Abreast Of Latest Aid To Handicapped

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31042, 23 April 1966, Page 2

Abreast Of Latest Aid To Handicapped

Although staffing and equipment in New Zealand schools for handicapped children was not as lavish as in some schools in England and the United States, New Zealand teachers were well abreast of the latest techniques and methods used overseas, said Miss B. M. Goldsbrough, head teacher of the Christchurch Cerebal Palsy School.

Miss Goldsbrough has just returned from a nine-month holiday in England and the United States where a grant from the Canterbury-West-land branch of the Crippled Children Society enabled her to spend some of her time observing and studying overseas methods for teaching handicapped children.

these children are usually poor spellers and very often there are whole families with spelling difficulties, said Miss Goldsbrough. Special Cases

In England the Invalid Children's Aid Association runs schools for non-com-municating children and children with special language difficulties. These children may be described as “autistic” or “aphasic.” Although they are not educationally sub-normal and do not suffer any physical disability, the human voice has no special meaning for them. If the child suffers from receptive aphasia he can hear the sound but cannot understands it; if he has expressive aphasia he can understand the language but he cannot express, although he is physically capable of doing so.

“I was particularly interested in any schools or centres which were trying to help children with learning difficulties. Such children might suffer from difficulties in visual and auditory perception even though they are endowed with normal sight and hearing,” she said. While in England Miss Goldsbrough attended an eight-week course at the London Institute of Education to study the education of the physically handicapped. During the course there were weekly visits to schools for physically handicapped, muscular distrophy. Children of average or near average intelligence who found school learning very difficult posed a problem which was arousing great interest in Britain and the United States. These children might have difficulties in sensation, perception and reasoning, but be physically overactive, and have difficulty in concentrating. Formerly they were just termed “naughty children” but now special schools and classes were being started.

Educationalists in New Zealand are aware of these difficulties and provision for children with such handicaps is made within the normal school curriculum through speech clinics, reading clinics and child health clinics, said Miss Goldsbrough. American Schools

The Dyslexic Clinic in London is for children who have difficulty learning to read. The children, aged between five and 14, attend the clinic once or twice a week, spending the rest of their time at normal schools. They must all be of at least average ability and there are some children of almost genius intelligence.

Miss Goldsbrough was particularly interested in two schools near Chicago for brain injured or educationally handicapped children. These schools were founded by Dr. A. Strauss and Dr. L. Lehtinen, who were the first educationalists to publish their findings on “the brain injured child.” Their methods rest on a thorough diagnosis and understanding of the individual child’s difficulties, a quiet orderly classroom and good apparatus. Miss Goldsbrough noticed New Zealand “Adsum” blocks in use in these schools. These blocks were devised by a New Zealand teacher for teaching arithmetic, but no-one in the school could remember how they came by them. Facilities provided for the handicapped in New Zealand provided a good coverage, said Miss Goldsbrough. In the United States the state was increasing its benefits but there were still a great many people who had to pay to have their handicapped children educated. In England there were many private schools, but as the local educational authority usually paid for the children attending these, education for the handicapped was virtually free.

Some of the children have difficulty in directionality—they are unable to read from left to right, others read words backwards and very often they are unable to see the difference between words which look alike or have similar sounds.

A full-time psychologist employed at the research centre in the clinic is trying to find the cause of these defects, ad if there is any hereditary factor involved. These' defects might be inherited because