The Possibilities to Including Children with Special and Exceptional Needs in Comprehensive Schools in Latvia: a Historical Perspective

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The Possibilities to Including Children with
Special and Exceptional Needs in Comprehensive
Schools in Latvia a Historical Perspective

• Dita Nimante, PhD student, the University of
  Latvia
• Leipzig
• January 11-12, 2008

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The Researche question

• What were the possibilities of including the
  children with special and exceptional needs in
  comprehensive schools in Latvia historically?
  What were the determining factors?

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• Research approach
• Culture historical approach (Kestere, 2005)The
  way pedagogical concepts, ideas supporting the
  inclusion of children with special and
  exceptional needs in comprehensive school are
  implemented in practice, in action.
• Sources and literature used
• Special education in Latvia has not been
  extensively researched. Even if there are studies
  of the history of the institution of education
  (special school), the history of the pedagogical
  ideas within special pedagogy has not been
  broadly identified.

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Quest

• The history of special education -
• To establish the history of the possibilities for
  including children with special and exceptional
  needs, the historical experience related to the
  development of formal institutes of education for
  children with special needs.
• To understand the present-day process in
  education with regard to children with special
  and exceptional needs.
• Schalik The studies of history researching
  the issues linked with children and disability
  will provide a better understanding of the way
  these individuals were treated from ancient
  times and today. (Schalick, 2001, p. 91)

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The Quest

• The history of Difference
• reflects the way people, society throughout
  centuries have
• understood and interpreted and treated
  difference. It is
• the history of childhood and youth.

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The history of Difference

• In Egypt, Roman Empire and Ancient Greek - a
  medical interest, utilitarian use of the
  difference, for example, the cripples were
  trained to become beggars.
• Early Christianity and Middle Ages the
  different as the reflection of their parents
  sins, the approach based upon religious
  stereotypes, isolation.
• Renaissance ideas, ideas of humanism saw the
  human being as the highest value. It is possible
  to educate a child with special needs (Gironimo
  Cardano (1501 1576))
• The ideas of John Lock (1632-1704) about the
  child as a blank sheet of paper that can be
  filled in new hopes for children with special
  needs.
• The ideas of French Enlighteners to understand
  and to develop the childs needs.

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• Even though the history of ideas is important and
  needs to be assessed, the decisive factor in the
  development of pedagogy is the practice of
  education. Not always an idea or a theoretical
  concept can be regarded as the starting point of
  real action. They may serve as facilitators, can
  be accumulated in society, but frequently it
  takes decades or even hundreds of years before
  they are implemented in school practice.
• Pedagogical ideas, theories and ideals have
  the same fate as all other ideals and promises,
  they all have to undergo the test of practical
  life in collision with the reality of life, in
  the grey, petty work of every day life.
  (Dauge, 1928, p. 47)

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The Possibilities for Formal and Informal
Education for Children with Special Needs

• Up to the 1700s the society in general did not
  offer to children with special needs the
  possibilities of formal education (Armstrong,
  2002). Care and protection of people with
  special needs in Europe appeared only in the
  18th century. (Kravalis, 1996)
• The first formal attempt to educated deaf
  children in Spain, in 1578, at San Salvador
  Benedictine monastery (Winzer, 1993)
• French pedagoguesRodrigue Pereire(1715 1780)
  was the first to start working with deaf
  children in 1745 in France
• Charles Michel de lEpee (1712 1789) in 1760
  established his alternative deaf school
• Valentin Hauy (1745-1822) was the first to start
  working with blind children in 1784 in France
• Doctor Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) in 1793
  started working with people with mental
  retardation. The followers of Pinnel doctor
  G.M.A. Ferrus in 1826 in Bicêtre opened the
  first private school for chidlren with mental
  retardation. Also his other followers - Edouard
  Seguin (1812 -1880) and Jean Etienne Dominique
  Esquirol (1782-1840) in 1830 opened a private
  school for children with mental retardation.

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Latvian Context (the 19th cent.)

• Pedagogical ideas were travelling and were
  discussed, the whole of Europe became acquainted
  with them. (Jonsen, 2001)
• The pedagogical ideas reached also pedagogues
  present in the territory of Latvia, who were
  educated in Germany or were simply ordered from
  Germany. (Kravalis, 1996)
• The first special school - for deaf-and-mute
  children. These started off as homeschools, later
  turning into small private schools (in 1809 and
  1832).
• In 1839 the first public school for deaf-and-mute
  children was established, which was headed by
  the graduate of Weissenfels Seminar August
  Arnoldy from Germany, who was specially trained
  to teach deaf-and-mute children (Kravalis, 1996).
  
• In 1854 the first institution of education for
  children with mental development disorders in
  Russian was opened, an institution for idiots,
  which was headed by Friedrich Plaz.
• The first public school for blind children was
  opened in 1872 in Riga, ophthalmologist K.
  Waldhauer was its director. (Kravalis, 1996)

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Futhure development

• The education opportunities for children with
  special needs broadened with the development of
  diverse branches of science and the adoption of
  the Renaissance and Enlightenment ideas into the
  pedagogical activities.
• However, the typical general trend to offer
  education in a separated or the so-called
  segregative environment, separately from the
  children of comprehensive schools, has remained
  from the 18th century to the present day.
• Society has an important role to play in
  ensuring opportunities
• Separate pedagogical initiatives without public
  financial support are doomed to failure
• Pestalozzi school that enrolled all children,
• Dr. Johann Graesers successful attempts to
  integrate deaf boys in the environment of
  local comprehensive class in 1821 in Germany,
  Beyrenth
• .
• 2. The positive impact of compulsory education
  upon the development of special education
  (Winzer, 1993, ???????, 1995)

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What determined and maintained the idea of a
separate, separated and segregative education?

• The theories that developed and became popular
  were taken over from Europe and America.
• Riddell (Riddell, 2007) mentions two theories of
  this kind
• The functional theory of French sociologist Emile
  Durkheim, which stipulated that the aim of a
  healthy society was to include as many people as
  possible, but to neutralize those who were
  marginalised.
• The development of eugenics in the USA and
  Western Europe that envisaged that children
  with special needs, especially children with
  mental retardation, psychiatric diseases,
  combined disorders should be separated and in
  some cases even destroyed with the aim of
  protecting the rest of society, to prevent
  continuity of the negative impact of heredity.

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Latvian context (the end of the 19th century
the beginning of the 20th century, the period of
independent Republic of Latvia up to 1941)

• The beginning of the development of special
  pedagogy as a branch of pedagogy - books about
  children with special needs. For example, A.
  Kenins, The deaf-and-mute, his upbringing and
  elementary education 1897, J. Sturitis Special
  school(1932), M.Štals Our lifes outcasts,
  their upbringing and teaching (1936)
• The inclusion of some topics linked to children
  with special needs in the teacher training
  programs. (Kestere, Nimante, 2007)
• Discussions about placing - where the forgotten
  children should learn, about which is the best
  place - the normal or the special school -
  for the children, who at the time were called
  less talented, lagging behind and defective,
  with little abilities, anomalous children.
• Basic information on special education issues for
  regular teachers - chapters in the books.
  (Dekens, 1919, Štals, 1935)

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Latvian context (the end of the 19th century
the beginning of the 20th century, the period of
independent Republic of Latvia up to 1941)

• The authors of the time were against joint
  education in a normal school because of
  pedagogical and social reasons. It was believed
  that separation or segregation was necessary,
  since the normal school could not satisfy the
  educational needs of the different children.
  In the normal school these children were not
  offered an adequate learning process, since the
  teachers were unable to offer it in a normal
  class. And if these children fail to learn
  anything, then they will not be successful, and
  they will start feeling bad as personalities
  like outcasts.

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Latvian context (the end of the 19th century
the beginning of the 20th century, the period of
independent Republic of Latvia up to 1941)

• Allocating children to schools of various levels
  striving for individualisation.
• Dauge in his work The Ideals and the Reality
  of Education (1928), referring to the Dalton
  Plan (Helen Parkhurst, 1887 -1959), voices the
  opinion that the pupils can and should be
  divided into several levels that are represented
  by schools of various levels schools for
  retarded and defective children, schools for less
  talented, schools for those of average talents,
  schools for the talented. This, in fact, would
  ensure individualisation.
• Dividing of class into two or three different
  units, which any pupil can join according to his
  own free choice, is the path towards increased
  individualisation of pupils. (Dauge, 1928, p. 8)
  
• The opinions expressed by Dauge reflected a
  broader discussion among the Western pedagogues
  from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the
  20th century. The core of the discussion was
  based in the attempts to reveal the
  contradiction, typical of the present, between
  the mass education and the individual mastery of
  knowledge. (Maslo, 1995, p.60)

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Latvian Context (1941- 1991)

• Special education - a part of the Soviet Union
  system of special education, the basic character
  of which was determined by the Soviet
  understanding of the science of defectology (a
  defect from Latin imperfection, logos from
  Greek teaching)
• In the Soviet Union defectology (the studies of
  defects) was focused upon disorders (biological
  or others ), inadequacies or other development
  problems, calling them defects.
• The children with special needs were segregated
  into separate special schools, as well as into
  special classes within comprehensive schools,
  thus implementing both segregative and
  integrative approaches.
• The objective of the special schools was to
  correct the disorders and to prepare the child
  for the working life. (???????, 1995)

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The Ambiguity of Defectology

• Zamsky recognises that the attitude of the
  Soviet power towards defective children was,
  first of all, determined by the objective
  education for all children, and, secondly, the
  principle that all children were the future of
  the state and therefore childhood needed
  protection. (???????, 1995)
• However, the principle childhood needs
  protection should be viewed in connection with
  the understanding of defective children held
  by the science of the time. Zamsky states that
  Russian researchers in the period from 1919 to
  1923 took over uncritically the theory of
  eternal virtue and moral truth coming from the
  West, which stipulated that the majority of
  children had moral senses similar to vision,
  hearing, smell or other senses. However, some
  children because of bad heredity or as the
  result of degradation are born without these
  senses. These people are unable to distinguish
  between the evil, bad and the good. Therefore
  they are moral cripples, and the cause is a
  biological problem.

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The Ambiguity of Defectology

• The activities of Lev Vigotsky in the 1920s and
  the beginning of the 1930s and the opinions he
  expressed, his public addresses in several All
  Russia conferences was a completely novel
  approach to the declaration of defectology.
• Among other views that he expressed was the idea
  that the special education should be totally
  reorganised, that it should as far as possible
  come closer to and not distance itself from the
  normal childhood pedagogy. To find a system that
  would allow organic merging of both. (???????,
  1995).
• Lev Vigotsky was a part of broader group of
  researchers who were in favor of social
  perspective of child development.

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The Ambiguity of Defectology

• 1936 was the turning point - the new ideas and
  the experimental activities were stopped.
• Thus the Soviet defectology fell back to its
  previous stage of development - the special
  children were still massed into the special
  schools, separated from the comprehensive school,
  to protect the society from them, the
  disorder (the defect) of the child was in the
  main focus of attention, and it was basically
  viewed from the biological perspective.

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Latvian Context (after 1991)

• Tendencies
• Democratization of society, increased level of
  public responsibility and awareness towards its
  citizens.
• Continuous impact of defectology (OECD, 2000)
• Integration policy and practice
• The entry of the ideas of human pedagogy and
  reform pedagogy into Latvian pedagogy (Step by
  step programme, Pestalozzi ideas)
• Gradual appearance of the social model from the
  concept Special education, predominantly linked
  to a location to the concept A service that the
  child can receive as a support rendered in the
  place, where it is most acceptable for the child
  and his/ her parents (Support centre in regular
  schools)
• Teacher training (Special education as obligatory
  course in teacher training programmes, inclusive
  education as topic in the teacher in - service
  training programmes)

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In Conclusion

• The opportunities for including children with
  special and particular needs in comprehensive
  school from the historical perspective are
  formed by the attitude towards children with
  special and particular needs dictated by each
  period of history and by the understanding of the
  children with special and exceptional needs. This
  understanding is deeply rooted in diverse
  aspects, including religious, ethical, medical,
  political, economic and other aspects, as well as
  the societys attitude towards what is the
  norm. The understanding and the actions the
  isolation, segregation, integration or inclusion
  of children with special and particular needs
  have also been determined by the theoretical
  assumptions that in each specific period of time
  have gained the largest public support, which
  have conformed with the totality of the public
  opinions and the development level of awareness.
• Thus the idea of including children with special
  and particular needs in comprehensive school
  needs several preconditions the philosophical
  concept, pedagogical activities, societys
  attitude, which is represented by the provided
  funding and the compulsory norms included in the
  legislation.