Special educational needs : report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People.

  • Great Britain. Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People.
Date:
1978
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Special educational needs : report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the possibility of independence. It is progress towards these goals which alone can justify a particular course of education for anyone, whatever his abilities or dis- abilities. For some children, enjoyment and understanding may be confined to the hard-won, taught capacity to recognise things and people, and perhaps to name them. For some, independence may in the end amount to no more than the freedom of performing a task for oneself rather than having someone else do it, even if the task is only getting dressed or feeding oneself. For others the concepts of imaginative understanding, enjoyment and freedom have an infinitely richer content. But the direction of progress is the same. 1.7 Though the general concept of education may remain constant, its inter- pretation will thus be widely different in the case of different children. There is in our society a vast range of differently disabled children, many of whom would not have survived infancy in other periods of history. In the case of the most pro- foundly disabled one is bound to face the questions: Why educate such children at all? Are they not ineducable? How can one justify such effort and such expense for so small a result? Such questions have to be faced, and must be answered. Our answer is that education, as we conceive it, is a good, and a specifically human good, to which all human beings are entitled. There exists, therefore, a clear obligation to educate the most severely disabled for no other reason than that they are human. No civilised society can be content just to look after these children; it must all the time seek ways of helping them, however slowly, towards the educational goals we have identified. To understand the ways in which help can be given is to begin to meet their educational needs. If we fail to do this, we are actually increasing and compounding their disadvantages. 1.8 Moreover there are some children with disabilities who, through educa- tion along the common lines we advocate, may be able to lead a life very little poorer in quality than that of the non-handicapped child, whereas without this kind of education they might face a life of dependence or even institutionalisa- tion. Education in such cases makes the difference between a proper and enjoy- able life and something less than we believe life should be. From the point of view of the other members of the family, too, the process of drawing a severely handi- capped child into the educational system may, through its very normality, help to maintain the effectiveness, stability and cohesion of the family unit. 1.9 We have been concerned, however, not only with the severely handicapped but with all those children who require special education in any form. The help needed may range from continuous support from specialist services, including an intensive educational programme in a special school for a child with severe and multiple disabilities, to part-time assistance from a specially trained teacher for a child with mild learning difficulties. It is perhaps useful to regard this range of special educational need as a continuum, although that is a crude notion which conceals the complexities of individual needs. 1.10 Our concept of special education is thus broader than the traditional one of education by special methods appropriate for particular categories of children. It extends beyond the idea of education provided in special schools, special classes or units for children with particular types of disability, and embraces the notion of any form of additional help, wherever it is provided and whenever it is