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Respondent:
Juliet
Stone - England
First of all I would like to congratulate ICEVI and its scientific committee for the commendable idea of including in its program (a keynote speech) the point of view of a parent, given that this is a conference that is basically aimed at educators.
Secondly, before you began asking me questions, allow to be the one to pose the first one: what justifies my presence in this conference, given the fact that I am not a specialist, educator or researcher and that my only formal training in the field of education has been that of parenting my visually-impaired daughter?
From a pedagogic standpoint, I don't have any doubt that the visual impairment of my daughter was profoundly instructive for me. The more I understand her visual impairment, the more I understand my own. Since I am not her educator, I have come here not to teach but to learn.
At most I hope to provoke and stimulate debate among you educators. Thus, don't expect me to reveal to you any innovations, suggest objectives or give solutions that one expects in a professional conference; but rather a personal testimony imbued with a natural dose of emotion from a parent living in Brazil and refusing to remain indifferent to the situation being lived by visually-impaired children and their families in today´s Brazilian society.
In view of the Conference's theme: "Stepping Forward Together, Parents and Professionals as Partners" I believe I can justify having been chosen for having already established such a partnership more than 30 years ago when I married an educator. Just like our eternal inspirator Natalie Barraga did, she learned practically everything she knows about education of the visually impaired through working with our own daughter. And she decided to share that rich knowledge with other parents. Lara, our daughter has been and continues to be the great motivator and stimulator or our work. Lara and Mara have been my greatest teachers, and I owe to them everything I have learned. They awoke in me my passion for special education.
Paulo Freire, arguably the most famous Brazilian educator who is internationally known and has left us forever just recently, used to say that "to educate is a courageous act that must not shy away from debate."
The topic that I am supposed to discuss with you is: "what are the barriers that are preventing parents and educators from building full partnerships in the educational process?"
Observing the question from the perspective of Latin American countries, I think that the barriers to the educational process lie neither on the side of parents nor of educators. The greatest barriers to the educational process in Latin America are the enormous social, economic, and cultural inequalities in our countries. Our cultural schemes reflect a tradition of political authoritarianism, economic backwardness, corruption at all levels of society, and extreme social injustice.
Before going on I would like to make clear that I am not speaking here as president of the Host Committee nor as president of the Board of Laramara, but only as a parent.
As a parent I feel much more comfortable, much more at liberty to say what I think and what I feel. Ever since the birth of my daughter up to this day - advocating for the rights of visually-impaired children and their families in my country- I am outraged. Outraged, in the first place, by government. They have been, and I have no doubt about it, one of the great obstacles blocking the educational process of our children. The have imposed heavy taxes on equipment for visually-impaired persons. I am outraged at the price of Perkins Braillers, which cost between 650 and 700 U.S. dollars in the United States - in passing, this is already very steep for Americans - but cost nearly US$2,000 in Brazil. This is an enormous barrier for the educational process. I am outraged at the situation of many of our neighbours in South America who cannot dream of owning a Perkins Brailler. Recently, with the help of ICEVI and Marilda Bruno, a brilliant special educator in Brazil, and Laramara, we led a teacher-training course to educators from Brazil (Mato Grossso, a central-west region of the country), Paraguay, and Bolivia, and we found that they would be very happy if they could have a few special education teachers, a school or other institution, or perhaps even that godsend, some slates and styluses. For a family of a visually-impaired child from these neighboring countries there are no barriers between parents and professionals, only ones that are economic and cultural in nature. Barriers that are seemingly unsurpassable. But Helen Keller has taught us that there are no unsurpassable barriers. If she were alive here today I believe (knowing the realities of Latin America) she would not revise her concepts, but perhaps she could help us with her life example to understand better our reality.
Another question: how many Latin American parents are present here today? How many parents could pay their registration fee and travel and accommodation costs? Isn't this perhaps another barrier to be considered?
Another reason I must congratulate ICEVI is for having invited the world to turn its eyes towards Latin America, even though it took 45 years to do so. If we wish to understand the reality of Latin America before anything else it is necessary to realize that we are arriving now at the end of the century facing three great challenges:
1. It is a challenge of economic order. Our economies, marked by backwardness, are being forced by the globalization of economies to compete with developed countries in a conditions of completely inequality of strength. This is a topic that fascinates me as a businessman and I would like to come back to it further on.
2. It is challenge of social order. There is no doubts that the root of all evil in our beloved América del Sol (America of the Sun) is the extreme social injustice that is attaining explosive levels.
3. The third great challenge I would call the challenge of citizenship, that is, how to promote access for all layers of society to health care, housing and education.
As a businessman, I try to keep up with my reading of Latin American business magazines. The "Latin Trade" issue of the month of August has as its cover page topic the subject of the Education Crisis and shows how the low education level in our region creates a qualifications and productivity barrier for its local businesses.
The text doesn't leave any doubt either, in citing the report of the United Nations - CELAC - Study Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean: insufficient education is, without a doubt, the greatest hurdle (dynamic equilibrium) that Latin America must pass in order to accelerate its growth with equality. It remains clear that it is through education that we must rediscover our America.
I believe that we cannot separate the problem of education in a country or a region from its economic, political and social reality.
I think that my country, Brazil, is undergoing after so much turbulence a moment of glory, to the point of having a president who is an educator and sociologist and is married to an anthropologist (who is also and educator). Our minister of Education, one of the most respected educators in this country, developed a campaign for our government that is a model for all of Latin America: "Wake up Brazil! It's time for school." Because it is only through education that we can begin building a competitive economy, a more just society and a truly democratic state where "education is a right of all and the duty of the state and family, which will be encouraged and supported with the collaboration of society, shooting for the full development of individuals, their preparation for the role of citizen and their attaining qualifications for employment" (Article 205 of the Brazilian Constitution).
This is the text of the Supreme Law of the country. Le us now examine the reality: according to statistics, 20 million out of the population of 160 million Brazilians are illiterate. For others, as our great educator Darcy Ribeiro used to say, 60% of the population, that is, 90 million are functionally illiterate, or in other words, unable to read/write or count. Now, never has so much been written or said about education as in this decade. But the truth lies in the numbers that show reality and not in the rhetoric of speeches. And in reality, a people have the education that it is able to have and not the one desired.
While visiting Canada last year, (a country that I leaned to admire long ago), I read in a Candadian magazine (Maclean's) that parents and families were complaining about their teachers because they earned 65,000 Canadian dollars (approximately 50,000 US dollars) for only 9 months of work per year. This situation is quite close, wouldn't you say, to the situation of Brazilian teachers, where a general education teacher earns an average of 80 dollars per month, or approximately 1,000 dollars per year! In Sao Paulo, the richest state of the federation, a teacher earns the dazzling amount of 240 dollars per month. How many Brazilian educators present here had to be housed in free lodgings because they do not have a decent salary for a professional of their responsibility? The situation of special educators in our region is scandalously tragic. There is a vicious circle working here, since there are no specialized teachers because there are insufficient services to train and hire them. The few teachers that become trained end up disillusioned with their profession and migrate to other, better-paid services.
I sometimes ask myself what keeps these educators active? Having lived 35 years with an educator, I believe it is truly and simply due to the passion they have for teaching, for learning, for continuing to be, in spite of everything, educators. Educators who believe in education and dream about it. Educators for whom education is the only way to build the country that we dream of.
We have all heard in official speeches, in the international declarations of UNESCO and in the Salamanca Statement the call to include impaired individuals in regular classroom. But does it exist in practice in Latin America? Another question: how many visually-impaired children are able to attend school in Brazil?
The national budgets of our countries do not earmark funds to train specialized teachers. Due to the lack of material resources, the low performance level of inadequately trained teachers and the persistence of archaic and outdated ideologies of residential schools that have become de facto asylums, everything seems to conspire against special education. If these anomalies are not corrected quickly, we will continue to be satisfied with and charmed by official speeches, laws and beautiful written statements while the panorama of special education practices for our children remains tragic.
We parents and special children do not need more laws, recommendations or written declarations but rather special resources and professionals who can be effective leaders for our children. We need to break down the barriers of official discourse to be able to act! I insist: we do not need any more recommendations or laws, we want resources and special educators for our children.
If it is true that 10% of the population of a country is impaired in one way or another, no country can afford the luxury of not educating and preparing for employment this 10% of its people. It represents a workforce for generating wealth that is important for any country. And we know how much a visually-impaired person that is integrated and independent can contribute to the development of society, from Homer's age, through Milton's and up to Jernigan's and that of all the people cited in his opening speech of this Conference.
When we decided to set up in our institute a computerized job-training program for youth with visual impairments, we faced the obstacle of finding teachers for it. We overcame this difficulty by finding blind professionals who were successfully employed in the computer field and who volunteered after their normal working hours to become teachers and train an initial group of trainers who absorbed the former's knowledge and went on to disseminate it to others.
These professionals became educators and became models for building partnership and solidarity. By the way, in order to create these resources we were forced to purchase two Braille printer, which cost approximately $3,500 in the country where they are manufactured. Do you know how much they cost in Brazil? $10,000, or the price of a car!
I think this begs another questions: if both resources and special teachers are lacking, why not train parents? I have no formal training in the area of education but have learned so much with educators, parents and even the children in our institution.
And now not another question, but a small confession: if I had learned more, participated more and dedicated more time to my children, I would certainly have been a better parent for them. It gives me such pleasure every time I meet a child who is in the waiting room with his parents for the first appointment for services.
And if there is one thing I have learned in our institution it is that behind every well-developed, and emotionally well-structured child there is always a good mother, and if that child is well above the average, I don't have any doubt there is a father who participates actively in his or her education.
The educational process is very complex, and the technical and scientific aspects covered in a conference are insufficient for treating this subject. It is too important a task to be confined solely to those who have always been involved in it: teachers, directors, and ministers of education. Education must involve all: educators, families and the whole community in a very broad partnership.
If we really want to achieve and education for all, we must mobilize all the active bodies of the nation: public organizations, syndicates, businesses, religious organizations, organizations of the blind and national associations. A child without education is and adult without a future. Providing an appropriate education for our children is therefore a talk for all society.
Where does education began? At the moment of birth. We are all born free, or as Jean Paul Sartre said "all men are born condemned to be free." We are all born free and with inherent rights of our human condition. Thus since we know that our children have special needs, we also know that they have the same rights of any adult: civic, political, social, cultural and economic rights.
It must be said in passing that these are rights that were established as international law on September 2, 1990, under the Children's Rights Conventions. Forgive me for insisting on this point: it is not a mere recommendation but international law. It obligates states to protect these rights of their children and to support families and promote efforts to achieve a socially just distribution of resources. And it is the best guarantee that governments assume these responsibilities and that society be globally mobilized.
Unfortunately the state of education in Latin America is not one of the most praise-worthy. Why? Is it due only to a lack of resources? This is a barrier that is always recognized by all. People are always complaining about the lack of resources. Is this one of the barriers to the educational process in Latin America? I think that the barrier is not the lack of resources but rather a cultural barrier. The barriers are obsolete ideologies and outdated curricula, which are at complete odds with the reality of families and children. The family is the foundation for everything. It is our principal point of reference. All legislation points out the importance for the child of living at home and in communities. Educators and schools cannot be substitutes for families but rather must help and strengthen them as partners. Through its proposal of uniting parents and professionals and getting them to act as partners, ICEVI is recognizing the key role of families in the life of their children. Family and home are the first "homeland" of children. It is there that children learn about their rights and obligations. And they learn with their parents. They are their first educators. Their words, their actions, their examples can be the most important lessons of their live. At home they learn how to give and receive affection. The learn the meaning of winning and losing, of happiness and sorrow. And at home they learn what I learned with Hodding Carter: to grow roots and wings. Roots and wings? Yes, roots to fix them to the fertile soil of the family, where they can learn to share and live in a group. And wings that will develop slowly through the acquisition of confidence, autonomy, their own convictions and their independence so that they can learn to fly alone.
Allow me to return to my questions.
Is it possible that in worrying only about the partnership between parents and educators we are forgetting an important partner in this relationship, namely the visually-impaired child or youth himself? Don´t they need to be listened to in this partnership? In addition to the right to develop roots and wings, don´t they have a right to express their opinion about their own destiny? And about their role within the family? Or do they always want us to do the thinking for them? Do they just want to listen and accept everything we tell them? Don´t they have a right to say no? Don´t they have a desire to participate in their own educational process? These are questions for debate. Who knows? Perhaps on Thursday Pedro Zurita will present us with some answers when he analyzes the question of clients...
Observing the problem from a different angle:
Is it possible that the family can sometimes be a barrier against the development of the protagonists of this conference, namely visually-impaired children and youth? Aren´t there higher-class families who try to compensate for the lack of time they devote to their children by buying them designer clothes or status-conferring toys? Wouldn´t many of these children prefer to spend more time with their parents than playing with their computer games?
In today´s world, TV has become one of the most powerful educators. Any child knows how to use a computer, a microwave oven or a video laserdisk player. Since both parents work to support the family, both have less time to spend with their children, and must rely more on persons "outside" the family. On day care centers, educators, grandparents...... It is indeed true that the world has changed, but children´s needs haven´t. They still need love, acceptance and protection.
We live in a society where changes occur at a dizzying speed; we can safely predict that in the next 5 years changes will be more profound than those having transpired in the last 30. In the past, families were composed of a working father and a mother who looked after the children and the unity of the family. Already in the 70s, in the USA nearly 12% of households were single-parent homes, generally a mother with on child. In the 90s the numbers have reached 30%. Recently, while travelling in the United States, I came across an article in the Chicago Tribune: "Approximately one million American teenagers will give birth this year." In fact, 4 out of 10 young American women become pregnant at least once before the age of 20. The great majority of them (80%) are not married. The consequences of this phenomenon for their children are completely unpredictable.
Who can predict the outlook for families in the next millenium? Today we already find everything: adolescent, divorced and widowed parents. Families where a brother, an uncle or a grandparent act as the head of the family. This is an example of a Brazilian family today, at the threshold of the 21st century: Eleneide is 19 years old and has four children - the youngest is one month old and the eldest 4 years. All the children have a different father. She gave one of the children to an aunt and lives with the other three in the home of the father, where there are 11 other brothers and a nephew living.
To paint the picture bleaker, in our America poverty and inhuman living conditions in slums contribute to the problems of these families. But the danger does not threaten poor families alone. In rich families in Brazil there is an important member of the family structure who is rarely considered by specialists in family behavior: the maid or housekeeper. The richer the family, the greater the number of maids. It is a status symbol as well as the heritage of more than 300 years of slavery in our country.
When the family employs only one maid, she is paid for what is called general chores - cleaning and ordering, chores that are considered "minor and for slaves". Washing, ironing, cooking also belong to this category. But the most widespread chore is that of nanny. The majority of 12 to 15-year-olds who enter the work force do so to help their families. Having no culture or experience, they are hired to "watch" the children while the mother is working. And if the unfortunate child happens to be visually-impaired, he or she will end up listening to the radio or television 8 hours a day while the mother-substitute rocks her cradle or shakes a rattle when he or she cries. Whatever the structure of the family, the educator needs to know and understand the status of the family, its values, beliefs, race, culture, traditions and customs in order to establish a close relationship with the child and the family.
Ironically, in developing countries such as ours, education - the most important tool for the growth of children - is a rare commodity for children with special needs. The least protected and most vulnerable children, which are special needs children, end up being the great victims in all areas of development. Here where we are in São Paulo, the richest and most developed state in the Federation, there existed in the past the possibility for a blind child to begin his or her education at the age of 4, when he or she could enroll in a state-run pre-school with special resource rooms. Today, now that the responsibility for providing pre-school education has come under the authority of the city hall of the third-largest city in the world, nothing, absolutely nothing is being done for the education of these children. And if the child happens to be mulitply-impaired, he is lost. Not even private schools, which are expensive, would admit such students. Even if the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Brazilian constitution were shown to the directors.
Parent-Professional Relationships
Since 90% of the world's
visually-impaired population lives in developing countries, the extreme
poverty and lack of formal education of the parents must be taken into
account. Illiterate or poorly educated parents are shy, insecure and end
up leaving a very important role to educators. Educators, in turn, conscious
of the parents' lack of preparation, tend to assume a position equivalent
to that of the shaman in primitive tribes, leaving a very passive role
to the parents, which makes any possible partnership very unbalanced indeed.
But partnerships need to allow all parties to act as equals and to accept
and respect each other mutually.
Families spend more time than anyone else with children; they are the ones who look after them; parents know their children's emotional disposition. They interpret and understand when and what makes them happy, sad, frightened, proud and affectionate. Parents always see their children as being unique. For professionals a child is just one among many others. On the other hand, since both the father and the mother work, parents need educators to fill in during their absence.
The problem lies in defining the boundaries and responsibilities of each of the partners. Both have to have clear in their minds what their respective roles are. Professional who wish to act as bona fide partners must understand how the parent-child interactions happen in the core of the family. If the history of the family is not investigated, nor the social and cultural level, nor their values, their worries, their place in the community, in brief, the world in which the child lives, it will not be possible to educate the child adequately.
Although it may be obvious to all of you, I believe it is always important to keep in mind how much a visual impairment in a child breaks disrupts the structure of families. Depression and feelings of guilt are always there, hidden by family members. This requires special educators to go a bit beyond their role of educators. A rather risky situation arises for the child whenever the educator assumes a haughty behavior in regard to the family and does not guide or listen to its members. Families need educators and vice versa. He or she must provide the parents in a simple and straightforward manner information on their child's conduct, his social involvement, and his development. Parents, in turn, want to be listened to. They want to solve their problems and allay their anxiety.
No sensible parent can neglect the importance of the specialized, scientific knowledge of professionals; but what we have seen rather frequently and with concern is the medicalization of services for the family by some professionals who sit on the opposite side of the table equipped with an exaggerated technical baggage that focuses much more on the impairment than on the child. If the child succeeds, it is thanks to the technical know-how of the professional. If the child does not develop properly, the child or the family are blamed for not following instructions. Or what is worse: washing off all blame, he or she tags on top the child another disability which is held responsible for the lack of development. Since parents are invariably technically unprepared, they not question the verdict and find the child guilty as charged.
Very often, an informal visit at the home, an extra-curricular walk in a pleasant spot outside of the school environment or institution can reveal previously unknown aspects of the child's behavior and secrets of his or her everyday behavior that had up to then lain hidden to the educator in the normal working environment.
In our institution we created an experimental shared living space where families meet and share their experiences and skills and carry out activities geared around toys - making them, exploring their possibilities as instruments of enjoyment and interaction with their children. This activity is supervised by professionals who stay in the background to avoid making the parents feel they are in subordinate roles. This shared living space creates a good opportunity for professionals to get to know in the most disarming fashion each of the parents, their potential, their behaviour with their children and their abilities.
In order to make life easier for parents, we are still offering family seminars on Saturday afternoons, and in the next few months we will be implementing a new immersion program in a site in the countryside where in the course of a weekend parents can be with professionals from different fields while their children play. There is so much that can be learned about each family during these get-togethers.
Since professionals always depend on the feedback of parents, it is important to view the child within the context of the family. The most sensible way of involving professionals in families is through the gaining their confidence. By sharing results and participating in decisions through regular contact and meetings where parents don´t simply listen to long, technical dissertations.
I insist: they are looking for practical examples that can be applied to the reality of everyday life. Of course it is true that on the camp of families we find examples of parents who are absolutely unreceptive to suggestions always oppose the recommendations of professionals. However, partners need to convince and not prevail over each other.
Parent-professional partnerships must be based in negotiations whose basic premise is mutual respect. When parents feel they are respected and understood, their self-esteem grows, they feel more confident, and the are willing to participate. When professionals are respected and recognized as specialists, their professional worth is enhanced. The relationship is thus balanced. Easy? Absolutely not! It is a complex affair, but it can be easier when there is transparency and flexibility from both parties. When both collaborate (work together); when they cooperate (act together); when they share information, both certainties and uncertainties. When competition gives place to partnership.
Unfortunately, we must recognize that in the world in which we live we have been trained to compete and succeed, and not to cooperate.
Globalization is the name of the game at the turn of this century.
With globalization, frontiers will no longer exist, nor will nations. Therefore, would it make any sense to speak about education in Latin America, Asia or Africa?
There will no longer by rich or poor countries. Competitive individualism, whose only motivation is exerting power over others, will be abolished. There will no longer be economic, political, social or cultural barriers among persons. All will cooperate in order to improve the planet, and no one will compete with anyone else. The universal principle of cooperation will have taken seat among peoples and the new rules of the game will not permit some to win and others to lose.
All will be winners. All forms of competition will be eliminated: between parents and children, between parents and educators, between educators and principals, between principals and education ministers; all will be partners for education. Since the values of this admirable new world are those of teaching the student how to share, the existing system will no longer be weighed down by the economic value of things, people will no longer be valued by how much they earn but by how much they know and how much they teach. Power will reside in knowledge.
All schools are integrated, because walls have been removed. There are no longer any castaways in society. Schools all have access to knowledge and no longer prepare students to be consumers but rather citizens. In school we are taught, now, all that we used to learn outside of school. Parents and professionals divide up responsibilities and share their opinions. With globalization, there are no longer any special educators, because all children are now special. A Utopia? What is utopia? What wasn't done, we are able to do.
Utopia is part of man. It is found in the Talmud, in the Bible, in Rousseau's dream, in which there is no life without liberty, no liberty without equality, no equality without justice and fraternity.
Is it possible that liberty, equality and fraternity are mere utopias?
What is most important for us? The future? The present? Without dreams, without utopias, not even the past makes sense.
And what is the present that we are living? Isn't it through it that we can anticipate the future?
Today we know that the global village is unequivocally richer. We need to globalize wealth and knowledge so that globalization not be a farce, and not take into account merely economic and financial aspects, as the ethic that life is only worth something only if economically viable would have it. This anti-ethic only worsens social conditions, institutionalizes exclusion, sanctions discrimination, and ignores basic human rights.
The new world of the next millenium has to be reinvented starting with education, not as a formal process, but as a means of forming men and women who are aware of their citizenship and capable of transforming society. A society in which education is not put on the back-burner behind building a new bridge, or a new stadium or a new economic plan. A society in which education is viewed as an investment. An investment in the future, since the society of the future in the global village will be more and more a society based on knowledge. All of us, parents, children and educators have a very important role to play in this process, since the challenges of modernity, of technological advance demand that our minds be well prepared.
In a world in which technology and knowledge are available and can be easily shared, as is being done in this conference; in a world in which per capita income has tripled in the last 25 years, there is no longer place for excuses from either governments or us. The rights of children - whether they be impaired or not - affirmed in all declarations, conclusions and statutes leave no space for doubt: they are rights inherent of man's condition. They are rights to health and education that cannot be treated as simple rhetorical statements in official speeches. They need to be respected as international law. They can and should be given attention to.
As a an industrialist-volunteer hybrid, these last years I have identified less as an industrialist and more as a worker-volunteer. It is a job that I learned as the work of my wife, which is the work of all of you educators. Thank you for the privilege of being able to be among all of you these days. It has been such a joy that I wish I could make it last longer. I have come out of this experience feeling enriched. It was a great challenge and it gave me great pride. Today I understand better you mission - please forgive me taking the liberty, our mission - as a mission of service, of sharing. And when such a mission is carried out our lives no longer belong to us. They belong to all special children that we serve. Children who are desperately in need of us. They need us now, right now. They are the only ones who cannot wait.