A small group of parents and friends of Fede e Luce recently attended a professional development course that the Lazio region and the Ministry of Public Education funded and sponsored for elementary school teachers in Rome. The course was led by a four-person British team of specialists: an audiologist-physician, a child neuropsychiatrist, and a speech-language pathologist and educator (the same educator who came last year to teach a short course at a special school in Rome. See Insieme n.9 1976).
Over two weeks, the course covered numerous and varied topics: rehabilitation methods for the sensory handicapped, behavioral disorders, normal child development, language, and more.
We will explore some of these subjects in detail in future issues of Insieme. But the professional quality of this course, the educational philosophy at its heart, and the human dimension brought by the British team justify this first overview focused on socialization.
Why Socialization?
The British team proposed five core chapters in their educational program for severely handicapped children. Developing socialization was one of them. The others were: gross and fine motor development, activities of daily living, language and communication.
But there is another reason. Socialization—defined as "the ability to establish relationships with the people around us"—is more than just one educational module; it is truly an essential quality of human life itself.
It is not a technique but one of education's fundamental aims. And it concerns not only childhood but adult life—a life as normal as possible.
To achieve this, we work to give the child, step by step, a toolkit of physical, intellectual, and social skills. These will offer him the greatest possible independence and participation. Special education must be rethought in this light—not as the opposite of socialization, but as a tool, sometimes essential and at least temporary, that makes genuine socialization possible.
Examples abound. A deaf child cannot learn to speak through simple imitation like other children. Placing him casually with peers is not an educational strategy. Rather, teaching him to speak through specialized techniques and appropriate aids gives him the means to participate in group life once he has that precious gift: language. The same reasoning applies to other forms of physical, intellectual, or emotional disability.
Understanding How Socialization Develops
The team's analysis of socialization and its methods of learning particularly interested us—especially as these apply to the severely handicapped who ignore or reject those around them. We learned that four conditions are absolutely necessary prerequisites for social development, and for language development as well:
- the ability to pay attention
- eye contact
- emotional connection
- the capacity to express (nonverbally) a need or request
The educator must first secure these basic responses. Once they appear, the next task is to teach the child to recognize himself as separate from others and from the world around him (what is called self concept).
This happens in small steps. The child reacts when touched. He looks at faces. He follows movement with his eyes. He accepts physical contact. He smiles back when smiled at.
Another critical phase is the capacity to play—with an adult, with one child, with several children.
What struck us most in this analysis was the emphasis placed on routine in the child's life: eating at the same table from the same plate, wearing the same clothes for the same activities. This helps him understand what is happening around him and, in time, to predict what will come next (for example: when we put on a bib, we eat).
When he begins to grasp what is happening, he is no longer entirely passive, no longer wholly at the mercy of others' will.
The Capacity to Obey
The ability to follow simple instructions, to wait his turn, to put objects back in place—these are steps toward integrating a child into a group and later into society.
Within the broader development of socialization, the team emphasized something crucial: the child must understand from the start that discipline exists—that some behaviors are acceptable and others are not.
This is made clear primarily through rewards rather than punishment.
And perhaps most important for the mentally handicapped child, more so than for other children, is consistency among all members of the educational team. The people caring for a child can and should rotate through different activities. But they must present the same responses in similar situations.
Another part of the educational program relates directly to socialization: activities of daily living (self-care: moving around, eating, dressing, using the bathroom). Teaching a child to manage these simple gestures alone (simple as they seem, yet so difficult for some) makes him more independent. It gives him his dignity. These small victories offer moments of personal success—something every human being needs.
With the most severely affected, these activities require lengthy techniques, often simple but sometimes difficult. We will return to them because they seem to us of great importance.
Finally, there is no discussion of socialization without addressing language.
The British speech-language pathologist was particularly emphatic about developing language that is true communication.
Before a child can speak, there must be an exchange of questions and responses between child and adult (the smile between mother and newborn is one such example).
There is no need to delve into the difficult analysis of language development. But it is worth stressing the importance of content—of using practical, simple language rather than drilling vocabulary words disconnected from reality. For instance, it is far more important to teach a child to say "toilet" (or whatever word is chosen) in order to request the bathroom than to recite a string of words while having an accident.
Developing socialization, learning to play, to accept discipline, to grow in independence, to communicate nonverbally—this is already a full educational program for many handicapped children.
Carrying it out requires basic knowledge, specific techniques, and great patience. But it also requires something at the heart of all education: a double faith on the educator's part—faith in the child's progress and faith in oneself.
This faith in oneself is not pride. It rests on acquired skill and on the enthusiasm we felt deeply in the team that came to share with us, simply and frankly, the fruits of its experience.
A group of friends and parents, 1977