Why do we expect pupils to go to school?

http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/2073-special-education-an-introduction-for-new-teachers

Introduction: The role of the aims of education

One of the arguments, which is used to reject or to ignore discussing the aims of education among teachers, is that: we are just required to follow what the government stated in the official documents. There has no room for us to discuss. Or the aims of education is variant, different people has different points of view. There has no model answer for this question. However, the aims of education is very important for teachers, not only because it affect on our teaching, but also is a process that for reflect what is education and what we have done.

The background of the special school

I am teaching in special school, the children with moderate mental handicap. To satisfy all their diverse special needs, we use eleven methods for ten students.

They often have learning difficulties in attending to the relevant aspects of a learning situation, in storing information in long term-memory, in generalizing what they learn, and in language (Westwood, 2003). And also some of them are children with autism. Children with autism typically have difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, interactions and leisure or play activates (ASA, 2004).

The interventions usually are ABA[1], PECS[2], visual strategies, TEACCH[3], situation teaching and learning, Snoezelen and Interactive Process Approach, Life Application Training (生活流程教學), social stories, even mediation and psychotherapy.

These all interventions need long-term training and co-operation with parents. So, the bottleneck of their education is not only their own abilities, but also whether the parents willing to co-operate.

Taking one of my students as an example, whose name Stonely, his abilities are pretty good. He came to my school in this year, but he had already picked up the schedule of schooling. He can just only utter some sound but understands what you said. We all believe that he can learn more while he experiences more. However, his mother rejects most of the school activities. When we had taught some self-care skills, such as washing head, he couldn’t practice at home, and finally he forgot what he had learnt.

The consensus in school on the aims of education

From the above, we can see that it has a very close relationship among school, teachers, students, and parents. The co-operation is demanding. If the aims of education of each membership are different, it is very difficult to have a successful education. Now we are investigating what students, teachers, parents and school believe to be the purpose of education, see whether they believe same aim or thinking in different ways.

Talking about the students first. As we saw in Stonely’s case, students are very enjoying in school’s life. It is because unlike mainstream school, students have much fewer activities than normal students when both of them are not going to school. It may because students with special needs need much more care from parents when they are outing.

In fact, nowadays, normal students have many reasons to reject going to school. Because of Internet, information and knowledge is easily acquired. Also, the knowledge grow rapidly, it seems that teaching in school cannot follow the main trend of knowledge expand. Taking computer studies as an example, many students blame that what they learnt in school is ten years ago technology or programme, for example, Basic and Logo. They are not popular or even vanish in IT’s world.

If they want to make friends or be “socialization”, they can go to centers or join some interest group in society. If go to school for the economic reason, that is training as an employee. It seems much more effective when they are learning from doing. That means they can have on job training rather than going to school. We does not say that it is no use to go to school, but it seems it has many alternative way to achieve what students expected doing in school.

Students in my school have no such reasons, or may be they cannot achieve that level of critical thinking or reflection. But through their smiles, we can see or even feel that they enjoy the lesson, activities and school’s life. For them, it is clear that the aims of education are improving their qualities of their life.

However, parents have different thought about schooling and education. From the interviews in the parent’s day, we can see that the topics, which the parent’s most interested is where do their children go after, graduated. Of course, they also concern whether their children enjoy the school’s life, but their expectations about what children learnt in school are not very much. Taking about Stonely, why his mother rejects the outgoing activities? From the dialog with his mother, we know that she worried about the safety of the activities. It seems that emphasis is on ‘care’ more than education.

So, what is the teacher’s point of views? Although it is not a ‘model answer’ because it has labeling effect which we didn’t want, but the fact is every teachers in special education are doing the same things, that is transform students to have a normal life, to fulfill or even to expand their potential and capacity. Once we can see the improvement of the students abilities, although it has no significance to mention, we have the most successful feeling and proud for that change.

The aims of education of my school are follow the mission statement of Hong Chi Association (2003).

“Hong Chi Association is dedicated to serving people with mental handicap and their families. We believe that people with mental handicap have the same rights and freedoms as other members of the community. They should be given every opportunity to develop physically, intellectually, socially and emotionally. And they should be encouraged and helped to participate fully in family and community life. All forms of discrimination against people with mental handicap are wrong. We will listen to the needs and wishes of people with mental handicap and their families, educate and train them so that they can develop to their full potential, assist them to find jobs and to live as independently as possible, and promote understanding and acceptance of people with mental handicap.”

To use categories, which learnt in lecture, it is obvious that the aims of education of my school can be classify as social and economic reconstruction. To promote understanding and acceptance of people with mental handicap, that mean the needs is here, why? It is because she thinks that the society has inequalities or misunderstanding about mental handicaps. To change it, to promote. It is a future centered. Parents care whether teaching can fulfill the requirement of future jobs; it is similar to economic and social efficiency. Of course, teachers and students can be classifying as personal enlightenment and empowerment because we concern about qualities of life. All above these are unlike official aims of education in Hong Kong in Education Commission (2000), which is include all elements, but has no focus.

From the above analysis, we can see that there has no consensus on the aims of education among government, school, teachers, students and parents.

The concept of education and the aims of the education

John Dewey (1859-1952) said that education as such has no aims; it is people involved in education, teachers, schools, governments, parents, and even students, who have aims. But people have often tried to clarify or defend their own aims by asking what are, or what should be, the aims of education.

As Haydon (1996) said that “to ask what the aims of education are—when this is a philosophical question and not an empirical question about what actual teachers and others are aiming at—is to suppose that certain aims are implicit in the concept of education. Thus, the question about the aims of education can be reducing to debate about the central features, and the boundaries, of the concept of education.

Under this background, most philosopher of education now would probably agree that the important question about the aims of education is a normative one: what should teachers (and others in related positions of influence) be aiming at? Debate around this question is effectively debate about what the aims of schooling ought to be.

So, the articulation of a concept of education may well furnish a central part of the answer. In analyzing the concept of education by Peters (1966), there have explicit three characteristics of education processes as follows:

• That ‘education’ implies the transmission of what is worth-while to those who become committed to it;
• That ‘education’ must involve knowledge and understanding and some kind of cognitive perspectives, which are not inert;
• That ‘education’ at least rules out some procedures of transmission, on the ground that they lack wittingness and voluntariess.
• Therefore, “education processes are voluntarily pursed and cognitively involved desirable changes.”

Teachers as mediators

What should teachers do? To facing the different aims of education, the tensions between individual and societal, vocational and academic, economic and democratic, stability and change, local and global, etc. And as White (1982) said that the list of aims is almost endless. As in the introduction mention, I think it is a process that reflects what is education and what we have done. To balance those tensions, to improve students qualities of life, and to involved desirable changes, that is our jobs and no cook-book to tell us how to do is the best.

Reference

1. Autism Society of America (ASA). http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=whatisautism. 4/3/2004.
2. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. NY: Macmillan.
3.  Haydon, G.. (1996). Aim of Education. In J.J. Chambliss (ed) (1996). Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia. NY: Garland.
4. Hong Chi Association (2004). http://www.hongchi.org.hk/ 1/4/2004.
5.  Peters, R. (1966). Ethics and Education. London: George Allen and Unwin
6. Poon-McBrayer, K. F. & Lian, M. G.. J. (2002). Special Needs Education: Children with Exceptionalities. HK: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
7. Westwood, P. (2003), Learning and Learning Difficulties. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong.
8. White, J. (1982). The Aims of Education Restated. London: Routledge.

[1] ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis (Scheuermann & Webber, 2002).

[2] PECS stands for Picture Exchange Communication System

[3] TEACCH stands for Treatment and Education of Autistic and Communication-handicapped Children (Connor, 1999).

2004/5/29