"The mentally retarded child has the right to adequate medical care, physical assistance, and education, re-education and physical rehabilitation that will allow him to develop to the fullest extent possible his capabilities, regardless of the severity of his condition. No mentally retarded child shall be deprived of such care on economic grounds."
Article 2 of the General and Special Rights of the Mentally Handicapped, adopted by the Association of the International League of Societies for the Mentally Handicapped. October 24, 1968
The importance of this declaration is clear to all of us. But where and how can it best be realized?
We do not pretend here to establish the ideal, or to take stock of the real situation in its entirety. We have simply tried—through a few testimonies and visits to schools (far too few)—to show that there is no single solution that works for every child, everywhere, forever.
For each child, the choice depends on many things.
It depends on the nature of the child's difficulties.
It depends on his age.
It depends on the country or neighborhood where he lives.
It depends on the school's schedule.
It depends on the mother's work.
It depends on the teacher and the school staff.
It depends on so many other things.
So we are guided by the child's best interests and by looking at what's real.
Sometimes the neighborhood school is the right choice.
This is Agnese Malatrasi's experience.
"…everyone feels capable"
Agnese taught in a special school for several years, then moved to a regular school as a tenured teacher. Thanks to her experience and a particular gift, she welcomed the inclusion of children with special difficulties into her classes with great enthusiasm.
The first class she taught, which she brought through to fifth grade, is now in the eighth grade and is evaluated very positively. This year her class is a third grade, and last year an 11-year-old boy joined who could neither read nor write, and who regularly experienced violent episodes that forced him to spend most of his time in the hallway with a support teacher.
Now the principal is astonished to no longer see him in the corridors. Fully integrated with his classmates, he is making rapid progress in learning as well.
From a brief conversation with Agnese, one gathers a strong impression: a person brimming with enthusiasm, vitality, and creativity, conducting the class with original methods.
As a teacher, she places great importance on music. She encourages everyone to sing—particularly those who are tone-deaf—insisting that no child is actually tone-deaf. By the end, they all sing beautifully.
She has abolished notebooks (children write only on sheets and cardstock), and brings her class out of school almost daily to visit workshops, friends, farmers, lonely or ill people.
In her classroom, aggression and fighting are not repressed. She watches carefully enough to prevent injury, but afterward they talk about it. She emphasizes that what matters is being friends at heart, being ready to take each other's hand. Fighting and caring for one another is better than perfect behavior coupled with hidden resentment.
Agnese creates deep solidarity and friendship among all the parents of her students. After an initial period of possible doubt and uncertainty, they all become satisfied and proud of their children.
This teacher's unwavering faith in her students turns out to be truly infectious.
When asked about her method, Agnese writes: "My commitment at school is driven by an immense desire to make children happy, to give them pleasant hours, to help them become true friends with one another. Many say I have likable, joyful children who are responsive to every situation they encounter directly, through almost daily contact with life in our community.
They write everything they live, everything they feel. They write only from lived experience. Lessons and math practice always start from the concrete, from what they have lived through, from experiences that at first were play and fun. Playing, for instance, I spent the entire first quarter of first grade without worrying about teaching them to read, write, or do arithmetic. Instead I worked on getting everyone to speak, sing, rhyme, draw, and so on—so that everyone felt part of class life.
I have never corrected a single composition. Instead I kept everyone working, no matter what they produced. I never graded their work with a judgment, only with praise and applause.
I always tried to notice when a child was eager to do something, and I always stopped if something didn't appeal to them. For me, learning can only happen when it comes from interest, joy, and satisfaction.
I always accepted from each child what they were able to give me, and everyone feels capable and doesn't feel different from the others."
But the experience of public school can also be catastrophic. Margherita tells what happened.
"…I can't help it…"
Workers came to repaint the walls, so we squeezed two or three classes into one room.
I went to the cinema room with a colleague who had a handicapped child, because my help was thought useful for musical and psychomotor activities. The handicapped child was named Rodolfo: he would suddenly attack his classmates with terrifying aggression, biting, screaming, rolling on the floor. Then he'd have moments of calm, and we could all relax a little.
What followed was a nightmare lasting two months. The classes were second grade, and I had my own problems—four of my students were labeled "difficult" or "troublesome." I had worked hard to help them adjust, and by the end they were fairly well behaved.
With Rodolfo there, all my work fell apart. Everyone descended into wild chaos. The classes split into two groups: on one side, Rodolfo and my four difficult students, plus a few others who took advantage of the situation. On the other, the "normal" children—frightened, attacked, often hurt.
The first few days were maddening. Slowly, the constant anxiety we lived in began to do real damage. Academically, we were completely shut down—not a shred of real work got done. Socially, I was terrified the children would get seriously hurt. Rodolfo would suddenly bite or hit with objects, or try to poke pencils and pens in other children's eyes. I was in constant defense mode—tensely, anxiously protecting the other children.
Alarming signs of rejection appeared (morning vomiting or diarrhea, bedwetting, restless sleep), and troubling moral questions arose among the children: (Is it wrong to reject someone who is different, but why do I have to stand near him? If being kind is a choice, why are they forcing me? And so on.)
Once the classrooms were repainted, it took months to put the classes back together.
Our school was among the first to accept handicapped children—not from any humanitarian impulse, but because of the weakness of the administrator at that time. He was afraid to resist the political pressure and didn't have the strength to act with authority.
So eleven handicapped children were placed in a school with no specialized team, no support, no equipped classrooms, no gym, no playground.
Enormous problems that everyone discusses but that nobody ever actually tries to solve.
As for myself, I admit my inability to handle such situations. I can't help it. I have an uncontrollable terror when I look at a person with mental disability and cannot communicate with them, cannot understand, cannot read their intentions in their eyes, cannot imagine what their reactions might be. Not that I haven't tried.
At teacher's college, my pedagogy instructor was a passionate admirer of Professor Montesano and took us several times to visit his school. She wanted to inspire us to get certified in special education, schools for orthopedic rehabilitation, and so on.
I couldn't bear the visit. At one point I fled, despite deep guilt and a sense of cowardice. I never went back and never got the special certification.
I attended a professional development course on including handicapped children, and courses on beautiful games taught by people who pet handicapped children once and couldn't manage to play with them for half an hour. Courses taught by theorists sitting behind desks full of books who have never experienced real school for even a day.
I have a diploma as a physical education and sports instructor, with coursework on the potential recovery of handicapped children (though there was very little of it, really).
And yet I remain simply an elementary school teacher qualified by the state to teach non-handicapped students. Despite good intentions, I still have the fear and cannot overcome it.
Two weeks ago, M. came to my first grade class—a child with Down syndrome, an affectionate creature, aggressive only in the sense of being expansive. He was welcomed with great openness by the other students, who quickly noticed from the first contacts that he was different. And M. is doing wonderfully.
Strangely, I'm not afraid and I handle situations calmly. But perhaps that's only because so far M. has been predictable and is, after all, only a three-year-old.
Unfortunately, he has a mother who rejects the idea of having a handicapped child. She sees him as "a little slow" and demands performance beyond his capabilities. From me, she demands miracles. She won't accept that progress will be extremely slow, on very long timescales, and that pressing for more is the opposite of what should happen.
For now I've managed: the class has done common activities and we've worked a lot on body awareness and play-based preparation. But as we move forward, the differences will become more and more obvious and marked, and I don't know what will happen.
The current problem is that the class isn't yet organized with enough independence to allow individual or differentiated work. I need to find a way forward because it's time now to begin real learning: reading, writing, numbers. And M. simply cannot keep up.
To put it bluntly, I need to find something so engaging that it keeps him occupied while all the others work—something that won't disrupt their attention but won't hurt his feelings. So far he's always refused to do anything different from his classmates, and when he can't do something, he gets very upset.
I've received lots of advice and tried to implement it, but with great difficulty and poor results.
I'll keep trying with hope, and I hope to manage it as well as I can.
Margherita, 1981