Special Education - My Take

I believe in the dignity of children. I believe these little ones, irrespective of "ability, gender, race and religion" will have a hand in moulding the future of the human race. I believe the earlier children with learning difficulties are identified, the sooner the parents can come to terms with it, ignore myths and grandmother tales about a problem spontaneously disappearing, the greater the chances for successful intervention to take place.

I feel that every child has a right to maximise their learning potentials in order to lead productive and independant lives. I feel that one person should not have the responsibility of deciding who gets catered for and who doesn't. I believe that one person cannot change the world. It takes many working together to change the world.

I feel that special education should be made accessible to everyone by policy makers. Mediocrity and compromise will only lead to the jeopardising of the futures of children with special educational needs who are citizens. Instead of advocating a specific curriculum for special education, it would be wiser and more logical to promote indvidual learning at individual paces.

The core problem with special education in Malaysia is our mentalities. We have our eyes set on the future of developed status but we lack the mentality for it, at least where education is concerned.

A good place to start in my opinion, would be to re-look our use of inappropirate terminology to refer to people with disability particularly those with physical impairments. While I admire that most buildings in the city now come equipped with ramps and low buttons inside lifts, Braille buttons and special car parks, I wonder what we are doing for our student population. I wonder what percentages of students with visual and hearing impairments go to University. What are we doing about the identification of children with dyslexia, the intervention and accomodation of those within the mainstream education system.

What kind of training are our teachers receiving in order to make effective educators of children with dyslexia? What steps are being taken to collect data? What plans are being made to implement a nation wide early intervention programme for those children who are at risk of facing difficulties at school?

I feel we can do more. I feel that we need to look beyond the daily problems. We need to collaborate, think together to arrive at conrete workable solutions. It needs to be a group that consists of policy makers, academics and people from the field, who have been teaching, who know what works and what won't. It is time to sit up and focus.

While we are a higher education hub in the East, we must not neglect the lower levels of education especially when it had direct bearing on or own people - MALAYSIANS.