structure that compares favorably to that of normal learning while giving out quality that out-matches that by traditional education.
Mr. Waithaka is the CEO Elimu Holdings Ltd.
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