Although studying a foreign language was my first and only option when deciding on a university, teaching – wasn’t. So how did I end up being a teacher for almost a decade, why I now hate it, and what makes me a horrible one?
To catch up on the first installment of this article, jump here, to read about:
#1: Lack of medical expertise
#2: Child’s mental age and abilities
#3: The nature of the condition
#4: Brain centres partiality
#5: The point of a foreign language
Now, this is something I’ve seen many times. I see no point in a child moving up grades to keep up with their calendar peers if their intellectual age in still lagging behind. In most of the world, primary school in mandatory for decades, and the right to education is one of the universal children’s rights stated in the UN Universal declaration of human rights. But, school setting is one where there are some standards to reach so as to be able to move up. Each calendar age, each intellectual and mental age, should be able to achieve certain academic level and develop accordingly. If kids who are unable to do so attend regular schools where curricula is adapted to their mental age, what exactly are we doing there, especially having in mind there are special schools designed to cater children with special needs?
Furthermore, what is the point of a child learning one or even two foreign languages, stipulated by the country for all kids attending primary schools, when the child is not only illiterate, but unable to take care of itself, control its physiological needs, or gain any type of however limited world knowledge? Sorry, but I just do not see the point in enforcing all that modified and adjusted curricula upon a child who is mentally unable to grasp it in its most essential form.
What is the point of a 14-yo attending my foreign language lessons where he only plays with colourbooks or watches cartoons or plays interactive learning games on Wordwall? What do they learn that way? What’s in it for them, for their development, for their learning or school experience? How do I work with them? I do not get it – does that make me an unsuitable teacher for them? It surely does!
#6: The continual assessment, reassessment, monitoring and readjustment
What we, as regular teachers of kids with special needs, are faced with at least twice per semester, is a continual paperwork to justify our progress or failure with the kid, however there is a tricky bit there as well. Actually, there are several, but allow me to explain.
Of course, it’s a given we have to adjust the curricula to the abilities of the kid (regardless of not knowing exactly what those abilities are), but if the kid is achieving top results does that mean that we expect too little of him, and if the results are unsatisfactory do we have to lower our expectations even further? Where is the thin line between the abilities, the laziness, the lack of interest, the assessment bar being too low or too high for the minimum we set out based on a guess?
I already said, and have to emphasize again, the assessment documentation is based on the medical assessment of a psychologist who talks to the child a few times a year, with each teacher adding their point of view, based on the taught material. But that very same psychologist, pedagogue, developmental advisor, or whoever, has never worked with the child on a daily basis, nor has taught him anything. Most of this report is an assessment based on a bunch of psychological tests and oral responses. No kid has ever gone through an in-depth medical testing outside of school setting – because if they did, we would have a clear medical statement of findings, of IQ, of objective assessment and facts to hold on to when planning our work with them. I even dare say the only person in the entire process who should be able to fill out any report should be the one working with the child on a daily basis, one on one, not just any medial clerk but a medical expert with proper specialization in developmental disorders, such as my mother. No psychologist, no teacher, no principal or parent, is able or trained for this, yet it is exactly them who assess instead of those who are professionally trained to do so.
What we do instead is expect teachers with no medical knowledge to constantly assess, reassess, track, monitor and adjust the material, their approach, their curricula, and to invest all their time, energy, creativity and all there is, blaming them for failure when a child is unsuccessful in what we expect of him not knowing how much is the kid able to achieve in the first place.
So, this also makes me a bad teacher – being absolutely clueless on the actual work, focusing instead on filling out the reports, evaluations, reassessments, modifications, alterations and adjustments – on paper, because that is what school expects me to do and will control me on, knowing that the kid is a lost cause anyway.
#7: Calling the kettle black
I know it is completely against the political correctness movement of the last decade, but we seem to have forgotten that calling the kettle black makes it easier to fix when broken. If there is a medical and psychological classification of different developmental disorders, paired up with a list of achievement each of them is able to accomplish, I see no reason for us to not to only neglect this but to fully forget about it. This way we are not helping the kid, because the kid has no idea about it at all, and we are making our work even more difficult, as if it’s not difficult enough already.
We are wandering, blindfolded, filling out reports, dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy, taking more care of not hurting somebody’s feelings, absolutely clueless on the actual facts – what is the mental age of the child, is the condition progressing or not, what are the prospects for the future, trying not to hurt parents’ feelings by telling them their child is of limited intellectual abilities or how are they going to react if we are too straightforward about a fact, etc.
Who benefits from all this?
Imagine a situation where a patient is discovered a lethal disease which is curable paired with a proper surgical treatment, but the doctor is legally and / or morally and / or politically not allowed to be straightforward about it and tell the patient directly, and instead tries dozens of medicaments for months or years, until all options are proven both ineffective and inefficient, and only then proceeds to the adequate surgery and follow up treatment – when it’s too late to treat the initial condition.
Because that is what we are doing by allowing kids with special needs to attend regular school instead of schools that cater their medical and intellectual needs. Because, if we, the educators working with somebody’s child, do not know the answers to the questions:
- what is the child’s mental and intellectual age, as well as its abilities,
- what is the nature of the child’s condition,
- if we do not have medical knowledge and training, and
- if we are not allowed to call the kettle black,
what is it that we are doing with those kids with special needs and why are we their teachers in the first place? What is education of children with special needs based on?
All this makes me a horrible teacher to your kids – as well as most teachers in regular schools today. Have this in mind if you have a child with special needs and you are a firm believer that they could only benefit from attending regular schools instead of special ones.
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