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It is a great privilege
to speak to you all today. It is an opportunity I must try not to waste.
This morning we are partners in the task of developing some thoughts about
the role of educators in preparing children for life. In this partnership
between speaker and audience, I think you would not want me to say only
the obvious. You should expect me to say a few things to set you thinking;
perhaps to say things that will make you a little annoyed. In turn, I expect
you, as my partners, to react to what I say; to disagree if you feel like
it, perhaps to discuss some of the more outrageous things that I say, but
at least to form an opinion. The relationship between partners need
not always be harmonious in order to be productive.
In this presentation we will begin by discussing who we mean when we talk about "educators". Then we will consider who are the crucial partners that we educators must work with. Then we will look at some of the factors which can work against good partnership. Finally I hope we can consider some of the things that we can do to foster effective partnerships.
In the midst of this, I will suggest that many educators talk loudly about partnership, when what they are really trying to do is increase their power. Many services in many countries have been developed and designed with greater attention being paid to the needs of partners than to the needs of children. Most of our educators have not been trained to work well in partnership with others, and indeed some of our training actively discourages partnership. I will argue that partnership should be seen as a process, not as a state that we are seeking to achieve.
Who are the educators of visually impaired children? There is a bewildering variety of players in this game. Of course we know that parents play a crucial role in educating their young child, and even after a child has started school most children still learn more from their family and friends than from any teacher. The majority of blind children in many developing countries still do not go to school; their education will come solely from family and from their community. For the lucky ones who do go to school, there are still many people involved. If they are integrated into their local school, their education may come from an untrained classroom teacher, with some occasional advice from the special educator. They might have an assistant in the class with them,
perhaps with a little training, or their real education may come from their classmates. For the child who attends a special school, they will almost always spend less time with a teacher than with a classroom assistant, or someone who helps with the mealtimes, or with a carer. Those of us who have had the privilege of special training to become educators are often the last people actually to be involved in educating a visually impaired child.
I remember visiting a school for blind children in northeast Africa. The teachers had received special training, and the children sat in neat rows in the classrooms, attending to their lessons and pretending to be interested. Each day when lunchtime came they rushed out into the courtyard and down to the garden. Here the gardener worked, and the children loved to spend time with him. He showed them how the food was grown, how to fetch the water, how to irrigate the crops. He even tended some chickens and goats, and the children loved to help him since this is what their brothers and sisters were doing back home. The gardener had received no special training, but he had a gift for sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge, and an open belief that they too could play their part. In that school, he was the educator. But how many gardeners do we have here at this Conference today?
In Malta I remember meeting another great educator. I visited a visually impaired boy who was integrated into a large school. He needed quite a lot of support, since the school was confusing and was reluctant to make many changes to accommodate him. He could not read the textbooks. A specialist teacher only visited every few weeks. But the boy had made a friend in his class, a lad called Vincent who would help him find his way around, help him understand what was being taught, and include him in the activities of the school. Vincent's sensitivity enabled the situation to work well. But I do not think he is here today either.
So can we distinguish between those we call "educators" and those with whom the educators must form a partnership? I do not think we can. The people are not so different - there are many parents that are also professionals, and it is only chance that has prevented any one of our own children from being visually impaired, or ourselves being visually impaired. The difference comes in the different roles that we each assume.
We "educators" are rather a mixed bunch. We are self-defined. We have no fixed levels of training. We have no fixed role; some of our trained teachers work individually with visually impaired children, some teach a class, some act as advisors or trainers to others. But we think of ourselves as educators. It is our commitment that binds us together, not anything else that I can find. Yet that commitment is shared by others, by parents, by administrators (at least the good ones!), by many others.
This brings me to my First Law of Partnership: We should value the contribution of everyone. And we should not make the mistake of thinking that our part in the partnership is any more important than anyone else's. First on everyone's list of necessary partners comes the child's family. The concept of partnership with families is very different around the world. In the USA or Western Europe parents now have statutory rights to be involved in planning the details of education provision, and expect to have a hand in anything that is going on. Indeed, as the professional if you do not keep the parents on your side you might end up on the wrong side of a law suit. The expectation is not only that the parent is involved, but that the parent is an equal partner, with their view being considered as equally valid on matters to do with the education of their child. In most of Africa, though, the partnership most parents look for is simply the existence of someone out there who is able to help! Many parents themselves will not have had the benefit of a formal education, so if the opportunity arises for their visually impaired child to attend school, the parent does not feel confident to express a view on how that education should take place. Such things they feel are the province of teachers, respected members of the community, whose views must be followed.
I said before that my first law of partnership is that everyone's role is to be valued. This does not mean that everyone should have the same role. As a parent, if you have not had the chance to go to school yourself, then you will not be in a good position to decide on the best type of schooling for your child. But you will still have a good understanding of your child and her needs, and you will have a view on what you feel are the most important skills for your child to learn. You will know whether it is important to you for your child to go to the local school with her brothers and sisters. You will have a crucial role in helping your daughter develop her full potential.
The whole nature of partnership is affected by who is in control. I can think of schools in North Africa, in the Middle East and in South-east Asia where parents can only get their child accepted into the school if they can convince the Headteacher that they are sympathetic to the religious aims of the school. The school is choosing the child, and the power lies with the school. In the UK it is parents that choose schools, and if a headteacher wants a parent to choose her school she must make it as attractive as possible. There the power is with the parent, and the partnership can be controlled by the parent.
Where the partnership works well, parents feel that their important role in bringing up their child is respected, and they feel they get support from the school in carrying out their role. The parent is not asked to become a teacher within their home, but they understand how they can provide support to school education through the way they do things at home. In turn, the parent feels that their own knowledge of their child is respected by the school, and that the teachers learn from insights that the parents offer. The school plans with the parent in meeting the child's needs.
There can be many barriers to the success of such partnerships. If both sides are not clear about their own different roles, then all can go wrong. I remember visiting a child at home in New York; the parents had devised educational programmes for every moment of the day, with checklists and tick-boxes, to support the educational programmes that the school was developing. The poor child went from one classroom at school straight into another one at home. And the poor parent busily tried to be a teacher for 70 hours a week. We should have learnt by now that homes are for living in, and that parents are for loving. There we had a case of a school asking something unreasonable of the partnership. We also had a situation where a parent found it easier to try to be a "professional" than to come to terms with being the parent of a disabled child.
In the same way, it is fine to say that educators should respect the parental views and listen to them. But what if the parent insists on their own views being followed, even if you think they may be wrong? Who is responsible for the education of the child? It is easy to say "it is shared" - but what happens if the sharing does not work? Here again we need to be clear about roles. In the classroom, it is the teacher who is in charge. At home it is the parent who is in charge. On a good day everyone is in agreement. But on a bad day, you each need to know who carries the responsibility.
This can be even more important in the area of medical care. Across the world the schools for blind children are accepting more children with complex medical conditions. We have to be ready for the situations where the interests of the parents may be different from the interests of the school. If a child is prone to epileptic fits it may be understandable for a parent to want to suggest a higher level of medication than a school; the priority for the parent may be to reduce fits, even if this leaves the child rather dopey, whereas the priority for the classroom teacher may be to try to keep the child alert enough to learn. Who is right? Who can say? But there must be well- understood procedures for handling this kind of situation. My Second Law of Partnerships: Be clear about who is responsible for what. As the American poet Robert Frost once said, "good fences make good neighbours".
Partnerships are also very important within a school. In developing countries most visually impaired children who go to school go to their local school, or to a school with a resource centre or unit in their area. The child in the local school may depend upon a regular visit from an itinerant teacher. The partnership between this itinerant teacher and the class teacher is crucial. So many things can go wrong. The classroom teacher might find it very difficult having a visually impaired child in the class, particularly if it gives her more work. She might resent the itinerant teacher who only comes by occasionally - surely it is his responsibility to look after this difficult child? Perhaps she does not want to receive advice on how to teach. The itinerant teacher has no authority in the school - he can only advise. In some schools I have visited, the visually impaired child is not treated as part of the responsibility of the class teacher at all. Here the partnership has not been spelt out, and the partners have not learnt to respect each other's role.
It is much harder to define the partnerships when a child is being educated in a mainstream school. Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether many teachers prefer special schools simply because it is easier to organise. In a special school, at least the children are there in one place, and you can try to control all aspects of their lives without having to organise so many partnerships. In a special school, the world can begin and end at the gates of the school. Responsibilities can be clear; the class teacher is responsible for what happens in the class, someone else is responsible for what happens in the afternoon and evening, and everyone is responsible to the headteacher. Partnerships are based upon management - you know where you stand in relation to everyone else. Parents are a long way away, and probably cannot afford to visit the school too often. The community of the special school is self-contained. Yes, there may be arrangements for the children to mix in the local community - "controlled integration" - but it is still on the terms of the special school. Any partnerships involved are within the control of the school.
There is no doubt about it, partnerships take time. It is easier to have full control of a child, and not to have to negotiate with others. In a special school you can make decisions. As the headteacher you are responsible for the education and care of the child, for the buildings, for the food - for everything that happens. If things go well, as the headteacher you can take the credit. If things go wrong, you have to carry the responsibility, unless you can find one of your staff to blame! In the mainstream school, the responsibility is shared. When things go well, there are many people around willing to accept the credit for the success. If things go wrong, often there is noone to be found. Success has many parents; failure is an orphan.
There are many different models for the integration of visually impaired children into mainstream schools, and each has different implications for partnership. If you have a unit or a resource base in a school, then you will have permanent staff based there. Perhaps it is a unit where the children normally attend the ordinary classes, but they attend the unit for some special lessons or special help, and to arrange for their study materials to be adapted for them. In this situation it will be important to be clear about who is responsible for the overall education of the child; who decides which materials are adapted and how. If all the responsibility is placed upon the unit, then there is the danger of the mainstream teacher not feeling they have any need to adapt their teaching style to accommodate the visually impaired children. But if too much responsibility is given to the mainstream teacher, who may not have any special training, then the child may be resented and their needs not taken sufficiently into account. Similarly, to whom are the unit staff accountable? Do they report to the headteacher, or to someone outside the school from the visual impairment service? In my experience, where unit staff do not report to the headteacher, the school does not feel a sense of ownership of the visually impaired children. But if the headteacher feels that the unit has ben thrust upon him as yet another responsibility, he will find ways of making it fail, and children will not have an equal access to a full education.
What is the role of the itinerant teacher in the partnership? It is very different in different systems. In some places the itinerant teacher is the one who actually teaches the child for some subjects. They rely upon the class teacher to do most of the teaching, but they visit in order to teach braille and mobility, and to assess the child. Sometimes they will advise the classroom teacher, or provide training to them. It is crucial that they have skills in working alongside another teacher, in helping the classroom teacher to feel confident.
For the specialist teacher, there are some similarities between the skills needed to work with a mainstream teacher, and the skills needed to work with parents. In recent years there has been much attention paid to how we should work with parents. Research around the world has established that the most important factor in supporting a parent of a young child is not to give the parent a set of professional skills. It is not crucial for them to understand everything about visual impairment. It is much more important for the parent to feel confident in their approach to the child, to feel relaxed in their interactions, and to feel valued. At the same time, we have learnt that parents want to have access to useful information, without having the information thrust down their throat all the time. We sometimes talk about the concept of "good enough" parenting as being what we are aiming for. Just the same is true, I believe, of the mainstream teacher who has a visually impaired child in their class. It is not crucial for them to become specialists. But it is important that they do not feel helpless in the face of a visually impaired child in their class. They should feel confident about their teaching approach, and they should feel that if they come across a situation where they need advice, they can get it. They should understand the role that they play in supporting the visually impaired child, and they should feel comfortable about this role. They need to be a "good enough" teacher, and this involves them having confidence in their support and advice. The advice needs to be directed at making them feel good, feel valued, and feel skilled. For all this to happen, our itinerant or advisory teacher must have a good set of skills. Does our training equip our teachers for this type of activity? Normally I think it does not. In most cases, the training that is provided concentrates mainly upon the knowledge required to understand visual impairment in children, and the specific skills required to teach a child. That is perfectly reasonable if you are training someone to teach a class of visually impaired children. But if you are training an itinerant teacher you should be training them very differently. Yes, they should still have the same core knowledge of the effect of visual impairment upon the learning process. Yes, they should have some basic skills in teaching a visually impaired child. But more importantly they need the skills to advise someone; the skills to help a teacher or a parent feel good about their own actions; the skills to help a teacher or a parent work out solutions for themselves rather than rely forever upon the expert; the skills to train others; the skills to form partnerships.
If our itinerant teachers are not trained in these areas, we see them doing the opposite of what is needed. Instead of helping the class teacher to learn for themselves, the itinerant teacher feels they have to justify their position and their salary by doing the teaching themselves. They suggest to the class teacher or the parent that there is some mystique to working with a visually impaired child, that without special training you can do nothing. They make the class teacher feel insecure. Nothing is more likely to make integration fail. Let us be honest. There is nothing magical about teaching our children. Yes, training helps, but a good teacher or a good parent will manage fine if they have the confidence. When we try to make out that it is all so complicated, we are just trying to keep jobs for ourselves.
Recently I went to one of the Eastern European countries that is going through rapid and violent change. I visited several of the blind schools. In most the schools, all the children were being taught braille. But when I watched the children, I discovered that nearly all of them had enough vision to read large print, or even ordinary print. Why were they not being taught to read print? Because if the authorities knew that these children could read print, then the authorities might decide to send them to a local school, with large classes. The school did not want this, because then they might have to close and the teachers would lose their jobs. The children did not want this, because they enjoyed studying in small classes, with very little pressure. The parents did not want this, because in the blind school the clothing and the food were paid for by the state, whereas in the ordinary schools the parents would have to pay. So everyone conspired to pretend that it was very difficult to teach these children. The irony was that there were a handful of children who were truly blind. They were the ones who were ignored. The lessons and the activities of the school were directed at the bulk of sighted (or nearly sighted) children.
In many other Eastern European countries we can still find partially sighted children being taught braille even if they have enough sight to read. The reason often given is that they believe (quite wrongly) that if the children use their sight then they might lose it. We know that this is a traditional belief held in many parts of the world, which has worked against the best interests of countless thousands of visually impaired children over the years. Recent figures from one Central African state showed that almost all the children being supported by an itinerant teaching programme had enough sight to read print. Yet the teachers were seeking to provide braille text books at great expense and inconvenience. But the position is not just held through lack of understanding. It is also self-interest - teachers want to claim that something as complicated as braille is needed, because it gives them a justification for seeming important. Do not misunderstand me. For those children who need braille, there is nothing more important than that they learn braille and have the opportunity to use it. But let us concentrate on teaching those children who do need it - and there are plenty of those around -and not try to pretend that other children need braille when they do not.
So we have examined a number of barriers to effective partnership. There is the lack of clarity as to what roles each partner should play in the relationship. There is the self- interest of the specialist teacher, who may want to protect his sense of self-importance by implying that only he has the skills to help the child. There is the inadequacy of much of our training, which focusses upon the core knowledge areas relating to visual impairment, but omits the core skills area relating to managing relationships.
Then there is finance: partnership takes time, and time is money. Parents and teachers should be able to communicate with each other, but many parents cannot manage to come and visit the school to talk with the teacher about their child. Many teachers have a second job at the end of their teaching day, or have their own family responsibilities, and find it hard to stay at school to meet the parents. The expectations of many schools in Europe and the USA of regular parent evenings and joint planning meetings are simply beyond the scope of most families. We must find strategies to get around this problem; I have seen excellent examples of home-school books where the busy teacher has written a few notes at the end of the day with his observations, and the parent has responded the next day with her reactions. When the itinerant teacher is visiting a school, time should be allowed for the teacher to meet the school teachers and the headteacher.
There are lessons for our field from colleagues working in the area of conflict resolution. Sydney Bailey, the renowned author on peace and conflict resolution, developed the concept that peace was much more than simply the absence of war. Peace, he said, is a process, not a state to be attained. For peace to exist between two or more active forces, there must be a constant process of negotiation, compromise, resolution, reconsideration and dialogue. I think that partnership in our field is similar. If we accept that all partners in a partnership will have their own positions, their own interests and their own priorities, each of which are open to change, then the process of working together successfully requires the need for mechanisms that enable these differing positions to be resolved. There are a few simple guidelines, I think, which are relevant to us.
First, for each child we need to think about who are the potential partners in the common task of preparing a child for life. Who has an interest? What would constitute a successful result for them? Perhaps most obviously the child itself has an interest, and this presentation has not yet touched upon the challenge of involving the child as a partner in decisions affecting their life. Let us just note that, throughout the world, there is an increasing recognition that the wishes and feelings of a child should be taken into acccount. There is no common view about how this is to be done, or about how much influence a child can reasonably have over the choices available to them. But I take the view that the most successful educational programmes have found a way of involving the children in decision-making, and planning educational programmes taking into account what the child wants as an outcome. For example, some blind children I know clearly develop interests and priorities different from their parents; there are many examples of blind children being the first person in a family ever to complete a school education. In other cases, it is clear that the child will only be happy within the family home, following the family interests, preparing for a life following family traditions.
Some other partners we have discussed - parents, teachers, teaching assistants. But there are other less obvious partners. The Government itself, or the local authorities with responsibility for education, are important partners. The educational policies of the politicians, and the values from which these policies come, will have great influence. Only eight years ago, in Romania, the state decreed that disabled children did not exist, since their existence would reflect badly upon the successes of the Government. The blind schools still existed, but they were kept well hidden. Teachers were allocated to teach in them as a punishment. That regime has now gone, but the country is still struggling with a legacy of a population who learnt that disability was a social sin. In that case, the desired outcome of the educational proces was for blind children to remain invisible; if they had to survive, then let them survive into adulthood living apart from the sighted community, in special workshops. Other countries have decided, as a point of political philosophy, that they do not believe in separate education for children based upon their disability, and they have closed all their special schools. In such countries, the Government as partner has expressed a clear interest in the educational process (although not always in the educational outcomes).
Blind people themselves, through their representative organisations, often appear as partners in the exercise. In my own country, my organisation, RNIB, is governed by blind people, and they have declared a strong interest in the education of future visually impaired children. In many other countries the main organisations of blind people have an important role to play. When all is well, this can prove an effective way of ensuring that services take into account the special needs of visually impaired people, by involving them in the governance of those services. But it can lead to problems too; it can be that the opinions of the blind people who govern those organisations may be derived from their own experiences of education a generation ago. I have come across situations where a service is fighting the battles of thirty years ago, as the middle-aged men who run these organisations work out in public their own frustrations and angers from their school days. Such an approach can lead to the retention of old out-dated schools and services, frozen in history, or alternatively can lead to the ritual closing of services as revenge for their perceived failures. So the first two steps in the partnership process are to clarify who are the interested parties, and to establish what their desired outcomes might be. Let us take an example. For a family in Peru with a blind daughter, we might establish that the parents really want her to grow up to be happy; that her happiness is more important to them than good educational qualifications; and that their real concern is that she will be able to marry and have children. For the child, she appears to be a lively young girl who may well have ideas of her own. The town authorities are committed to education in the local school, and committed to spending no more money than they have to. The local school, who have accepted her, are determined that she will not slow down the other children in her class, and whilst they are keen to do their best for her, they do not want to find that she consumes all their resources. The class teacher is anxious about the challenge, and does not feel she can take on more work over and above teaching her class of 38 children. The itinerant teacher is keen for the education to succeed, because she needs to prove that integrated educaton can work, she is committed to girls being given the same educational opportunities as boys, and she feels if she cannot make it work then her own job may be at stake.
A mixed set of interests, and a mixed set of desired outcomes. The crucial next stage for the poor itinerant teacher, who has to coordinate much of this activity, is to establish how each partner will want to measure success. How will the parents decide if their daughter is happy? What reassurances will they be seeking? If the itinerant teacher can meet this basic desire of theirs, then she is more likely also to be able to meet her own objectives of getting the girl into high school and maybe even into college. What reassurances will the class teacher want? What kinds of support will the class teacher feel would met her own personal needs? If the itinerant teacher can establish this early, then the class teacher may feel ready to make the extra efforts that turn the enterprise from being not unsuccessful into being successful. And the town authority? What are their requirements?
Now we are into establishing the process whereby this partnership will be managed. With different aims and desires, there will inevitably be conflicts. The only relationships that exist with no conflict are those where one person is totally in charge, and the other person, for whatever reason, accepts this. That is not a partnership, it is a dictatorship. Conflict will arise, and is natural. The challenge for our partners is to have a system that allows for disagreement and discussion, and provides for the necessary compromises and resolutions to be arrived at.
One of the standard methods for developing partnership has been through the Case Conference. Representatives of all interests are brought together once a year to review progress, to agree objectives for the coming year, and to identify the resources required. In theory this kind of structure can work well to help joint decision-making and joint "ownership" of what is done for the child. In practice, in my experience it only wprks if the relationships are already good. As we have already noted, the interests and the desired outcomes of different partners are not normally compatible. A review meeting may be a good way of resolving different positions, but it may not. In particular, if a parent has different feelings, there are few parts of the world where the parent would have the confidence to challenge the representatives of the school and the town authorities. No, more is needed to encourage partnership. Our itinerant teacher - if it is still she who is responsible for this child - needs to find a way of reassuring each of the different partners that their concerns are being addressed.
But let us continue to feel relaxed about disagreements. When have children ever agreed with their parents about what is best for them? When have parents always agreed with schools on every aspect of what is done for their child? And do not schools always find ways of blaming parents for the inadequacies of the children? If we think that partnership is about always agreeing, we are doomed to failure. Partnership is about finding a way of working together despite our disagreements; it is about combining the views, ideas and strengths of all those involved, so that no partners feel disempowered, and all feel that they have a role to play. It is about setting a child upon a journey of education and development, knowing that not everything will go right, but hoping that when things go wrong, there will be a partnership of people trying to pick up the pieces. It is about celebrating diversity and difference, and making a strength out of disagreement.
And are educators any good at this? I don't think so. Too often we are proud; we think that because we have been trained we must be right; we lack the confidence to recognise when someone else without the training is right and we are wrong; we find ourselves constantly preaching about the wonders of our services and not identifying our shortcomings.
Yet I am speaking here of a profession of which I am deeply proud. I have had the privilege of visiting services throughout the world where inspired individuals have worked wonders and transformed the lives of children through sheer commitment and through love. I was greatly moved by my first visit to Eritrea during their long war, to see how Ghebreberhan Iyasu and his colleagues in the Budeho School developed an education and a life for blind children and young people in the most testing conditions. That example could be repeated, I know, in every continent, and this Conference brings together people who have given all in their power on behalf of children. Our profession has grown in number and in competence, and has learnt to share insights and knowledge both within and between countries. So it there is no lack of commitment.
But we educators are not natural partners. We have many virtues, but humility is not normally one of them. And humility is at the heart of partnership, that ability to recognise that an easy answer is probably not a right answer.
But maybe I am wrong.