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Where only with the “disabled children”? I

Where only with the 'disabled children'? I

I. Today. 10 to 8.

Where only with the "disabled children"?

Where only with the "disabled children"?

Create smaller school classes, hire more teachers and social workers and overcome your fear – then we (almost) no longer need special education.

What is worst for children? When they can’t feel normal and when you talk about them. Both together – the absolute horror. Children who fall under the “disabled” label face this every day. The ubiquitous word of abuse in the schoolyards, the natural use of "Spast", "Spacko", "Mongo" etc. can be ignored if necessary. But the Be-Word in its compassionate-empathic use, well-meaning condescendingly used – "they can’t do anything for the fact that they are so disabled" – is unbearably humiliating.

Parents often take a long time to understand: they themselves, together with the doctors, therapists, educators, contribute with their pity and worries to the child being stigmatized. It has its dignity, right to personality no matter how impaired it has been from an early age, and this dignity and right are constantly violated by the fact that the whole world cares about the child about the child, as it is in society it will be clear: as if this were a problem for the child and not for society, in which it must then survive. At some point, most parents respect that children don’t want them to be talked about.

This could be a reason why in the entire debates about separation, integration and inclusion, the families concerned almost completely leave the speaking to the experts. Especially if the children are big enough and can read and understand that their personal rights are being violated again.

So I’m not going to write about my family either, but about the family of a friend whose child bears the Be-Word, let’s call him John: John was once very ill and has difficulties in almost all areas of life due to cerebellar damage than others. According to Paragraph Soundso, he has the funding status xy and the disability card. His school career has so far been light. After seven years of reasonably successful integration in various elementary schools, the family was cooked so softly by the difficulties that John registered him in a support center to transfer to high school. John stayed there for a few days, thought it was nice, but also said that the children there would not be trusted. They would also be afraid of the upcoming class trip with a non-disabled partner class, because "we are weird for them". In the end, he insisted on going to a normal school. Since the family lives in Berlin, where there are schools for almost every need, there was actually a private school foundation at the other end of the city that offered the conditions John needed: very small classes, good and committed teachers, care in social matters Composition of the classes and the permeable structure of the school type "Integrated Secondary School" (ISS), which makes everything possible from secondary school to high school. John was lucky and got a replacement position. Of all the schools John has attended so far, he likes it best, for one reason: he has a few buddies there (friends would be too much) who have almost as bad grades as he does, and the teachers don’t spare him , but make very clear announcements. In addition, the school is small so that it can orientate itself, and there are only 16 children in its class, which is crucial: it gives him the chance to keep up with what’s going on and to concentrate again and again.

A case of successful integration, an example of self-evident inclusion? John would go under in public schools. After all, his private school is oriented towards the common good: the fees are calculated based on income and some of the places go to children sent by the youth welfare office. But like everywhere else, the economic pressure is increasing. Foundations suffer from low interest rates, while government grants are canceled. And maybe at some point this school will discover what other private schools have long discovered: that the worries and fears with which parents translate society’s discrimination into families can make a lot of money. Wouldn’t we all give our last shirt for our children’s happiness? In the United States, families borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund their children’s schooling and education. Let’s multiply $ 40,000 a year by about 17 years of training: $ 680,000 so that a child can be released into work well-equipped! Accordingly, there are also expectations of the earning opportunities of the pupils of these schools – the vicious cycle of a capitalist logic that produces a kind of modern bondage that very, very, very few, very, very rich families will escape, even if this scenario is in Germany becomes a reality.

All of the educational debates about inclusion, twelve or thirteen years of school, flexible entry classes and everything else go beyond John’s needs, but also the needs of all children. You could also suggest the following:

1) In the high school, from class 4, we introduce less, but more differentiation according to performance: a five-, six-element school system, which is permeable, however, by always putting two or three grades under one school roof and interlinking them there. (In Berlin there are working examples of this for the super-fast learners in the high school area as well as in the integrated secondary schools.) The class sizes and the teacher and room equipment are adapted to the needs of the students depending on the level. So: The school classes with the children who have the hardest time are small and have at least two teachers, for children with severe impairments even more staff, and have two or more rooms. The children were no longer sitting in these classes on the basis of any established status, but because their objective level of performance made it necessary to look after them intensively. The school classes with the children, on the other hand, who learn very quickly under the "highly gifted" label, can easily include 35 children. Money could be saved here. Most of the teachers are intellectually no longer up to these children, especially in the higher grades. From time to time they are given really stimulating input, which they then implement under any supervisor.

2) Only when small classes and good teacher equipment are guaranteed for the needy pupils – and only then: An end to “special education” that believes that it is responsible for all children with disabilities worldwide and thereby reproduces the stigmatization of the “Disability” label. Inclusion can only mean the abolition of this profession – which does not mean that there must no longer be deaf pedagogy, visually impaired pedagogy, speech impaired pedagogy and, for my part, also mentally handicapped pedagogy. Let’s take John again: his cerebellar damage is so rare, his impairment so unexplored, that even neurologists have difficulty describing it adequately. Cerebellum injured pedagogy would be nice, but it will never exist. However, since the "special educators" still feel responsible for John just because he falls under the term, he must feel that they are part, if not the cause, of his stigmatization. In the multi-level school system that was designed here, they could be classified as normal teachers or, with special expertise, be responsible for precisely defined problems.

Is it a utopia? Why doesn’t there exist: a public school system with small classes and sufficient teachers and without stigmatization for John? Why does John’s family also need the reinsurance of the special schools as a shelter if the private school for John does not continue for any reason? All parents of children in the "disabled" category want inclusion in theory, but fear in practice that special schools and special education will be abolished. Why?

It’s not just John’s parents who should be concerned about the growing amount of money they will spend on their children’s education. Disabled ghettos must not be an alternative to privatizing the cost of disadvantage. Because in the end this alternative will also hit back on the supposedly “normal”.

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Christina Cherry
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