It is no small thing controlling 20 or 30 lively children while trying to teach them. Add in three or four special-needs students, and a teacher鈥檚 task becomes Herculean. Teachers asked to do more with less must be given the tools not just to survive, but to teach effectively.
Those tools should never include something as odious as voting a child out of a classroom.
In 2010, a Grade 2 student who is autistic and suffers from seizures was lying on the floor of a classroom in the Greater Victoria School District. The teacher led the students in the room in a vote to kick the girl out of the classroom.
According to the student鈥檚 mother, an account not disputed by the school district, the teacher then told the girl: 鈥淪ee what your classmates think of you?鈥� and dragged her to another room to wait for an educational assistant.
The teacher was undoubtedly frustrated, perhaps desperate. Perhaps taking the child out of the classroom for a time was necessary, but allowing a group of children to vote on booting someone from the group, even temporarily, is unthinkable. A classroom is not some trash-TV reality show or a place for a popularity contest. Special-needs children need to be (and feel) included, not excluded.
The harm was not only to the excluded child but to the rest of the class. It鈥檚 a terrible thing to teach impressionable young minds: If someone does something we don鈥檛 like, we kick them out. If someone is not 鈥渘ormal,鈥� we don鈥檛 allow them to be part of our group. That was likely not the teacher鈥檚 intent, but that would have been one of the results.
Kids don鈥檛 need much encouragement to turn on a member of the flock who is different. Part of the education process must include learning to overcome the baser instincts of flock behaviour and to think compassionately.
The 2010 incident, though, is a symptom that should not distract attention from the illness. The real problem is that teachers are being pulled in too many directions and are too often faced with conflicting choices: Does the welfare of one special-needs child come before the welfare of the whole class?
In a perfect world, integration of special-needs children is good for all. Those with special needs have a better chance of mainstream success; all children learn that society is not 鈥渦s and them,鈥� but consists of people with a spectrum of abilities and behaviours. It should teach tolerance and compassion.
But integration comes at a price. If one child requires extra attention from the teacher, the education of the rest of the class is at risk. Disruptive behaviour, regardless of the cause, seriously hampers learning for the whole class.
Many special-needs students are autistic, which is not one disorder or behaviour pattern, but a wide range of behaviours and abilities. Other conditions, such as fetal-alcohol syndrome or impaired mental development, may be involved. These are situations requiring the intervention of medical and psychiatric expertise, and yet, teachers are saddled every day with responsibilities that go far beyond the scope of education. Educational assistants ease the burden, but funding restraints limit the number of EAs available.
Parents of special-needs children are dismayed at how much time their children are spending outside classrooms. Education Minister Peter Fassbender says the issue is the responsibility of local school districts, but the province doesn鈥檛 provide schools with resources required to give special-needs students a productive school experience without sacrificing overall education.
Offloading responsibilities onto cash-strapped school districts will not ease the problem. Without adequate tools and resources, teachers will continue to be forced to make impossible decisions.
